[HN Gopher] John Glenn's $40 Camera Forced NASA to Rethink Space...
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John Glenn's $40 Camera Forced NASA to Rethink Space Missions
Author : danboarder
Score : 282 points
Date : 2023-03-27 16:02 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (petapixel.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (petapixel.com)
| Grimburger wrote:
| So while everyone in the comments section is amazing us all with
| how inflation works, what's the cost of camera today on
| Perseverance?
|
| I'm having a rough time searching for costs on google and
| official pages, guess it's not a word that they like to put in PR
| pieces. There's 23 cameras onboard and it's not easy to work out
| what a single one cost.
|
| Edit: this is a great paper on the devices themselves
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11214-020-00765-9
| mturmon wrote:
| Thanks for linking Justin's paper, he has been the lead of the
| engineering camera system for Perseverance and, IIRC, for
| Curiosity before that (https://mastcamz.asu.edu/team/justin-
| maki/)
|
| That paper is largely about the engineering cameras (for
| localizing obstacles, path planning, EDL diagnostics, etc.) --
| as opposed to the science cameras (see paper Table 1) which
| would often be even more exotic from a hardware POV (e.g.,
| spectral sensitivity and photometric calibration).
|
| The table links the following articles on science cameras, for
| example:
|
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11214-020-00755-x
|
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11214-021-00812-z
|
| I guess the cost of the hardware might be of some interest, but
| as you can guess from a look through these papers, it's the
| supporting engineering (e.g., calibration and I&T) that
| dominates the system cost.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| >The sensor has 1600 x 1200 photoactive pixels
|
| I kind of expected something more than 2mp.
| EricE wrote:
| more pixels mean the smaller each sensor for each pixel is
| and the less light each sensor for a said pixel can gather.
|
| Quantity does not always equate quality, especially in
| photography.
| skykooler wrote:
| Keep in mind that Perseverance was designed back in 2012,
| and using proven hardware meant that the camera modules are
| from even earlier.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| The cameras on Perseverance are also mission critical for
| the rest of the 1B+ Rover.
|
| John Glenn's camera wasn't mission critical. Failure
| would have had no impact on the mission success. It
| sounds like it was a hobby project for the Astronaut and
| NASA engineers.
| myself248 wrote:
| Lower pixel count means larger individual pixels, which
| increases their quantum efficiency. This gets you more
| accurate information about the light itself; think of it as
| more bit-depth.
|
| In scientific applications especially, this is often a
| better tradeoff than going the other way. If you need fine
| detail of distant objects, do it with lenses rather than
| raw pixel count.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| To many financiers not enough emgineers
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| > During his three-orbit mission that lasted 4 hours and 55
| minutes, John Glenn took the first human-captured colored still
| photographs of the Earth using this camera.
|
| Weird: in these photos the Earth's horizon looks rounded, rather
| than flat
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'm really confused by what you're saying. Clearly, you're
| talking about the lens distortion that hasn't been flattened
| yet, right? You're not insinuating the preposterous lies that
| the Earth is round are you? /s
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Evidently not only did they fake the blue marble photos, they
| also faked John Glenn's drugstore camera shots
| em-bee wrote:
| they used a fisheye lens to fit the whole width of the earth in
| obviously
| jarofgreen wrote:
| If you like this check out
| https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/443162/apollo-remastered-by-...
|
| > In a frozen vault in Houston sits the original NASA
| photographic film of the Apollo missions. For half a century,
| almost every image of the Moon landings publicly available was
| produced from a lower-quality copy of these originals.
|
| > Now we can view them as never before. Expert image restorer
| Andy Saunders has taken newly available digital scans and,
| applying pain-staking care and cutting-edge enhancement
| techniques, he has created the highest quality Apollo photographs
| ever produced. Never-before-seen spacewalks and crystal-clear
| portraits of astronauts in their spacecraft, along with startling
| new visions of the Earth and the Moon, offer astounding new
| insight into one of our greatest endeavours.
|
| I saw the exhibition in Glasgow, was good!
| stevetron wrote:
| Can one of these pistol grip devices be made using a 3-d printer?
| [deleted]
| stevetron wrote:
| Can one of these pistol-grip devices be made with a 3-d printer?
| yawpitch wrote:
| I love what they've done here to get they grip to attach, using
| just the cold show and what looks like a pin rivet and quite
| possibly some epoxy. The thumb actuator to depress a custom cable
| release extension is gorgeous!
|
| Now I want to make a replica.
