Earthrise 50 years ago on 70mm film

dave lackey

dave lackey

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Unfortunately, the iconic Hasselblad image that highlighted the beauty and fragility of the Earth's environment could only do so much and the record shows that we are still not treating our planet kindly.

https://www-m.cnn.com/2018/12/23/op...ick-evanoff/index.html?r=https://www.cnn.com/

But the cool thing is, one can still buy both the camera and 70mm film that was used on the moon to shoot this beautiful image.

Sigh... I would love to shoot an HB with 70mm film myself for an environmental project locally. But it is not financially possible... Perhaps some RFF member will do some amazing work to regenerate the public's interest in our environmental concerns.😉
 
Still an incredible photo...
robert
PS: I remember many years ago I saw an Hasselblad advertising saying (more or less) there is one of our cameras for free, you only need to go to the moon and pick it up !
 
There was a great piece on NOVA last night on Apollo 8. It showed one of the astronauts wielding a Hasselblad with what looked like a very long telephoto lens as he shot out the window of the capsule. Anyone know what lens they were using?

Best,
-Tim

PS: Isn't 70mm film just 120 film?
 
Photo was taken in "portrait" mode, but usually published rotated to "landscape." NASA thought the unrotated image, with the moon looming into the left of the frame, had a menacing quality. YMMV.
 
charjohncarter said:
I was really busy then, I couldn't believe what I was seeing on the TV. And I'm maybe wrong but I think it was live; we had to wait for the photo though.
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My Dad and I used to watch all the space program news, going back to the early 1960's. We were both really excited about the Apollo program and the dream of getting to the moon. That Christmas, 1968, was the last space program news we got to watch together. I have very fond memories. He died a month later, and never got to see them land on the moon.

Best,
-Tim
 
Timmyjoe said:
There was a great piece on NOVA last night on Apollo 8. It showed one of the astronauts wielding a Hasselblad with what looked like a very long telephoto lens as he shot out the window of the capsule...
Click to expand...

I watched that program too. I liked how astronaut Bill Anders said he didn't have a light meter so just bracketed like hell.

Jim B.
 
Those were certainly different times. I miss them. NASA was almost totally civilian, while now they have been defunded so much, about all they do is launch spy satellites for our military and we have to rely on the Russians to send American astronauts up to the space station.

I don't understand the comment about the shot being made in portrait mode. A blad takes square photos. I find it amusing that Irwin's camera locked up on him while on the moon, just like so many blads did to us down here.
 
Recently saw a short YouTube film about these photos, don't recall the link though. I believe they had one body with an 80mm lens, one with a 250mm lens and another with a wide lens (40mm? maybe).
 
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Timmyjoe said:
There was a great piece on NOVA last night on Apollo 8. It showed one of the astronauts wielding a Hasselblad with what looked like a very long telephoto lens as he shot out the window of the capsule. Anyone know what lens they were using?

Best,
-Tim

PS: Isn't 70mm film just 120 film?
Click to expand...

It was a 250.
 
robert blu said:
Still an incredible photo...
robert
PS: I remember many years ago I saw an Hasselblad advertising saying (more or less) there is one of our cameras for free, you only need to go to the moon and pick it up !
Click to expand...

There are several, in fact. The astronauts only brought back the film backs to save weight.
 
Timmyjoe said:
There was a great piece on NOVA last night on Apollo 8. It showed one of the astronauts wielding a Hasselblad with what looked like a very long telephoto lens as he shot out the window of the capsule. Anyone know what lens they were using?

Best,
-Tim

PS: Isn't 70mm film just 120 film?
Click to expand...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthrise. The lens was a 250mm Sonnar. 70mm film was a movie film that was broad enough to take 6x6cm images. The backs used a cassette for the film, I believe. I don't know how many exposures were possible, but it was a lot more than the 24 possible with 220 film. The article says the photo was shot on Ektachrome.
 
Portrait mode Landscape mode?

Portrait mode Landscape mode?

Last time I shot with a Hasselblad it was a 2 1/4 inch square. You can crop it any way you want to, but the negative is still square.
 
At least some of the 70mm films used during the Apollo program were on a thin base facilitating a greater number of images per magazine than would usually be the case. Not sure about the Ektachrome used during the Apollo 8 flight without looking it up though.
 
Timmyjoe, good memories with your dad. I was in professional school with a pregnant wife and working in a gas station so watching TV was out (so I missed all those 'Hogan's Heros' shows). When the moon landing happened (1969) I had taken a breather and was swimming in the lake in my hometown. This was at a classmates parent's home: his father came out and told us to come inside and see Armstrong on the moon. And it was live and in Color which was not a common TV then. I was oblivious to what was happening at that time.
 
Jim Lovell tells Anders “250 at f11”. That’s from a table for sure, and specific to the colour magazine with 168 ASA Ektachrome. The bracketing was just in case, not the lack of a light meter which would have been disastrous.
 
charjohncarter said:
Timmyjoe, good memories with your dad. I was in professional school with a pregnant wife and working in a gas station so watching TV was out (so I missed all those 'Hogan's Heros' shows). When the moon landing happened (1969) I had taken a breather and was swimming in the lake in my hometown. This was at a classmates parent's home: his father came out and told us to come inside and see Armstrong on the moon. And it was live and in Color which was not a common TV then. I was oblivious to what was happening at that time.
Click to expand...

There was only one family in our neighborhood who had a color TV in 1969, and I remember the entire neighborhood crammed into their living room watching Neil Armstrong and the moon landing. Crazy days.

Best,
-Tim
 
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