moon walk and Hasselblads

Replica Hasselblad showing changes used in Apollo 11 mission – Cole Rise

Toronto. Riffing off yesterday’s post, the website NPR has an article called, “The Camera That Went To The Moon And Changed How We See It” written on July 13th by Scott Neuman. The article explains how NASA decided on Hasselblads for their missions and what they did to Astronaut Walter Schirra’s off the shelf camera to prepare it for the moon landing – and why Hasselblads and Zeiss lenses were abandoned on the moon.

Abandoning the cameras led to replications as explained by Cole Rise. The linked site includes this note on Cole Rise, “Cole is a photographer, designer, entrepreneur, pilot, and space camera maker. Obsessed with space and shooting Hasselblad for a over a decade, Cole spent the last two years training to became a Hasselblad technician, studying the original mission notes from NASA and obsolete Hasselblad repair manuals. He built a custom workshop for replicating NASA cameras, using many of the same tools and materials available in the 1960’s – down to replicating NASA’s temperature resistant foil stickers.”

My good friend George Dunbar sent me the second link in this post just after I wrote yesterday’s post. Thanks, George.

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