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| hipsterstal1n wrote:
| This is interesting and hits close to home. My dad and I are
| collectors of flown cameras from NASA missions. We have a few
| early digital cameras that flew on Shuttle missions in the very
| early 90's and they were modified similarly (minus the pistol
| grip). They were essentially film camera bodies with extra
| modules attached that had the digital components. We also have
| the extra large film magazines that were used, etc.
| thechao wrote:
| There were a lot of avid Shuttle photographers. When the
| astronauts landed they'd develop the film and mount them to a
| cheap matte-off-white cardboard, sign them, and they'd go out
| to the various centers. When NASA JSC decided to "upgrade" to
| Discovery Center & boot the public out, they also threw away
| _thousands_ of these photos. A friend 's dad had taken some
| photos between spacewalks to repair the Hubble (STS-61?); I
| picked up some of these photos, and I really love them!
| jacquesm wrote:
| Interesting! I relayed the output of the camera on the arm for
| one launch and a whole bunch of other footage from another.
| mongol wrote:
| > Photography was the last thing on NASA's mind
|
| This is the most surprising. Why was it so?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I'm as surprised as you are. But the more I think about it, the
| more I can see how this could happen.
|
| It's kind of a hindsight thing given we know how the space
| program played out. But at that time, the entire mindset might
| have been, "we just need to get to space and not kill our
| pilot."
| themadturk wrote:
| It was near-mutiny by the astronaut corps at the time (all
| seven of them!) that made NASA bend enough to put a window or
| two in the capsule (which name the astronauts also hated,
| apparently, preferring the term "spacecraft").
|
| NASA was woefully unaware of exactly what people could do in
| outer space, since they'd never sent a human up for more than a
| few minutes. They wanted to get people up and back down safely,
| to prove to the Russkies we were as good as they were. They
| simply weren't thinking about things like taking pictures. The
| astronauts, in contrast, were hotshots (even staid,
| conservative John Glenn). They spent their lives pushing the
| envelope, and going round and round in a highly automated tin
| can was less than they imagined doing. John Glenn taking a
| camera along for the ride was probably the tamest thing he
| thought he could get away with.
| krab wrote:
| Maybe engineering vs PR? Rarely people are good at both.
| gist wrote:
| > This is the most surprising. Why was it so?
|
| How about 'let's get him back alive'. If that had not happened
| there quite likely would have been no program or a big delay in
| the program.
|
| The writer (as is typical looks at upside not downside of
| attention to certain details) is predictably glib with that as
| if 'geez why wouldn't they thought pictures were important!'
| antoineMoPa wrote:
| Nice story, but I still don't see how missions were re-thought.
| orev wrote:
| The article makes quite few statements as if $40 is just some
| cheap camera. $40 in 1962 is $395 today.
|
| Still much cheaper than some special custom NASA thing, but that
| amount buys you far more than a "cheap drugstore camera".
| Aissen wrote:
| $395 is cheaper than a spaceflight-designed flight-certified
| espresso coffee cup ($650):
| https://spaceware.co/products/flight-space-cup (you can find
| articles about this).
| klyrs wrote:
| The shape of that vessel makes me feel unreasonably angry.
| Which, isn't all that angry to be honest, but it manages to
| press that "don't f with my coffee" button somehow. I think
| I'd prefer a mylar bag with a sippy valve.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I think an resin printed cup for $700 makes me an
| appropriate amount of angry.
|
| That it's in a completely idiotic design is just to be
| expected at that point.
| Aissen wrote:
| This design allows you to smell the coffee, something the
| mylar bag wouldn't allow. It also uses capillarity to
| prevent liquid bubbles from escaping while you drink. See
| more:
|
| https://blogs.nasa.gov/ISS_Science_Blog/2015/05/01/space-
| sta...
| klyrs wrote:
| If you gently squeeze on the mylar bag in space, the
| liquid will cling to the surface of the spout. I'm sure
| that the over-engineered design is great at what it does,
| but it's an unnecessary skeuomorphism.
| ghaff wrote:
| Even though it's probably at the lower end of rangefinder
| camera, I'm even a bit surprised you'd buy something like that
| in a "drugstore." That said a lot of stores were much more mom
| & pop back then and some probably carried things that wouldn't
| pass muster in a modern CVS.
| paulmd wrote:
| While not exactly a drugstore, one fun one that others might
| not know is that Sears' camera lineup was actually quite
| extensive and serious, featuring premium models rebranded
| from Asahiflex/Pentax, Nicca/Yashica, Mamiya, and others. A
| Sears/Tower brand camera wasn't bad at all!
|
| It sounds odd, but "white-labeling" by importers was quite
| common in those days - Pentax cameras were often sold as
| Honeywell Pentax, and large format camera lenses traveled
| through extensive networks and partnerships (Calumet, DO
| Industries, Graflex, etc). Today's distributor networks are
| very, very centralized in comparison, and there are a lot
| less players in the market. Today the closest analogy is
| probably CCTV lenses where there's still a pretty thriving
| industry and lots of sub-vendors.
|
| Given the historical nexus of drug stores to film
| developing... I guess I could see a drug store carrying some
| products, especially popular ones, and maybe having the
| ability to order some stuff too. Ansco was a film brand too
| (actually it's part of Agfa iirc, quite a large one!) so they
| could have been able to order cameras.
| ghaff wrote:
| Ansco and Agfa merged in 1928. I forgot that the Ansco
| brand continued to be used independently. I never used Agfa
| film much. I was always mostly Kodak consumables although I
| used Ilford B&W materials quite a bit for a while.
| ginko wrote:
| >All this camera hacking was done hastily just days before the
| mission and on a camera that was essentially a $40 point-and-
| shoot toy.
|
| That's a bit unkind. $40 in 1962 is would be about $400 adjusting
| for inflation and those Minolta fixed lens rangefinders were
| excellent cameras and pretty much state of the art consumer
| cameras, especially the auto-exposure. Of course it's no Nikon F
| or Hasselblad (those went to the moon later-on) but you could do
| a lot worse in 1962.
