My reminiscences come, of course, in the form of photographs.
Back in 1969 there weren't a lot of homes with video tape recorders to capture television programs. In the days leading to the landing, the news programs suggested that we could use cameras to take pictures of our television sets to keep a record of the event. All we had to do is put a camera on a tripod and set the shutter speed to 1/30th of a second. That's the refresh rate of the NTSC broadcast standard used in the U.S. at the time. We needed to carefully focus on the TV screen and set the aperture to let in enough light for the speed of the film we were using. They told us what apertures to use for the different speeds of film.
Our pictures of the event were on two rolls of film. The pictures leading up to the landing are color slides and the pictures of the extravehicular activity are black and white prints. Mom or Dad sent me the prints. I don't have the negatives.
The aperture for the color slides seems to have been set as if the faster, black and white film was in the camera. Those pictures are terribly underexposed and sometimes it is hard to see what's in the pictures.
The pictures of the EVA are not that great because the quality of what was on the TV screen was not that great.
I wasn't the nerdiest nerd on the block. After they went back into the Lunar Module I figured there wasn't a lot to see so I went to bed. It was well past my usual bedtime.
I wish I had a better memory. About the only thing I remember is Nixon's phone call to the astronauts. I was kind of annoyed that they had to pause to chit chat with him. They had more important things to get done.
I was also annoyed that Armstrong's descent down the ladder and his small step onto the moon were so dark and fuzzy. I wondered if they can send a man to the moon, why can't they make a camera that can show what's happening? They explained the technical issues of the difficulties with sending back live video from the moon and I guess that satisfied me. Still....
I'm glad I got to witness this. I'm not convinced that there is a need to go back yet. Low Earth orbit offers a lot of opportunities for valuable science to be done and is fairly accessible. But then, I'm not a rocket scientist so what do I know?
Here are the pictures we took of Apollo 11.
The captions of the EVA pictures were written by Mom on the backs of the pictures.
3 comments:
I had forgotten about the taking pictures of the TV. We have come a long way. There was an interview with Aldren on NPR this am.
I have a problem with pictures because of my (lack of) eyesight, so these are just sort of blurs to me. Didn't the network make a video of the event that people could buy? Not that it would have been any better than your pictures-----
Do you want the negatives? I could probably find them.
They are blurs to us, too, RegroMag, don't worry too much about it!
What I remember was that I thought how impressive it was that my classmate Jeff Armstrong's dad landed on the moon!
Thanks for sharing, Chuckbert.
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