Who Took the Photo of the First Man on the Moon?
Who took the photo of the first man on the Moon?C. Stuart Hardwick:
If you mean this:
This is a frame from the slow-scan, low resolution TV camera mounted in the Modularized Equipment Stowage Assembly (MESA). The MESA folded down out of a small equipment bay clockwise from the ladder (as you look down on the LEM) when Neil Armstrong pulled a release prior to descending to the surface.
The image above shows the MESA deployed, so that the camera is roughly upside down, its pistol grip protruding at the top center of the frame, its lens facing away. Here is a closeup of the camera from the other side:
By today’s standards, this was a pretty crappy camera, but it was a technological wonder at the time, some dozen times smaller than the commercial TV cameras of the time. Because it transmitted in a non-standard format, and because footage of the moon landing had to be broadcast over dozens of different formats around the world, all the images you’ve ever seen from this camera were actually filmed second hand, off high-intensity TV monitors provided by NASA for that purpose. The whole rig was hopelessly crude and expensive, but that was the only way to do it at the time.
If you mean this (and any of several similar images):
This is Buzz Aldrin (the second man to leave the LEM), photographed by Neil Armstrong (the first) using a 70mm Hasselblad medium format film camera, to this day one of the finest cameras ever made, loaded with a specially made magazine of fine-grained Kodachrome film on an ultra-thin mylar base that permitted each magazine to hold twice as many feet of film as on standard commercial stock.
These cameras were modified such that they could be mounted on the astronaut’s chest:
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