| adolph wrote:
| Just adjusting for inflation is not charitable. A $400
| commercially available camera today would be about $0.25
| adjusting for NASA. If it were for military use it would be the
| equivalent of $0.10.
| Retric wrote:
| Hardly NASA has a long history of getting good value for
| money. Just look at their funding of SpaceX and how cheap
| many of their probes have been. The shuttle was something of
| a rare exception, but it was also infected by the DoD's
| requirements.
|
| Cutting edge R&D is expensive, difficult, and prone to
| failure. Just look at all of say Google's failed green energy
| etc initiatives.
| ChancyChance wrote:
| > Cutting edge R&D is expensive, difficult, and prone to
| failure. Just look at all of say Google's failed green
| energy etc initiatives.
|
| Exactly. I find it ignorant when people claim NASA is some
| kind of cash-cow that drags its feet to get more money. If
| NASA played fast and lose (move fast and break things),
| people would die and shit would explode, and they'd get
| crucified by congress. Private companies play the risk game
| because they don't have to meet the same extremely high bar
| of safety that a government org does. I'm not saying
| there's some waste, but it is a complex process for a
| reason. Does it go too far, perhaps: I've fallen into ISO
| hell before, and it can be mind numbing, but maybe I'm just
| not smart enough to be the person reading those docs.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _some kind of cash-cow that drags its feet to get more
| money_
|
| just for the record, a cash-cow is a business you can
| just keep milking cash _from_ , not one that you keep
| feeding cash to. It comes from the BCG (Boston Consulting
| Group) "growth-share" matrix to describe the lifecycle of
| startups.
|
| https://www.scienceabc.com/wp-content/uploads/ext-
| www.scienc...
|
| the basic idea is, a company with a large market share in
| a growing market will just keep making cash in the future
| but requires investment now, as opposed to a company with
| a low market share in a market that's not growing, or the
| other variations. "Stars" are essentially potential
| unicorns, worth investing in.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _people claim NASA is some kind of cash-cow that drags
| its feet to get more money_
|
| The Shuttle and SLS jaded people. Of course, NASA didn't
| cause those. The military and Congress, respectively,
| did.
| hgsgm wrote:
| NASA destroyed a shuttle on more than 1% of all shuttle
| flights, each time killing everyone aboard.
| ChancyChance wrote:
| Or to put in another way, NASA only had two shuttle
| disasters.
|
| Two is such a small number, right?
|
| Funny now numbers can be used.
|
| However I can see the glaringly obvious omission in my
| post that NASA, in its near 70 years of existence has had
| numerous casualties and explosions. But that's literally
| my gist: massive checklists, standards, and regulations
| are a result of that.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| One of the issues with NASA is that the centers are a
| source of alot of political capital for their
| congressional sponsors. So things get funded on that
| basis.
|
| The big deal made about it is because government is more
| transparent. Big companies are often far more wasteful of
| shareholder dollars, but they generally don't have boards
| as insane as congress.
| smegsicle wrote:
| > NASA has a long history of getting good value for money
|
| like how apollo made do without a luxury fourth gimbal as
| in gemini
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| The shuttle was amazing. Never has there been such a
| versatile space vehicle. It could repair satellites, act as
| a small space station and bring satellites back to Earth.
| Hubble wouldn't be a thing with out it.
|
| All the other solutions currently are just kind of space
| buses (for equipment and people).
|
| There are different estimates for the shuttle launch costs
| -- between $500m - $1.5b. However for LEO there couldn't be
| anything more useful. The SLS launch costs run between $2b
| - $4b. It hasn't done anything useful so far...
| t344344 wrote:
| Right, unless it breaks and Americans have to launch from
| Kazakhstan :)
|
| There were two spy satellites with the same mirror
| diameter as Hubble. Launched by normal rockets! Without
| spending money on shuttle, US could launch new Hubble
| every 5 years or so!
|
| > Both NRO space telescopes have a main mirror nearly 8
| feet wide (2.4 meters), rivaling the Hubble Space
| Telescope,
|
| https://www.space.com/16000-spy-satellites-space-
| telescopes-...
| outworlder wrote:
| > The shuttle was amazing. Never has there been such a
| versatile space vehicle. It could repair satellites, act
| as a small space station and bring satellites back to
| Earth. Hubble wouldn't be a thing with out it.
|
| I'll concede that NASA did an excellent job, all things
| considered.
|
| The Shuttle itself was terrible(although gorgeous) but
| that's not NASA's fault. They had to get money from the
| Air Force so they were subject to Air Force requirements,
| like the incredible cross range capabilities and the
| oversized cargo hold.
|
| Then there were other requirements - like having to build
| solid rocket boosters from far away locations and
| transport by train, purely to get political support -
| that caused further problems. NASA didn't even want to
| use solid rockets in the first place.
|
| The Soviet Buran copied the project (without SRBs) even
| though it made zero sense to them - but the US obviously
| had a reason to develop such a vehicle, so they wanted to
| be ready. Their Energia rocket worked _better_ without an
| orbiter attached.
