Just caught shuttle landing on hdnet and have a question or two

[Van]

First one is this, the anouncer stated that the camera's used to show the landing were off the shelf standard definition camera's yet the quality was atleast to my eyes alot better than that.

Second one is if anyone else noticed that when the shuttle was sitting on the runway that the camera had wind shake and the shuttle would shake and a section of the horizon would shake but the forest didnt shake in sink with the first two almost like the forest was a background image and the other two were overlays? This is an optical illusion trick of the eye right or is it a camera issue? I can see how some conspiracy nuts would think that the moon landing was faked if they saw something like that.

 

[Smith P.]

Could be some sort of stabilize picture processing artefact.

 

[Jim S.]

Compression issue? Heat and/or fumes coming from the shuttle? (I'm just guessing, I didn't watch it this time.)

 

[Pepper]

The "off the shelf" cameras he talked about were the ones mounted to the solid rocket boosters at launch.

I noticed the weird background stuff, it did look like some kind of overlay.

 

[Van]

Ok I thought I had missed what he was referring to with the off the shelf statement.

Definitely not a heat issue ( I was surprised to not see the heat waves in the air on the side shot but did see them on the front on shot ) but I agrea it did look like an overlay or some bad photoshop work. Best way that I can describe it is if you took a cartoon background cell with a runway and then a second that had the shuttle and some structures at the top of the horizon line then moved this third cell up down at a faster rate than the back ground cell with the runway, it really did make it look like a fake shot.

 

[Hall]

First one is this, the anouncer stated that the camera's used to show the landing were off the shelf standard definition camera's yet the quality was atleast to my eyes alot better than that.

You can get standard def cameras that look excellent. Our local CBS does their news in 16:9 SD and it looks phenomenal. In fact, over at AVS in the local thread for Dayton, many people ask if the station has switched to HD cameras (they have not).