Why NASA used the Nikon D5

6:51Most of the photos that we see come from the Nikon D5. This is a pretty old camera. It's a traditional digital single-lens reflex, so the DSLR that we know and love. It was released in 2016, so it's quite old. The crew also had the Nikon Z9. >> Yes. >> The difference between the two cameras is if we actually if you if you were to pull up that photo again. On the left, we see the Nikon sort of like dissected. >> Yeah. >> The difference between uh DSLR and the Nikon Z9 is the DSLR has a little mirror that takes the light that's coming in from the lens, and part of that light

7:32goes up and is reflected up to an auto-focusing mechanism, okay? And only about 80% of the light tops gets through to the CMOS detector at the end. So, you would think that, you know, this is an old camera and it's got this mirror mechanism, which means not all of the light is coming through. Why is NASA still using this super old camera? >> Uh nepotism or nostalgia is my guess. >> Yeah, it's it's science. It's actually it's actually a well-thought-out. The basic idea is that the D5, the Nikon D5, was selected because of sensor physics and extreme low-light performance. Yeah, that makes sense.

8:12First, let's get into the low-light performance. The D5, the Nikon D5, is engineered to maximize high ISO. ISO is, for all the photographers out there, it's effectively one of the triangles of exposure, aperture, and ISO. It lets you control just how much light you're putting in and how high fidelity you can make your image with really, really low light, right? The Nikon D5 has a maximum ISO of 3 million. >> That's so crazy cuz we're we have these cameras that I manipulate the triangle that you're talking about. We don't have 3 million.

8:53>> No, we I don't think we would need 3 million given our like studio lights, right? >> If you have a podcast in the dark. >> Yeah, yeah, then we probably would. The Apollo era film cameras, the Hasselblads, they had a ISO of 160. So, several orders of magnitude lower. And the Nikon Z9, which don't have this mirror mechanism, that just goes straight from lens all the way to um CMOS detector. >> Yes. >> Those only top out at 102,000. So, from 3 million to 102,000, it's a very good reason why we would want to use this Nikon D5. >> Yeah, that makes sense. >> right? Okay. So, the other big thing about the Nikon D5 is it features a pretty modest 20-megapixel sensor.

9:35That's the CMOS sensor inside of it. 20 megapixels nowadays is not a lot. Back Back in the day when I was like, you know, getting into cameras, 20 megapixels was a lot. But that lower megapixel count, what that actually means is each of the pixels, each of the photodiodes on my CMOS sensor is larger. Literally physically larger. If you were to fit more pixels in, the each of the sensors would actually be smaller. Each of the pixels would be smaller. And what that means is you've got a greater full well capacity. >> Okay. >> collecting more photons >> Mhm. >> before getting saturated. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay. >> And that's huge for low-light scenarios, okay? >> Right. You You're getting more original data before you start manipulating with

10:17computational photography. All the All the I should say processing. Yeah, cuz computational photography is a term of art that's specific. Just the processing. >> Exactly. We can get the raw data and that can have a lot higher fidelity is the idea. And the other big thing is that deep space exposes your electronics to galactic cosmic rays, solar particles, all kinds of stuff, right? And so NASA has already used the Nikon D5 on the ISS. And they know that at least it's going to work. >> Right. >> Right? It works on the ISS. And now with Artemis, we're leaving the Earth's sphere of influence, right? Oh, we're

10:57we're leaving the Van Allen belts. What's going to happen? What's going to happen? Right? Everyone's like, oh, what's going to happen? Well, actually that's a concern if you have electronics because the Van Allen belts which trap all of that radiation are no longer there to shield you, right? And the the magnetic field, I should say, of the Earth are no longer there to shield you. So when you get out of there, now you're just the cosmic rays are just coming and the Earth's magnetic field isn't strong enough at that vantage point to really stru you know, perturb those galactic cosmic rays Yep. those high-energy particles. So we know that the D5 works on the ISS and we can take a gamble that perhaps they

11:38will work when we go outside of the Van Allen belts, right? We don't want to start testing new electronics equipment when we're in this like high radiation space in deep space. >> This is actually a really interesting point I don't think I've ever thought about which is you know when you have to go into production as we say in software engineering, right? You have a test environment which for NASA might be the pool, it might be the desert. >> Or in this case the ISS, the International Space Station, low Earth orbit. >> Where you're in an you're in the environment that you want your outcome to happen in. And so you're trying to replicate the dynamics of that environment. Uh so that you know that when you test you can only do so much. >> Yeah.