|
| What NASA _actually_ wanted to build would have been
| incredible. Sure, maybe the cargo hold would have been
| smaller, but if it could have a lower turnaround time and
| cost less to refurbish after every launch, maybe it would
| still be operational.
|
| The SLS is also bogged down by politicians. And still
| uses the accursed SRBs.
| Retric wrote:
| The shuttle worked, which was amazing considering
| everything it could do. But the program was a huge money
| pit because the shuttle had so much capability that went
| unused on most missions.
|
| You can quibble about the numbers, but a rough
| calculation puts the program at US$196 billion in 2011 or
| ~262B in 2023 dollars for 135 attempted flights. So 2B
| per flight in todays money.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program
|
| SLS is aiming for 130t to LEO vs 27.5t to LEO for the
| Shuttle. 4B a launch would have less than half the
| shuttle's cost per kg to LEO, if it's roughly 2B that's
| almost 5 times the cargo for the same budget. Granted the
| shuttle sent people up on every mission, but spending
| 60m/person to the ISS lets them stay in orbit for vastly
| less money / day. Essentially the shuttle launched and
| returned a large useful space into orbit, but then
| returned it at the end of every mission, which was
| extremely expensive.
|
| Both the SLS and shuttle have their advantages but the
| shuttle was only really useful for LEO as getting that
| much mass into higher orbits was untenable despite what
| various movies have suggested.
| adolph wrote:
| > Just look at their funding of SpaceX and
|
| . . . compare it to the funding of their actual priority:
| the series of Constellation: Ares, SLS: Orion. Just look at
| how despite their best efforts, they accidentally funded
| something successful.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Orbital_Transporta
| t...
| williamDafoe wrote:
| Yeah full frame cameras like the Minolta himatic viewfinder
| model were considered entry level back then. Thank God the
| mission wasn't delayed by one year because Kodak developed the
| truly terrible instamatic 126 camera in 1963, with awful
| resolution and picture quality ...
| pulvinar wrote:
| I can vouch for that-- I still have my Agfamatic 126 from the
| mid 60's which may look like the $40 camera (same selenium
| meter), but it always took crappy pictures. Nothing close to
| John Glenn's. The Argus C3 did though.
| DavidAdams wrote:
| I think it's worth mentioning that a nice Nikon or Leica in
| 1965 would have cost about $400. So they modified a "cheap"
| camera that cost about 1/10th the price of a "nice" camera.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah that was probably at the lower end of "real" rangefinder
| cameras. I'm guessing even something like a Kodak Retina
| would have been considerably more expensive.
|
| I'm not sure what the real mass market consumer cameras were.
| Brownies from Kodak I guess--Instamatics were only introduced
| in 1963. Of course, part of the answer is that photography
| was a lot less mass market in the early 60s.
| paulmd wrote:
| Real mass-market cameras for this era would have been
| things like the Kodak Pony line or Argus C3 (aka "the
| brick"), or the brownie box cameras you mentioned.
|
| https://mikeeckman.com/2022/05/kodak-pony-135-model-c-1955/
|
| https://camerapedia.fandom.com/wiki/Kodak_Pony_828/135
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argus_C3
|
| Anyway just as a general statement, photography was a mass-
| market thing throughout most of the 20th century - it just
| wasn't the glamorous pro-tier cameras that we still
| remember and care about today. Kodak in particular _always_
| catered to the low-end, getting cameras in people 's hands
| to get them using Kodak film was their bread and butter, it
| was very much a "give away the razor, sell the blades" at
| least in the low-end market.
|
| (and they introduced 620 and 628 film with different spool
| sizes to try and brand-lock you to Kodak! Today some
| cameras can be converted, or you can clip down the rim of
| the spool, or rewind 120 film (in a darkroom/darkbag) onto
| the 620 spool. It's a little bit smaller spool which can
| cause problems with film spacing on "automatic" cameras,
| but, red-window style cameras don't care, or you can use a
| 620 spool on the takeup.)
|
| In the early days it was "postcard cameras" shooting 122
| film (bigger than 120!) that would be contact-printed onto
| postcards, typically either folding cameras or box cameras
| (the latter being even simpler and cheaper - brownie
| launched at one dollar in 1900). Later, this evolved into
| viewfinder cameras/point-and-shoots.
|
| https://postcardhistory.net/2022/09/the-kodak-
| model-3a-postc...
|
| https://mymodernmet.com/kodak-brownie-camera/
|
| But if you are contact printing (effectively 1:1
| enlargement - the print is the same size as the negative),
| or enlarging only a small amount onto a 4x6 or 5x7 print,
| the lens isn't that critical. Meniscus is fine, rapid
| rectilinear or triplet is good, tessar is premium.
| Similarly, when you are shooting B+W film, a vague
| "instant" (usually about 1/100, sometimes 1/60) shutter
| setting is fine... the exposure latitude will cover you
| even though you're not perfectly on.
|
| And it was sensational being able to send a picture of
| _your own family_ through the mail on a postcard, like you
| were a movie star or something! Very very popular for the
| time.
