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Apollo Remastered

kottke.org

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Re: Apollo Remastered

#21

Post by throw0101b »

contrarian1234 wrote: post #8

Well it's a thinly veiled ad... and you can't really easily get digital copies - which somehow feels weird/wrong for space stuff. You typically can get that in full resolution directly from NASA. Is the web interface representative of the final quality? Just looking at an example: https://www.apolloremastered.com/shop/p/as15-82-11056-to-110... Even mildly zoomed in the image looks quite crummy and blurry. Fine for a…

> Well it's a thinly veiled ad...

Jason Kottke has been curating links on the inter-tubes for twenty-five years (1998). He simply links to stuff he thinks other will find cool: the fact that some of those items are purchasable does not mean the post is an ad.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Kottke

His posts on the Apollo program go back to 2005:

* https://kottke.org/tag/Apollo/3

Here's another post on a book you can purchase by Edward Tufte:

* https://kottke.org/01/09/edward-tufte-author-of-three

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Tufte

Was that post an ad?

Re: Apollo Remastered

#22

Post by dabluecaboose »

contrarian1234 wrote: post #8

Well it's a thinly veiled ad... and you can't really easily get digital copies - which somehow feels weird/wrong for space stuff. You typically can get that in full resolution directly from NASA. Is the web interface representative of the final quality? Just looking at an example: https://www.apolloremastered.com/shop/p/as15-82-11056-to-110... Even mildly zoomed in the image looks quite crummy and blurry. Fine for a…

I had written this comment almost verbatim before getting distracted at work.

There's gotta be some public-facing way to access these images. NASA wouldn't just let any jabroni access these highly guarded films to sell them, they have to have gotten something out of it for them (and by extension the public)

EDIT: Clarifying since it sounded like I was calling the guy a jabroni, didn't intend that

Re: Apollo Remastered

#24

Post by gmiller123456 »

contrarian1234 wrote: post #9
porphyra wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And best of all, like other works of the US government, it's public domain!

Is it? It's definitely not made immediately clear on their website: https://www.apolloremastered.com/the-project Why are they on flickr and not NASA.gov as usual?

In the US, government organizations are not allowed to copyright their work. They can, however, obtain works that were copyrighted by someone else. But pretty much everything coming out of NASA is public domain, though they don't put a lot of effort into publicising that fact.

https://www.copyrightlaws.com/copyright-laws-in-u-s-governme...

Re: Apollo Remastered

#25

Post by sponaugle »

akiselev wrote: post #14
TylerE wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those date from 2019, so clearly not. The quality of the few I sampled is also nothing special.

According to the author's bio [1], he was remastering photos of Neil Armstrong in 2019 for NASA for the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 so clearly the timing lines up. Multiple sources on NASA and elsewhere point to that Flikr gallery. > The quality of the few I sampled is also nothing special. The ones in the TFA are remastered - color correct among other things. The ones in the Flikr are the unprocessed versions of A…

From that site: "The raw output from the digital scan of a 70mm Hasselblad frame, is a huge 1.3GB, 16-bit TIFF file. At approximately 11,000 pixels square, a single image would require a 12-foot x 12-foot computer monitor to display the whole image at standard resolution. "

The Flikr images must be jpg conversions of the original TIFFs, certainly in an attempt to reduce file sizes. I'm not sure where the 11,000 comes from. The JPGs are 4400x4600. Perhaps the original TIFFs were 11,000x11,000 pix.

Re: Apollo Remastered

#26

Post by Arainach »

dabluecaboose wrote: post #22
contrarian1234 wrote: post #8

Well it's a thinly veiled ad... and you can't really easily get digital copies - which somehow feels weird/wrong for space stuff. You typically can get that in full resolution directly from NASA. Is the web interface representative of the final quality? Just looking at an example: https://www.apolloremastered.com/shop/p/as15-82-11056-to-110... Even mildly zoomed in the image looks quite crummy and blurry. Fine for a…

I had written this comment almost verbatim before getting distracted at work. There's gotta be some public-facing way to access these images. NASA wouldn't just let any jabroni access these highly guarded films to sell them, they have to have gotten something out of it for them (and by extension the public) EDIT: Clarifying since it sounded like I was calling the guy a jabroni, didn't intend that

Hundreds of hours of labor (and the hours developing professional skills prior to that labor) are not free. Art-grade photo printing is not free.

