marchtothemoon 100MP Apollo uploads

[apollo16uvc]

marchtothemoon has updated their website, and they now offer 1.3gb raw Tiff scans of the Apollo hasselblad photos.

The picture frame inside the scans is aprox 100 megapixel, the highest uploaded resolution of the original Apollo 70mm film to date.

http://tothemoon.ser.asu.edu/gallery/Apollo

With these raw scans I am confident we now have access to the full resolving resolution and dynamic range that exists within the original flown slide film.

[bknight]

They will still need to be converted to a more manageable format. 

[apollo16uvc]

They will still need to be converted to a more manageable format. 

How come? you already got access to a thumbnail, small, medium and large PNG.

If you want the raw scan, you got an uncompressed TIFF file. Old but common raw format in scanning software.

[bknight]

The TIFF images are large and most home pc don't handle all that display necessary, but when compressed to a more manageable size then I would be happy.
But thank for the information.

[apollo16uvc]

The TIFF images are large and most home pc don't handle all that display necessary, but when compressed to a more manageable size then I would be happy.
But thank for the information.

Last time I checked the raw files, they had a large colour cast and were really dull in order to preserve all highlights and shadows. They would not be usefull for quick viewing on a desktop PC anyway. Some colour grading and photo editing software would be required in order to make the viewing experience pleasurable.

Should they have offered a raw scan as PNG? maybe. Its always possible to setup a web crawler to download all the tiff photos and batch-process them to PNG and crob out all the extra space.

I think they left the extra space there so the film base can be easily subtracted from the final image.

[TippedIceberg]

Thank you for sharing. It is exciting to see the images in double the resolution previously available, with sprocket holes too!

I initially thought the new tiff files seem to have less dynamic range and quite crushed shadows.



But now I think it's the opposite, these likely have a wider dynamic range, but just not 'out of the box':



Adobe Camera Raw with the shadow slider boosted +100% appears to give the much 'flatter' image above if anyone wants to play with these. I also started noticing fiducial markers are visible in dark areas, that's a good sign.

Curious to know if anyone has a better workflow for processing these tiffs?

[apollo16uvc]

Might depend on the colourspace setting. They should have put that somewhere on the website. Try looking in the metadata.

Its possible the raw scans can only be correctly opened in the scanning program it was made with.

This is the case with raw scans from the scanning software Vuescan, they are much darker than raw files from say a digitical camera. The gamma is set to 0 while normal AdobeRGB is set to 20 or something. The vuescan files are best opened with vuescan.

Try asking NASA what software they used or look in the metadata.

In your comparison, the new scan appears to have more noise.
What is with all the lines in the image? I see lines coming off the bright parts of the flag, I have seen this before in shitty scanners where the bright parts of the slide bleed into the darker parts as lines/haze.  If this is the case then these files are useless and somebody needs to be fired...

[TippedIceberg]

The unusual lines only appear when the image is brightened. By default the tiff looks closer to its png counterpart:



I scrolled through each color space option, but perhaps you're right that some obscure software might be needed to get the best result. I'll keep looking around, unfortunately the metadata holds no clues.

[apollo16uvc]

Thank you for sharing. It is exciting to see the images in double the resolution previously available, with sprocket holes too!

I initially thought the new tiff files seem to have less dynamic range and quite crushed shadows.



But now I think it's the opposite, these likely have a wider dynamic range, but just not 'out of the box':



Adobe Camera Raw with the shadow slider boosted +100% appears to give the much 'flatter' image above if anyone wants to play with these. I also started noticing fiducial markers are visible in dark areas, that's a good sign.

Curious to know if anyone has a better workflow for processing these tiffs?

Is it possible you can provide your raw tiff file of the 2008 scan for me? Try WeTransfer, its free. PM me for email.

[TippedIceberg]

Is it possible you can provide your raw tiff file of the 2008 scan for me? Try WeTransfer, its free. PM me for email.

I PM'd a wetransfer link 

[TippedIceberg]

For anyone searching for the 2008 tiff scans, they are still available at a different site:

https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/SearchPhotos/

Example URL after searching for an image ID:

https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/SearchPhotos/photo.pl?mission=AS16&roll=113&frame=18339

"Download Options", and "Request Raw File From Camera". There is a 5 minute queue, but the site will eventually redirect to the tiff.

For resolution, color information and sharpness, the 2019 scans are much better. For particularly dark images, the 2008 scans might contain slightly more detail (I think, maybe). Either way it's good to still have access to both.

[TippedIceberg]

Just to add; there seems to be more color information in the new scans. For example, they reveal Buzz is illuminated by sunlight reflected from the gold LM foil in AS11-40-5903, certainly not "studio reflectors".



Again, boosted shadows to get a brighter image. Raw source.