|
| And even then there were models that specialized in getting
| relatively decent quality at minimal cost, like the Argus
| C3. Definitely a cost-optimized camera but I doubt you
| could get anything better at the prices it sold at.
|
| Anyway, today we tend to have a survival bias about this -
| yes, a leica or a rolleiflex or a kodak retina or a contax
| was quite expensive, not a mass-market thing at all! But
| 90% of everything is crap, it always has been (it's equally
| true of PC hardware today, f.ex), and we forget about the
| Kodak Pony 135s and the crappy box cameras with meniscus
| lenses and guillotine shutters because they're crap. But
| those were the mass-market products of their day.
|
| (I'm sure you know this, iirc we've interacted on photo
| threads before, I just like sharing. ;) But I disagree on
| the "photography wasn't mass market" bit, box cameras and
| cheapo bakelite viewfinder stuff has been a thing for a
| long time and it's easy to forget that with survivor bias.)
| jacquesm wrote:
| Amazing comment. How do you feel about Amazon shutting
| down dpreview.com?
| ghaff wrote:
| Thanks for sharing.
|
| I actually used my dad's old Pony for a time but got his
| German-made Kodak Retina IIIc when he went the SLR route.
| I had a lot of good use out of that and used it alongside
| my later SLR through most of college when some of the
| mechanisms finally wore to the point they couldn't be
| repaired.
|
| >Anyway, today we tend to have a survival bias about this
|
| Yeah, there may be cult exceptions but most of the
| cameras considered collectibles today were probably at
| least moderately expensive when they were introduced.
|
| >But I disagree on the "photography wasn't mass market"
| bit
|
| That's probably fair. Vacation snapshots were at least
| moderately popular. Kodak didn't get to where it is only
| servicing pros. Of course, it was at a whole different
| level than today with smartphones in everyone's pocket
| and the costs associated with taking a picture
| effectively zero. We have all become the Japanese :-)
| TMWNN wrote:
| > We have all become the Japanese :-)
|
| The novelization of _The Pink Panther Strikes Again_
| (1976) has a passage that discusses a photograph taken by
| "a Japanese student in England with a Leica". I doubt
| future generations will understand the multiple jokes
| encoded here.
| Finnucane wrote:
| The Hi-matic was not a top-of-the-line pro camera like a
| Nikon or Hasselblad, but it was not a cheap toy camera. It
| was a good-quality rangefinder with a decent lens and new
| features like the auto exposure.
| doubtfuluser wrote:
| So amazing! Today they would have mounted the grip in the other
| direction... it's very difficult to make selfies with this
| grip...
| syncsynchalt wrote:
| Difficult but not impossible -- I think there's a "selfie"
| halfway down the article.
|
| > "A photo of astronaut John H. Glenn Jr. aboard the
| "Friendship 7" Mercury spacecraft during the Mercury-Atlas 6
| spaceflight."
|
| The grain and quality seem to match the external photos, so I
| think it's the same camera. John must have had enough media
| training to know not to spike the camera like we usually do for
| selfies, he's valiantly scanning the horizon instead.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| mmm p sure he literally took what we would now call selfies
| with it sorry to ruin that for u.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| Wasn't he the only human definitely _not_ in any of the
| pictures?
| dylan604 wrote:
| The old adage of the only way to ensure you're not in the
| picture is to be the one taking the picture doesn't really
| work now. Now it seems to be reversed. The only way to be
| sure you are in the picture is to take a selfie
| ben7799 wrote:
| He was the only human period, Mercury was a single seat
| ride!
| estebank wrote:
| What GP meant is that he was taking a picture of Earth,
| hence every living human _but_ him was in the picture.
| That doesn 't quite work for Mercury given the orbit, but
| certainly does for the pictures taken in the Apollo
| missions.
| FearNotDaniel wrote:
| I mean, it's a cool story and an awesome hack. Perfect HN
| distraction when I have better things to be getting on with so
| thanks danboarder for posting. It just slightly irks me that the
| article refers to it as a $40 camera so many times (14, in fact).
| I would imagine if you factor in several days' work by a Nasa
| engineering team the actual cost would rise slightly higher.
| clucas wrote:
| For those interested in the "automatic exposure" mechanism
| mentioned in the article, Technology Connections did a great
| video on it recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwm_Dya0PFQ
| adolph wrote:
| Thank you for linking to that. The default of vertical
| orientation as a result of "half frame" exposures meant that
| device was about 50 years ahead of its time
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Love this channel
| causality0 wrote:
| _on a camera that was essentially a $40 point-and-shoot toy._
|
| Is the author intentionally trying to mislead us or is he a fool?
| With inflation that camera cost $400. It was not a "point and
| shoot toy".
| Waterluvian wrote:
| This touches so closely on a recent anecdote that I must share.
|
| The FIRST Robotics team I mentor just finished their season this
| past weekend. Something they did last-minute was add a GoPro to
| their grabber because they wanted to see some neat footage of it
| working, and maybe use it to improve the design or fix issues.
|
| Then one of the students had the idea to just put it in real-time
| mode and watch it live from their phone. Which instantly became
| an invaluable tool for controlling the arm effectively. They
| couldn't live without it after that. I think it was against rules
| to have a wireless device, so they took the idea and applied it
| to a USB camera that fed to a video output on the drive computer.
