Walking in the Air

Just in case you forgot how awesome space time-lapse video is, here’s a new one featuring photography from the Expedition 30 crew.

[iframe width=”640″ height=”360″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/hWz5ltE_I4c” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen]

I also came across a really interesting article on Luminous Landscape (a photography website) by Alan Poindexter, a shuttle astronaut who most recently commanded STS-131 two years ago. I had assumed that the explosion in night photography from space was because either 1) recent ISS crews have been more interested in photography than previous crews or 2) NASA has just been doing a better job of making the photos and videos available to the public (for both viewing and for remixing).

It didn’t occur to me until reading this article that its the improvement in camera technology — and specifically in digital camera sensor performance in low light (high ISO) situations — that has had the biggest impact. Now that the astronauts on the ISS have cameras capable of capturing what the Earth really looks like at night, they’ve been able to come up with all sorts of inventive ways of making these time-lapse videos and capturing other amazing images.

The article is a really interesting read if you are interested in photography at all, but beware — it made me want to buy a new camera body! Mine is about 8 years old and the image quality starts to suffer at ISO 800 and higher. I would use the excuse that I need a new camera because we’re about to have a baby…except I just used that excuse two weeks ago to buy a new lens. I wonder how long (and how much money) is that excuse good for?