Hi.
Does anyone have detailed information about the photographic equipment the Artemis II crew is using?
I’ve heard some vague mentions of the difficulties the commander and the Canadian specialist have been having with smartphones and GoPros.
I tried to find more official information but couldn’t.
The fact is that very few images have been released, and almost all of them are of poor quality, which is surprising.
I was thinking the exact same thing this morning while reading the news. Most of the images from the spacecraft have been poor quality. But apparently there is a Nikon D5 with 14-24 F2.8 lens onboard, and a few shots are starting to come in.
They have to get some free time after all the system checks they need to do. They need to find the camera from the storage location. They then need to have the earth in the field of view of the window. They then need to take the image. They then need to transfer the image to a computer to edit the images and make the flat earth look round 
Then at last they need to transfer the images using the bandwidth that is being used for other stuff. Of course they could also send SOOC or have the ground crew do the edits from raw.
I’m sure we will see more images.
Oh, thanks for the link. Yes, those are nice.
Sure, they seem to be pretty busy. Thnks for the Petapixel article, that is what I was looking for
Surely there’s wifi access at the Hollywood studio lot they’re on.
Moderately interesting article about the launch photos here.
Sound triggers apparently - wouldn’t have thought of that!
While the mission images are stunning, imho the crew portraits (made back in 2023) also deserve some attention.
Group portrait, shot with a Hasselblad X1D II 50C:
File:Artemis 2 Crew Portrait.jpg - Wikipedia
Individual portraits, shot with a Nikon Z 9:
Victor Glover
File:Jsc2023e0016433 alt.jpg - Wikipedia
Reid Wiseman
File:Jsc2023e0016434 alt.jpg - Wikipedia
Christina Hammock Koch
File:Jsc2023e0016435 alt.jpg - Wikipedia
Jeremy Hansen
File:Jsc2023e0016436 alt2.jpg - Wikipedia
The lighting is so good, especially in the group portrait. Would love to take a look at those raw files if I can find them (those should be PD as well I believe).
Hopefully this time NASA remembered to switch the OOTB patented HE compression on the Nikons to lossless…
I looked at the original they published on Flickr (link is from Wikipedia), and faces look weird; if you zoom in, the pores and wrinkles are very pronounced and highly visible on everyone. Either the light is too harsh or (more likely) the image was oversharpened.
I think it’s a combination of both. Extreme light and then it looks like the classic ugly lightroom sharpening.
“In our next tutorial, you will learn how to use $7k worth of camera equipment to take a crappy photo” 
Sometimes less is more 
Another thing is probably make up. They are all caked up for the photoshoot. The older photos look more human, even if they have some makeup on, it’s probably not a lot. I am not saying that back then they didn’t focus on looks, after all Yuri Gagarin was chosen for his looks, to make propaganda using his face stronger, but at least they still looked somewhat like someone you might meet on the street.
I think we should request NASA to create a PlayRaw thread 
Wow those photos look absolutely heroic, the colours in the group shot are very painterly.but yeah the sharpening is super weird. Makes their faces look like plastic when zoomed in.
I think it’s some kind of frequency scale (wavelet?) retouching. Smoothed the bigger details and tones while sharpened the finer ones.
Could be AI of course.
This image was made with a Nikon D5.
Apparently atmospheric blur was not a concern
It does have some motion blur. They should’ve mounted a giant speedlight on the spacecraft to get some nice frozen motion