The book is huge in all 3 dimensions. Nearly every page is a full-page photo print. It is a work of art, an artifact, and well worth the price. I love my copy.

Re: Apollo Remastered

#27

Post by Arainach »

WirelessGigabit wrote: post #20

> Inspected, embossed and hand signed by the artist What? Since when is a film developer an artist? If he would've taken the photos himself and then did the post-processing... fine. But not like this. I'm reading this page: https://www.apolloremastered.com/shop/p/s65-30427 and it doesn't even mention the original photographer.

A number of these shots are composites from multiple source images.

Photo editing is an art and a technical skill all on its own. A print with a separate photographer and editor has two artists, not one.

Re: Apollo Remastered

#28

Post by gmiller123456 »

WirelessGigabit wrote: post #20

> Inspected, embossed and hand signed by the artist What? Since when is a film developer an artist? If he would've taken the photos himself and then did the post-processing... fine. But not like this. I'm reading this page: https://www.apolloremastered.com/shop/p/s65-30427 and it doesn't even mention the original photographer.

>Since when is a film developer an artist?

Developing and printing photographs absolutley is an art form. Many books on developing and printing are quick to point out that Ansel Adams was celebrated more for what he did in the dark room than for the subject matter or composition.

Re: Apollo Remastered

#29

Post by netsharc »

dabluecaboose wrote: post #22
contrarian1234 wrote: post #8

Well it's a thinly veiled ad... and you can't really easily get digital copies - which somehow feels weird/wrong for space stuff. You typically can get that in full resolution directly from NASA. Is the web interface representative of the final quality? Just looking at an example: https://www.apolloremastered.com/shop/p/as15-82-11056-to-110... Even mildly zoomed in the image looks quite crummy and blurry. Fine for a…

I had written this comment almost verbatim before getting distracted at work. There's gotta be some public-facing way to access these images. NASA wouldn't just let any jabroni access these highly guarded films to sell them, they have to have gotten something out of it for them (and by extension the public) EDIT: Clarifying since it sounded like I was calling the guy a jabroni, didn't intend that

This shop where I got my copy from is still selling them for 46 Euro a pop: https://www.buecher.de/shop/raumfahrt/apollo-remastered/saun...

I bought it after reading The Guardian's excerpt with a lot of great pictures: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/aug/26/apollo-space...

> Digital scans of the transparencies are often underexposed and difficult to process. The images shown here are derived from new, high-resolution scans of the original film, painstakingly restored using image-enhancement technology.

I think the "jabroni" was hired to make the best quality reproduction out of these films for NASA's own archive, my guess was he probably negotiated a deal where he'd be allowed to publish these photos.

I do wonder if public domain means they must be accessible online too?

Edit: on the Guardian excerpt, the photo credits include ASU, I found this site which talks about their work thawing the films and doing high-resolution, high bitrate (e.g. 14-bit grayscale) scans: http://tothemoon.ser.asu.edu/about, and this site also offers about 26000 scans of the films.

But the ASU scans are still not enhanced, e.g. the cover of the book, AS09-24-3665 from:

- Flickr, 2015 upload: https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive/217878648...

- ASU scan: http://tothemoon.ser.asu.edu/gallery/Apollo/9/Hasselblad%205...

- Apollo Remastered (Andy Saunder's work) - but with the Guardian's JPEG compression: https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/70f4b600092729ee3a719066227d7...

Wow I just noticed the download link on the ASU page, it offers a raw download of that single image which is about 1.3 GB...

Re: Apollo Remastered

#30

Post by toomuchtodo »

dabluecaboose wrote: post #22
contrarian1234 wrote: post #8

Well it's a thinly veiled ad... and you can't really easily get digital copies - which somehow feels weird/wrong for space stuff. You typically can get that in full resolution directly from NASA. Is the web interface representative of the final quality? Just looking at an example: https://www.apolloremastered.com/shop/p/as15-82-11056-to-110... Even mildly zoomed in the image looks quite crummy and blurry. Fine for a…

I had written this comment almost verbatim before getting distracted at work. There's gotta be some public-facing way to access these images. NASA wouldn't just let any jabroni access these highly guarded films to sell them, they have to have gotten something out of it for them (and by extension the public) EDIT: Clarifying since it sounded like I was calling the guy a jabroni, didn't intend that

https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/index.html

https://www.nasa.gov/missions

https://images.nasa.gov/

If you're unable to find something you know should be there, a FOIA request should fill the gap.

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