If you look at modern-day closeup launch footage you may well feel a little disappointed compared to the older film footage from the Apollo and Space Shuttle days. Why is this?, we have modern digital cameras which are better than the old film cameras of the 60s, 70s, & 80s right?
Look at almost every close-up shot of recent launches from SpaceX and NASA and you will see them looking grossly overexposed almost as soon as the engines start and certainly when the SRBs light up, something that didn’t happen on the Apollo and Shuttle footage. In this video, we look at why image quality has gone backward as camera technology has gone forwards and that old in this case isn’t necessarily bad.