|
| I'm sure other teams already came up with this, but I was just so
| impressed to see that organic process happen with a bunch of 10th
| and 11th graders. They learned a practical example of all the
| buzzwordy things like "think outside the box" and "no idea is a
| bad idea" and "don't engineer everything, sometimes just throw
| ideas and see what sticks." I'm just so proud of them.
| monetus wrote:
| Thanks for sharing - That is a warm and fuzzy story. It is nice
| to hear people have access at that age; I certainly didn't.
| q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote:
| That is a really lovely story; I'm glad you shared it.
|
| I like these glimpses of the true joy and fun that can be had
| with the _craft_ of engineering. Amidst the relentless barrage
| of bureaucracy that defines most modern SWE jobs, it 's nice to
| know that there's still some good, pure engineering out there.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I actually feel jealous that the students get an engineering
| problem like this. By only having about 8 weeks from when the
| challenge is announced, they're forced to cut through
| bureaucracy. There is no Agile and project planning. There's
| just round-table discussions on what to design, a bit of CAD
| work to feel it all out, and then weeks of prototype, build,
| test, loop. It was so darn lean.
| falsenapkin wrote:
| FRC was an incredible experience. Like you said, the fast
| pace round table discussions and develop as you go was a
| lot of fun and inspiring. The biggest takeaway for me was
| the positive energy and great sportsmanship I saw in every
| team and competition. Hope that still rings true 10+ years
| later. Coming from traditional sports and previously
| disconnected from the "nerds" and band kids, I came in with
| a very different headspace than I left with.
|
| Thank you for mentoring!! I know every team needs all the
| mentorship they can get. I've thought about coming back too
| but cold feet so far.
|
| Oh and a bit of fun technical story to relate to yours.
| Back then touch screens on consumer devices was still
| pretty new, I remember a couple kids on the team had the
| original Android and iPhone devices. A couple of years
| earlier I had followed an Instructables guide for a "touch"
| device with infrared/glass/webcam and in the process
| learned how cameras can see infrared after removing a
| filter. Then in my competition year there was a goal of
| autonomously interacting with some stage elements and this
| question of how do we do vision processing to make that
| work? Maybe it was implied somewhere and I don't remember
| the details anymore, but I immediately recalled that
| webcams can see infrared and the stage elements had
| reflective tape. So we butchered a webcam to remove the IR
| filter and add a near IR filter and then we slapped some IR
| LEDs on the front. Of course the software side (we used
| LabVIEW) was a whole other thing but the hardware side was
| captivating to the whole team and was a lot of fun to put
| together organically.
|
| Other great memories of replacing 4 motors, soldering heavy
| gauge wires and all, 15 minutes before a match and walking
| around the pits with a deep cycle battery wired to a car AC
| transformer to keep my batteryless sponsor hand me down
| laptop running.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I love the stories you shared. When I was a team member
| 20 years ago (oh my god it was 20 years ago...), we did
| all kinds of wild hacky stuff. Our entire robot chassis
| was made from PVC and we felt super clever using the
| hollow tubes for cable management.
|
| These days they put QR codes all over the field for
| vision processing. It's absolutely !@#$ing wild to see
| what some of the better robots can do in 15 seconds of
| full autonomy.
|
| We also had a laptop that ran off a car battery =D Though
| we could afford a new laptop this year, so we finally
| don't need to use it as much.
| otoburb wrote:
| >> _[...] a bit of CAD work to feel it all out [...]_
|
| Which CAD program are your 10th & 11th graders using? It
| seemed that most well-resourced school robotics clubs try
| for AutoCAD through Autodesk's educational access program
| but always have to re-apply every year to determine
| eligibility.
| throwaway49593 wrote:
| Why Autocad and not Inventor? And, why not Fusion 360?
| otoburb wrote:
| My informal survey was based on anecdotal information.
| Since Inventor, Fusion360 and AutoCAD are all under the
| Autodesk umbrella it could be that many school
| teams/clubs lumped them all under "AutoCAD". That being
| said, I did hear that Fusion360 can be problematic with
| the cloud-based (always-on) emphasis. No mentions of
| Inventor, and I was also surprised that nobody mentioned
| Solid Edge Community Edition either.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| They use OnShape I believe. I think it's something the
| school board has a license for, and it's 100% through the
| browser, which makes it a lot more accessible both at
| school and at home. We're also one of the least-well-
| resourced school robotics clubs you'll ever meet. The
| mere existence of the team and having a robot that leaves
| the starting line in a competition is a resounding
| success.
| j5155 wrote:
| I don't know whether you're discussing FIRST Tech Challenge or
| FIRST Robotics Competition, but I know that at our team's
| competition they specifically asked if we had any GoPros in
| real-time mode and the remote software prevented viewing any
| cameras and driving at the same time. Otherwise I think this
| strategy would have been a huge help to us!
| Waterluvian wrote:
| FRC. Yeah, they're understandably concerned about what
| happens if every single robot has 1 or 2 extra wireless
| communications channels. They announced at least once to the
| audience to turn off any hot spots as they're getting
| tremendous noise and channel swapping for the RoboRios.
