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Originally Posted by Sandy G
I THINK Apollo 12 used one...The SECOND moon landing. Remember 11 was in B&W, for some reason or another they couldn't get/didn't think a color camera would work on the moon, or maybe because a small, light color camera had yet to be developed..
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Also very limited bandwidth from the RF path from the Moon to Earth. NASA threw it together just a few months before the moon landing. Slow scan TV. And at the receiving site in Australia, they used a pair of crude scan converters to make it 525i/30frames (NTSC B&W)) and 625i/25frames (PAL B&W) to feed the TV stations around the world. This scan converters were essentially a CRT display with long persistence prosper running at the slow scan rate, and regular B&W cameras operating at NTSC and PAL rates looking at that display. Heard it said that the slow scan video was significantly better than what the world saw live off those scan converters, but NASA can't find the tapes (they suspect someone in need of tape erased and reused them). A few still camera photos exist though.
Think NASA used sequential color on some early shuttle missions. Saw some footage of a shuttle crew launching a satellite, and as the satellite rotated, you could see color artifacts.
The astronauts on Apollo 12 accidentally pointed the camera at the Sun while moving it, and burned out the camera tube sensor. It didn't hurt the mission except for a huge loss of public interest (what, no more moon landing video?). That and "Been there, done that" didn't help.