No amount of computational smartphone photography can match, in my eyes, the clarity and contrast and intensity of whatever analogue medium these were captured on.

This looks gorgeous. I'm extremely tempted to splurge on this, and the Apollo, books...

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LiquidPolymer 25 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I have the "Apollo Remastered" book and it is gorgeous. I'm going to buy this one too. Obviously they went back to the original film from the missions and did a full scan. NASA almost never gives access to the original film and instead we have been seeing duplicate transparencies which involves a loss of detail and dynamic range. They were good enough back then. But these first generation scans cannot be matched for detail and color.

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lm28469 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Medium format film (120, 6x6), Hasselblad cameras. I personally think we're barely starting to match the quality of medium format film with modern medium format sensors

https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/camera-hasselb...

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bbatha 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Depends on how you define quality. While medium and large format photography are extremely high resolution that’s not the only factor. Space age lenses were significantly lower resolution than the film. Modern mirrorless lenses are starting to come close to being able to out resolve film but still aren’t there. Meaning that you get more functional resolution out of modern digital. Digital also beats the pants off film for dynamic range and low light. That said the noise (grain) and dynamic range fall off in film are more pleasing than digital to most eyes. So it’s not all about technical specs.

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thw_9a83c 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Digital also beats the pants off film for dynamic range and low light.

While this is true now, it took a surprisingly long time to get there. The dynamic range of professional medium format negative films is still respectable. Perhaps not so much in a low light, but it's very immune to overexposure.

Also, you can buy a cheap medium-format camera in a good condition and experience that "huge sensor" effect, but unfortunately there are no inexpensive 6x6 digital cameras.

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buildbot 6 hours ago | parent [-]

In fact there is basically only one digital back ever made at that size, the dicomed bigshot.

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thw_9a83c 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Interesting. I didn't even know that. I had to look up what's the size of the modern Hasselblad digital camera sensor, and it 43.8 × 32.9mm.

	▲	buildbot 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It’s incredibly rare and specific, many people in the DB world don’t even know about them. 60x60mm sensor, larger than the actual film gate of 56x56mm There was also a version for the Rollei 6x6 6000 series, the Rollei Q16. I’ve only seen one for sale ever. Technically larger than 6x6 film sensors have existed since the 80s or 90s at least but are typically only used for government things… Some digital aerial systems use huge sensors.

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bhickey 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Space age lenses were significantly lower resolution than the film.

Can you say a little more about this? Modern lenses boast about 7-elements or aspherics, but does that actually matter in prime lenses? You can get an achromat with two lenses and an apochromat with three. There have definitely been some advances in glass since the space program, like fluorite versus BK7, but I'm wholly in the dark on the nuances.

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bayindirh 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I find modern primes much sharper than their older counterparts not because of the elements or the optical design, but from the glass directly.

Sony's "run of the mill" F2/28 can take stunning pictures, for example. F1.8/55ZA is still from another world, but that thing is made to be sharp from the get go.

The same thing is also happening in corrective glasses too. My eye numbers are not changing, but the lenses I get are much higher resolution then the set I replace, every time. So that I forget that I'm wearing corrective glasses.

	▲	dylan604 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> I find modern primes much sharper than their older counterparts not because of the elements or the optical design, but from the glass directly Even back in their prime, haha, the Cooke lens leaned into their glass manufacturing by calling it the Cooke Look. All of the things that gave it that look are things modern lenses would consider as issues to correct.

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bbatha 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I wrote a longer post a few months ago.[1] The tl;dr is a) computer aided design and manufacturing b) aspherical elements c) fluorite glass d) retro focus wide angle designs and e) improved coatings. Mirrorless lenses also beat slr lenses because they are much closer to the film plane — of course rangefinders and other classic designs never had this problem to begin with. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42962652

Edit: this is just for prosumer style cameras. If you look at phone sized optics that’s a whole other ballgame.

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actionfromafar 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The lenses also have to be better to compensate for the smaller sensors. All lens defects get more "magnified" the smaller the sensor is. So a straight comparison isn't fair unless the sensor is the same size as the film was.

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kjkjadksj 22 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Even the fuji medium formats don’t have sensors as large. They are more like 4cm x 3cm.

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tecleandor 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Film in big formats is incredible, gives great images even on shitty cameras...

	▲	kjkjadksj 21 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		These hasselblads not shitty cameras. A holga is on the other hand, and the images are shitty as a result despite being medium format.

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jillesvangurp 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You are talking about the digital, heavily processed photos here that are indeed a lot nicer than the originals taken and.printed 50 years ago. The originals were actually a bit under/over exposed (very harsh light in space), and quite grainy.

	▲	isoprophlex 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I get your point, but no amount of post processing gives my iphone 17 pro portraits the sharpness and atmosphere of what i shoot with my crappy nikon with a prime lens. And I feel that these old analogue photos contain even more magic in the base material, digital reconstruction notwithstanding

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londons_explore 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Computational photography is about to get really good when it can combine hundreds or thousands of frames into one. 1000 frames effectively combined is equivalent to a lens and sensor of 1000x the surface area - ie exceeding a single frame from a DSLR.

Current methods use optical flow and gyroscopes to align images, but I imagine future methods to use AI to understand movement that doesn't work well for optical flow (ie. Where a specular reflection 'moves' on a wine glass).

	▲	dmitrygr 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Saying “ai” does not magically solve anything. Current best ML things can’t even solve medium difficulty calculus equations. We’re nowhere near them doing original work like understanding what’s in 1000 images, creating a world model out of that, and then rendering a better image of that world successfully without hallucinations.

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glimshe 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Great lenses with huge film frames. It's doable in digital, but not on a Smartphone or budget SLR.

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speed_spread 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I assume you've watched with delight the 2019 Apollo 11 documentary assembled from previously unused 70mm footage.