Man has been bringing cameras into space for quite sometime now, which means the technology and resulting photos are getting better and better. To that end, it’s still interesting to take a look back into time to see where it all began. We can do that in the video clip below, where viewers are able to take a rare peek into astrophotography when it was just getting off the ground:
The camera featured in the video clip was a Nikon F3, a film camera that was modified by replacing the film back with an electronic back that transmitted the images to a computer using ports and wires. The computer then transmitted the images back down to a control station on Earth.
The lens is a 300mm with two lens extenders. One is a 1.4x and the other a 2x extender, giving the lens a reach of about 1000mm.
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I think modified Hasselblads were the first cameras (on manned US missions) used in space–at least as far back as 1962. Don’t know which were aboard the first 4 Mercury flights (Shepard, Grissom, Glenn, Carpenter), but the Hasselblads were in use during Gemini and Apollo missions.