|
| If you use a RoboRio and wpilib, there's first class support
| to feed USB camera into the Rio, through the official
| match/field wifi for your robot, and to your laptop's Game
| UI.
| [deleted]
| dehrmann wrote:
| > They couldn't just send people up into space and not capture
| the magic and beauty of it all.
|
| Hence "pics or it didn't happen"
| ben7799 wrote:
| Not going to say anything about the inflation figures.
|
| But the general tone of Petapixel is a perfect example of
| photography media still not getting it with the constant tone of
| "cheap things are toys" and fancy things are "serious tools".
| Nothing used to take the photos in space taken handheld can be a
| toy by definition, hindsight is 20/20 and yet they still make
| this remark.
|
| It's like no matter what happens people who write about
| photography can't figure out it's what you do with a camera that
| makes it a tool, not how much money you spend.
|
| Most of the people playing with toys are buying the expensive
| toys most of the time, but realistically there is no correlation
| between buying luxury camera gear and making serious photos.
| stavros wrote:
| I have a $500 camera and a $5000 camera. They have a fair few
| difference, but by far the most important differentiating
| factor is one:
|
| The expensive camera has more buttons.
|
| That's literally it, the expensive camera lets me take photos
| without taking my eye away from the viewfinder, the cheaper
| camera has me fiddle with the menus to change things (I've
| missed photo opportunities because of this).
|
| If you aren't a professional photographer, the RX100 is a great
| camera. You generally don't need the expensive one. Hell, I've
| taken many of my favorite photos with my phone.
| estebank wrote:
| There are two axes for types of people in photography:
| technicians and artists. Some go all in on the technical aspect
| of photography, obsessing over numbers, features and
| functionality. Others see photographic equipment as a tool for
| art, they don't care about what they have in their hands, as
| long as it is in their hands when they need it to. All the best
| photographers you might have heard of fall on the quadrant of
| "competent enough to understand the mechanics of photography
| but cares more about getting the shot". You can use camera
| equipment from the 60s and still take amazing, beautiful,
| evocative pictures. Even an out of focus, blurry, improperly
| exposed picture can be amazing.
|
| The "problem" is that the technical features of these tiny,
| amazing machines can be quantified and argued over ad nauseam.
| Does it matter if a lens has worse fall off than another? If
| the chromatic aberration is high? What about the pinchushion
| distortion? If you are gonna print the picture in a fashion
| magazine, yes. Does it matter if your shutter speed is 2000
| instead of 4000? Does it matter if your lens is f/1.2 instead
| of f/1.8? If you're a wildlife or sports photographer, maybe.
| But if you have a camera on you, that's good enough, and you
| have the basic understanding of photography, you can capture an
| event that would otherwise be lost to time. Cameras in
| cellphones have destroyed the market for point and shoot
| cameras, but brought the advent of completely popularizing
| photography at a scale that could never have been believed
| before.
|
| Of course this is no different to cars, or computers, or bikes,
| or...
| avg_dev wrote:
| i really enjoyed this post.
|
| i have been pretty reluctant to take photographs in general.
| i do enjoy a nice photo for sure, and i have taken a few that
| i actually like too.
|
| > [I]f you have a camera on you, that's good enough, and you
| have the basic understanding of photography, you can capture
| an event that would otherwise be lost to time.
|
| i like this thought. and i will perhaps try to take more
| photos.
| bitwize wrote:
| When I was in Japan, in America-mura in Osaka, I saw an
| exhibit by a local skateboarding-culture photographer. I had
| been carrying around a Nikon CoolPix point-and-shoot with
| which to take tourist pictures.
|
| It turned out that the photographer himself had been hanging
| around his own exhibit, and we got to talking briefly about
| my visit and my interest in his work (his English was pretty
| good). He pointed to the camera and said "Can I see?" I let
| him leaf through my camera's memory filled with photos from
| the trip, random things that caught my interest. He handed me
| the camera back and said "These are some good shots."
|
| I was really chuffed to hear this pro compliment my random
| tourist shots. He must have liked my eye and my composition
| instincts because the camera was rinky-dink by pro standards
| and didn't allow me fine-grained control over exposure,
| aperture size, etc.
|
| I know this sounds a bit like a "things that didn't happen
| for $400, Alex" story, but it totally did happen. Maybe he
| was flattering me, I dunno. But it helped me appreciate
| casual photography with cheap equipment as something with its
| own aesthetic merit.
|
| My brief time in Japan was amazing all around.
| ben7799 wrote:
| He liked your photos because for serious photography the
| technical side is not as important as the subject matter or
| artistic, compositional, or journalistic aspects of the
| work.
|
| The technical side only needs to be "good enough" and the
| photo can still be great. The artistic sides have to be
| great to make a great photo.
|
| The whole "technician" side of photography often loses
| sight of composition & subject in the quest to have the
| perfect aperture/ISO/shutter speed and get maximum
| sharpness.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| There's being nice and then there's _just_ being nice.
| Sounds like he's a nice guy and he also meant what he said.
|
| For what it's worth, I find it very believable because it
| matches my experience of positive pro/amateur interactions
| in other fields from both sides. Something about the shots
| signaled to him "this person gets it". It's not that it's
| pro level, but it seems possible to multiply what's already
| there by time and intensity and get something that is pro.
