Col. Chris Hadfield—Space Station commander, orbital Bowie-player, high-tweeting photographer, and more—recently sat down with Photoshop’s Lex van den Berghe for an interesting & varied chat. As you’d expect they nerd out a bit about photography & touch on some interesting details—for instance:
“We keep about eight cameras in the main viewing module—or ‘cupola.’” Hadfield explained. “There are so many high-energy protons coming through the station—things that are usually absorbed by our atmosphere—that they destroy the camera sensor. Pixels start dropping out immediately. On some of my lower light pictures you can see the flaws in the imagery.”
Lex noted later, “Chris was THE MAN… super fun to talk to…fascinating. Killed me that we only had 60 minutes to chat… I could’ve spent all day talking to him, especially if cold beers were also involved.”
Thanks for posting this John. Col. Hadfield is truly an outstanding guy, with a “voice” of and for this age – here’s another extended (and wonderful) recent interview, from NPR: http://tinyurl.com/m2m3lak
“… if they (everyone) could see the whole world every ninety minutes and look down on the places where we do things right, and look down where we’re doing stupid, brutal things to each other and the inevitable patience of the world that houses us — I think everybody would be reinforced in their faith, and maybe readdress the real true tenets of what’s good and what gives them strength.”
p.s. it’s possible to download the images taken on the ISS at their full original capture size: http://tinyurl.com/nfcbzw (missing pixels and all)