When one considers the greatest achievement of the 20th century, the Apollo missions to the moon must be very strong contenders - unless you're one of those unhinged conspiracy theorists who believes it was all faked, but AP readers are much saner than that.
If the Apollo programme from 1968 to 1972 wasn't impressive enough, a vast body of still and video imagery was also taken by the astronauts up in space or on the lunar surface.
You'd think they would have enough to worry about, especially the crew of the troubled Apollo 13 mission, but some 35,000 images were taken on state-of-the-art cameras (for the time being), and subsequently stored in a frozen NASA vault in Houston. For half a century, almost every publicly available image of moon landings was produced from lower-quality copies of these originals. Now, however, expert image restorer Andy Saunders has painstakingly worked on digital scans of this massive archive, bringing the original images to life as never before. His new book, Apollo Remastered, includes much more detailed shots of Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong from the first moon landing, Apollo 11, Jim Lovell and the Apollo 13 crew struggling to get their stricken transit craft back in one piece, and much more. We caught up with Andy to find out more about this labour of love.
The right stuff
Andy begins by stressing that this project was never driven or funded by NASA. 'NASA has an open-source policy, so anyone can access the image scans. They are more than happy for people to work on them. I sent back the remastered versions of the scans to NASA, but it wasn't like I was contacted by them at the beginning. Nobody else was working up the images, including NASA. We had the holy grail of the super-high-resolution Apollo mission scans and they were just sitting there on a server!'
This story is from the September 20, 2022 edition of Amateur Photographer.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the September 20, 2022 edition of Amateur Photographer.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Final Analysis
Maria Falconer considers...Cromarty. Wednesday 18 August 1993. By Mark Power
Using artificial intelligence ethically
AI-powered tools in photo-editing software can be a blessing to photographers. James Abbott demonstrates a more ethical approach to AI to save time and to simplify complex manual tasks
The gift of nature
Hungarian photographer Csaba Daróczi has enjoyed great success in a number of high-profile photography competitions. Tracy Calder talks to him about fresh challenges, originality, and what constitutes a prize-winning picture
Sigma 10-18mm F2.8 DC DN Contemporary
Andy Westlake assesses a compact, affordable, large-aperture wideangle zoom for APS-C cameras
OM System Tough TG-7
Joshua Waller reviews one of the few tough, waterproof, compact cameras left on the market
OnePlus 12
This latest flagship model boasts high-end specifications beyond its price. Amy Davies discovers more
The dream team
Julia Margaret Cameron and Francesca Woodman pushed the boundaries of photography, and have been paired up in a major new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. Tracy Calder takes a look
Images to inspire action
Why is animal photography so popular and can photographs help to save species from decline or extinction? Huw Lewis-Jones, author of a new book on animal photography, talks to David Clark
Photo City: How Images Shape the Urban World
Photography and cities have long had something of a symbiotic relationship, as this exhibition explores. Ailsa McWhinnie finds out more
Final Analysis
Tracy Marshall-Grant considers... The Sun, Early Sunday Morning, by Peter Mitchell