Question about the moon landing footage vs Mars rover footage

I was watching old Apollo 11 videos and then some 4K footage from the Perseverance rover the other night. The difference in clarity is huge, like 60s tech vs modern stuff obviously makes sense, but why does the moon footage look so staged compared to what we can pull off on Mars today? Has anyone else noticed how suspicious that grain and lighting looks?

2 comments

2 Comments

benwilliams8d ago

The Apollo cameras used 16mm film running at about 12 frames per second, not 4K digital sensors. A lot of that grain comes from pushing the film speed way up to get any exposure in bright sunlight and deep shadows at the same time. Those old TV broadcasts were also shot off a monitor, which killed what little clarity was left. The Mars rovers use modern digital cameras with way better dynamic range and processing. Have you looked up the actual specs on the Apollo TV cameras versus the Mastcam-Z on Perseverance?

paulperez7d ago

I had a similar issue trying to digitize some old home movies from the 60s... my dad's old Super 8 reels were all grainy and washed out. What finally helped was using a scanner with adjustable exposure settings, not just converting the raw film. I had to play around with the brightness and contrast a lot to get anything decent. For the moon footage, I bet a lot of that grain is from the film being pushed too fast in the camera, like you said. The Mars rovers definitely have it easier with modern sensors and all that processing power. It's night and day comparing those old clunky broadcasts to the crisp images we see now.