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40th Anniversary Moon Landing Memories

Tuesday July 14, 2009

With July 20 being the 40th anniversary of the landing of Apollo 11 on the moon, I'm curious about whether anyone has memories of how you tried to record the original moment.

I am a little too young to remember the original moon landing, but I do remember (after the fact) how my parents recorded the moment. My father shot a Polaroid instant print image of the grainy picture on the TV and then pinned it to a bulletin board in his workshop, where it hung for my entire childhood, growing slightly more yellow every year. The photo print quality was awful, and the glare from the flash on the Polaroid camera blocked part of the TV screen ... in fact, if you didn't know about the photo's subject, you probably wouldn't have guessed it was of the original moon landing. However, it provided an interesting memory of a historical moment.

Anyone else have stories about how they or their parents tried to record the moment? Obviously, with this being the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, consumer electronics devices that we take for granted for recording such occurrences didn't exist 40 years ago. You couldn't DVR the moon landing, and the earliest VCRs were rarely found in homes in the late 1960s. So how did you attempt to record the moment? Did you use a film camera?

NASA has a variety of events centering on the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, for those seeking more information.

Nikon Coolpix P90 Camera Review

Sunday July 12, 2009

I recently had an opportunity to test and use the Coolpix P90 from Nikon, and I recently wrote a P90 review.

It has some very good features, highlighted by a 24X optical zoom lens. It has fast response times, and it performs pretty well overall ... although zoom lens moves in steps, rather than completely smoothly.

However, image quality is a bit of a problem for the P90. With a camera like this, if its overall feature list closely meet your needs, you probably can overlook the image quality issues. If you need a camera that has good close-up focus capabilities or if you don't need a large zoom lens, there are other cameras in the sub-$400 price range that can better meet your needs. (Compare prices on the P90.)

Photo courtesy Nikon

Kodak No Longer Making Kodachrome Film

Thursday July 9, 2009

Kodak recently announced plans to stop manufacturing its classic film stock, Kodachrome.

Kodak, which was one of the world's leading film manufacturers for decades, has made Kodachrome film for almost 75 years. Kodachrome was the first commercially successful color film, but photographers who still use film have switched to newer types of film.

Kodak says it expects the final rolls of Kodachrome, which appears in slide or transparency film (rather than color negative film), to all be sold by the fall of 2009.

Obviously, such a move by Kodak signals further tough times for the film camera market.

Cameras Continue to Shrink

Wednesday July 8, 2009

It's not quite the size of the miniscule "spy cameras" of fictional novels, but the Veho Muvi Micro DV camera takes another step in that direction.

The Micro DV can shoot up to 30 frames per second of video at a 640x480 resolution, equal to VGA quality. It isn't a still image digital camera, but you could pull single-frame images from the digital video.

This tiny camera measures only 2.0 by 0.8 by 0.4 inches, and it can run at least two hours on a single battery charge. The Micro DV accepts MicroSD memory cards to store the video clips. It also can record audio, and it can be set to only record when it senses at least 65 decibels of noise. The Micro DV carries an MSRP of about 80 British pounds (about $130), but the unit is not yet available in the United States. Veho is a British company.

As digital cameras continue to shrink while shooting video and images at always improving resolutions, it's great for digital photographers and videographers ... as long as those tiny cameras aren't being used for spying.

Photo courtesy Veho

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