Ascent - Commemorating Shuttle

David Sekanina · February 3

I watch this maybe once a year - it's marvelous high speed footage (mostly 16mm) that documented various engineering aspects during a shuttle launch

Kamran Pakseresht · February 3

Very nice footage. After looking around a bit it seems like type of camera used was possibly a Redlake Locam? Looks like they topped out at around 500fps. I could imagine they had to modify them to handle the amount of film they would need to eat through for this footage.

David Sekanina · February 3

Most of them ran at 500 fps, that's 32 seconds of footage with a 400 ft roll. Considering the camera has to come up to speed first, I'd say maybe half of that, so 16 seconds for a 400ft roll.

Samuel Preston · February 3

this is incredible footage, just watched the whole thing. Really interesting technical details on the cameras they used too

Mark Dunn · February 3

8 hours ago, David Sekanina said:

Most of them ran at 500 fps, that's 32 seconds of footage with a 400 ft roll. Considering the camera has to come up to speed first, I'd say maybe half of that, so 16 seconds for a 400ft roll.

The Locam actually ramps up to full speed in a bit under a second, so only about 20ft. is wasted.

Edited February 3 by Mark Dunn

David Sekanina · February 5

Didn't know, thanks Marc

Nicholas Kovats · February 6

NASA utilized upwards of 50 x high speed 16mm, 35mm, 65mm and 70mm cameras surrounding the gantry. All pin-registered. Some cameras such as the Photo-Sonics Actionmaster 500 16mm HS camera had simple "metadata" exposed to the right of the frame, e.g. time in seconds, date, camera #, etc. They had upwards of 10x huge Photo-Sonics 70mm-10A high speed cameras. Most of the cameras were predominately Photo-Sonics. Some encased at the base with quartz portals.

I have two of the Photo-Sonics Actionmaster 500 16mm HS cameras with one utilized by NFL films. I had both converted to 3 or 4 pin XLR power connectors utilized with 8x cell LiPO 29.6V. It can peak at 11 to 15 amps on startup. One was converted to a PL mount. Uses 2-perf 16mm film stock with twin registration pin and pulldown. Exceedingly sharp frame line.

This was a quick registration test shot at 24fps with E100D, i.e. https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/612179757

This was a quick document of UK filmmaker Cherry Kino testing our initial "prototype" with the camera tied to a huge power source consisting of batteries and huge ceramic capacitors in a milk crate. Fun times. https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/222611616

My original intent was too utilize them predominately as rock steady MOS 24fps in conjunction with the internal digital crystal sync (PLL).

Amazing tech circa 1969 - 1971 regarding this PAM 500 16mm. Multiple Photo-Sonic 16mm and 35mm camera shutters can be synced which David Fincher utilized to great effect in The Fight Club (35mm). Nolan utilized Photo-Sonics 35mm cams at their maximum 360fps in Inception. Photo-Sonics even built a very rare 1000 fps 16mm camera with 8 rego pin/pulldown transport. The president of the company admitted to an fps war with either Locam or Redlake. These cameras are incredible "intermittent" transport systems not the faster but lower resolution prism transport systems which utilized frame blending.

Intermittent is king for maximum frame sharpness.

Erik Emerson · August 7

NASA did indeed use multiple formats at multiple locales for each launch at least into the early '00s. When I was based out of Orlando I did a tour of the photographic unit at Kennedy Space Center....IATSE Local 600 was making an effort to introduce freelancers to the NASA "Missile Cameramen". Never quite worked out scoring work, but was still a fascinating tour.

Most of the cameras were indeed Photo-Sonics. They ran 16mm at 500fps...as I recall, most of those were KB-19As and 1Ps. 35mm ran at 48fps & 24fps, and sometimes up to 360fps as memory serves...I think those might have been 4Es. The 70mm cameras were Hulchers...and those ran at something like 10 or 15fps.

Cameras were rigged in pairs & trios out of phase with one another so that while one takes the exposure, the other(s) are advancing to the next frame. This way there's not a moment that's not photographed from any given vantage point.

Cameras were rigged inside fire boxes a day or two ahead of the scheduled launch. And if I'm remembering it right, air was removed from inside the boxes and replaced with nitrogen. In spite of the protection of the fire boxes, the heat was still intense at the close setups...so hot that the front elements of the lenses were damaged every time. Contractor had a lens grinding and coating facility on site for this reason. Front elements were treated kinda like brake rotors. After they were gathered post-launch they'd be measured. If they were within a certain spec, they'd be re-ground and re-coated and reinstalled. The front elements that were out of spec were replaced with new. The focal lengths of the lenses on some of the tracking cameras were measured in feet rather than millimeters....those were typically set up miles away from the launch pads.

The tracking cameras btw typically had larger magazines than the stationary units.

Post-launch, the cameras sat untouched until clearance was given by EPA or some such agency. Sometimes hours later...sometimes longer. Rocket exhaust is pretty toxic. So that had to dissipate to acceptable levels before crew could be allowed in to retrieve the gear. That's presuming the launch was a success at the platform. In the event of a disaster on or near the platform, clearance could sometimes take days. Once clearance was issued all cameras were retrieved, downloaded, and inspected.

Film developing was on-site for a time. In the late 90s or early 00s a film lab based out of Miami bought the 16mm and 35mm processing machines and moved them to their satellite office in Orlando. 70mm developing remained on site, while 16mm & 35mm was delivered to Orlando. That lab has since ended film developing. No idea what became of the processing equipment.

Johnson Controls was the contractor who handled the photography at the time.

Edited August 7 by Erik Emerson

Nicholas Kovats · August 7

Thank you, Erik for taking the time to share your onsite experiences from such a fascinating period. Vivre la intermittent film transport!

Geffen Avraham · August 8

NASA still uses 35mm PhotoSonics cameras to this day. The Artemis-1 launch in 2022 was shot on 35mm at high speed. I haven't been able to find high-res scans on youtube though.