But it was not a great medium for space.
Most astronauts are fighter pilots. And there are only a few who are genuine photographers. You can train a fighter pilot to competently use a camera, but becoming a good photographer during the days of film usually took years of practice.
During the Apollo days they would send them up there with the best camera available. Usually a 70mm Hasselblad medium format. But the astronauts proved that the only way to get amazing photos without being a photographer was mostly down to luck.
We see the best photos they took, but those only amount to a handful. And as you saw above, NASA often had to do a lot of darkroom magic to make them aesthetically pleasing.
If you look at the Apollo archives, you can find hundreds of photos like this.
There was no instant feedback. They didn't have any instincts for settings or focus or composition. Most of the time they were just collecting visual data.
But every once in a while the stars aligned and they took absolute bangers.
That flag one is amazingly composed. But it took them a few tries.
Digital cameras give you a better baseline of quality. They can focus for you. They can meter for you. And they have high ISO gain that film could never touch.
They are... fighter pilot friendly.
With digital, they can look at the back screen and see if they bungled the exposure.
If they take a photo like this...
They get instant feedback and can be like, "Houston, where is exposure compensation?"
There is an undeniable ineffable quality that film sometimes delivers. But the medium is far less important than the skill of the person taking the photo.
Don Pettit is my favorite astronaut photographer. A true artist.
He really makes you forget about whether film is better than digital. He makes one remember that the person taking the photo is the paramount variable.
There is a great interview from Smarter Every Day where Don talks about how he captures amazing photos from space.