| This is very different from someone who wants to talk about
| the best lens caps, and you look at their photos and it
| feels like they really missed something.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| > Others see photographic equipment as a tool for art, they
| don't care about what they have in their hands, as long as it
| is in their hands when they need it to.
|
| As a cinematographer/photographer...ehhhh yes and no. I care
| a lot what I'm using because it controls what I can capture.
| I'm fine using a $300 canon rebel or a $30k red package with
| Cooke glass. But I definitely care which I'm using depending
| on the objective of my work. I need to know - and again I
| care - what sensor and codec I'm using, because it has a big
| impact on how and what I can shoot. There are some things a
| cheap rebel with a cheap kit lens simply won't let me do.
|
| Being a "technician" or an "artist" is hardly so stark. You
| have to be both to be good at your craft. It's a tool, but
| one that I have to understand the capabilities and
| limitations, both of which I need to weigh when planning my
| "art." Just as a painter needs to choose their paints and
| brushes.
| estebank wrote:
| That's is why I called it two separate axes and not two
| ends in a single axis. You need a base level of technical
| competency to understand what the limitations of your
| equipment are to leverage it to the fullest extent and
| avoid doing things that will just plain not work, and the
| technical features are needed to accomplish specific
| things, but artistry is till required. Feature films have
| been captured on iPhone (you can say that is little more
| than a stunt, but it still exists).
|
| Not everyone is filming Barry Lyndon with f/.95 aperture in
| candle-lit scenes. Watching older films where both the
| glass and the film were subpar compared to what's available
| today, where the grain was high, the focus puller wasn't at
| the top of their game leaving characters somewhat out of
| focus (when looking closely, maybe not noticeable at 480p
| or 720p), but the films are still enjoyable. Parts of The
| Batman were filmed on a Helios 40-2, an objectively
| _terrible_ lens when it comes to it 's optical
| characteristics, but it can evoke a _look_ that you can 't
| otherwise get which helps with the mood the cinematographer
| was trying to capture. You won't be able to capture the
| vast expanses of night time scenes of Nope (filmed as day
| for night with infrared cameras) with subpar equipment. You
| need full sharpness for easier rotoscoping when dealing
| with VFX. You want the best cameras available to capture
| miniatures of spaceships like in 2001 or Interstellar to
| make people believe these are real spaceships. You can
| leverage a new technology in a new way, like 28 Days Later
| used new at the time digital cameras (that would nowadays
| be considered subpar) for easier application of effects
| like undercranking and lower production costs, or how they
| used 360 shutters in Collateral. But you can also make a
| film like The Man From Earth that was shot in a single
| room, with a bunch of actors and an camera that was average
| at the time, or Saving Private Ryan simply undercranking
| and using really short shutterns to ensure that the beach
| landing scene was crisp through and through. Everything
| Everywhere All At Once didn't have Marvel-budget level
| gear, but they still made one of the best movies of the
| past few years.
|
| I don't fully disagree with what you're saying: better
| tools expand the envelope of what you can accomplish. But
| technology is in service of the art, not the other way
| around (unless you're producing marketing material for the
| manufacturer, I guess ^_^).
|
| I _love_ combing over features, and learn about the
| mechanics of these amazing machines, and the theory of the
| physics of light (even knowing how it works, it is still
| feels like _magic_ that you can take a full picture of an
| object that is partially obstructed as long as you can make
| that foreground element blurred enough). _I 'm_ a shit
| artist, but I trust one with a point and shoot to make
| something better than I can with my DSLRs. I can't wait to
| see what new story telling tricks people will come up with
| new tech, like Nope did.
| phillryu wrote:
| Part of the article's characterization of that camera as a toy
| seemed to be how simple it was to operate and designed, and
| that's what allowed a non-photographer astronaut to make use of
| it, or the engineers at NASA to remix it days before the launch
| for their priorities. So at least it makes some case for the
| value of 'toys' while it might simultaneously look down a
| little at them. The toy-like approachability and simplicity is
| what enabled these people to play with it and have space
| photography taken seriously as a result.
| ben7799 wrote:
| Well the idea they might look down at John Glenn or think a
| fancy camera might be too challenging is absurd too.
|
| The article misses that John Glenn was himself an engineer
| who had an exceedingly good grasp of operating exceptionally
| complex machinery. Of course he could figure out how to use
| any camera on the market.
|
| There are lots of people in photography who are not
| technically inclined but pretend they are cause they can use
| a camera, after all being technically inclined is not what
| makes you good at photography.
|
| It's totally possible John Glenn & the other engineers bought
| a whole bunch of cameras and did exposure tests and ergonomic
| tests in terms how easy their modifications would be and then
| selected this camera as superior to what the Petapixel guys
| might have thought was the superior prosumer camera of the
| late 50s.
| gist wrote:
| Hate generally the 'if not for' type stories (usually by writers
| about certain inventors or some technology) . They would have
| figured out even if this hadn't happened that photography made
| sense to do.
|
| Also in addition to what others have said about $40 and today's
| cost the modifications and time for that were not factored into
| the actual value of the camera.
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