[jiberius]

The biggest reason was that the Apollo program was able to return film from the surface of the Moon to Earth. Many of these photos weren't returned to Earth in film form. Instead they were developed onboard the spacecraft, scanned, transmitted via radio, and then recorded onto tape on the ground. Every step of that process incurs a decent bit of quality loss.

You can actually tell which probes had a reentry module because the photo quality is pretty stunning compared to the photos transmitted over radio, look at Zond 8 which returned film negatives to Earth.

[hellbannedguy]

I've never heard this. I'm not saying it's wrong.

I was told the all the Astronauts were trained on the Hasselblads, and Hasselblads are great cameras--even today.

The great high def pictures were developed on earth, but I'm not sure now.

I remember hearing they came home with hundreds if rolls of film.

The film footage was sent to earth via radio waves, but was grainy.

[baybal2]

American videocameras were way superior as well.

Tube cameras Russia used up into 200x were inferior than RCA ones from sixties.

Consumer technology, and monetary incentives make mirracles.

Hard to fathom that today's "supercomputer in the pocket" came out of efforts to build superior gaming PCs, and frag more people in Q3.

[fifilura]

> American videocameras were way superior as well.

I know you didn't phrase it exactly that way.

But we in Sweden are somewhat proud of supplying the Hasselblad cameras to the Apollo missions.

[ninjin]

While I greatly dislike the nationalistic undertones in your comment, you are – unlike what some responses claim – not wrong in that the video cameras for the Apollo 11 mission [1] were indeed American and made by Westinghouse [2] and lenses by Fairchild [3]. Not sure how much I would argue that it was “consumer technology” though, at least not at the time.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_TV_camera#Westinghouse_...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westinghouse_Electric_Corporat...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Camera_and_Instrumen...

As for the more famous non-video cameras, they were indeed made by Hasselblad [4] (Sweden) and the lenses by Zeiss [5] (West German). I am of course acutely aware of the latter as I shoot Zeiss lenses and prefer their aesthetics to pretty much anything else I have tried, although these days a chunk of them are made by Cosina [6] (Japan). If you want to dig deeper, I liked Hasselblad’s official homepage on the matter [7].

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasselblad

[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Zeiss_AG

[6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosina

[7]: https://www.hasselblad.com/inspiration/history/hasselblad-in...

[skhr0680]

The Russians got the Zeiss factory as spoils of WWII so they made at least some decent optics.

[dylan604]

Except those american videocameras were probably made in Japan. Sony, Nikon, Ikegami, JVC, ...

[baybal2]

There were no Japanese videocameras in sixties

[bellyfullofbac]

A quick google says you're wrong: https://global.canon/en/c-museum/product/cine253.html

What is it with Internet commenters who are cocksure despite not knowing what they're talking about?

[baybal2]

This is not a videocamera

[bellyfullofbac]

Well, color me embarassed. But why the pivot of the discussion to the video cameras? Maybe to emphasize "America superior"?