What is this?

I thought the Buran was at Gorky park. I'm either completely wrong or they built more than one.

The booster and erector are beautiful with the contrasting deep red, silver and olive drab colors. Even the guy (not the officer to the right) standing under the booster looks to have deep read clothing. I'd love to have a high-res version of that pic for wallpaper. I wonder how much the late evening sun had an affect on the deep color. Years ago I used a particular slide film to get deep reds...seems like it was Ecktachrome, but I don't remember. Whatever it was, it was a slow film compared to the B&W Tri-X Pan I normally used for most projects.

tim

It's tough to tell but it looks mothballed. I recall seeing one of their old shuttles and one of their old SSTs parked somewhere and looking shabby. Wouldn't it be something if they hooked it up the the booster before it rolled by? :-)

Possibly, but it's difficult to judge the perspective. Could be pretty far off. If that's a light tower, or radio antenna next to it, I'd think it'd be about the right size. Wasn't the Buran a little smaller than our shuttles?

tah

Yeah, there're a whole bunch of nice shots in that gallery. NASA's listed in the credit, so maybe a hi-res is buried somewhere in their IT infrastructure.

I really like:

tah

Isn't that the next Gates Brothers cluster rocket?

Kodachrome had much better reds that the Ektachrome of the day. Now a days the Ektachromes and Fujichromes rule, as Kodak has only one speed of Kodachrome, and it is next to impossible to find someone that can process it.

Did Kodachrome come in ASA 64 and/or 32? Seems like what I used was really slow. We had to have it custom processed at the camera shop, IIRC. I used it in a couple of photography classes in college 15+ years ago.

tim

It seems that the jet trainer of the Buran is stuck in Aussieland........at least it was a couple years ago.

Chuck

The varieties I remember were "Kodachrome II" (ASA 25) and "Kodachrome-X" (ASA 64).

-dave w

What is the date of the photo? could it have been taken before the Buran was discontinued?

-- Eric Benner TRA # 8975 L2 NAR # 79398

I bet that's what I used. I still have some slides packed away somewhere that I took of a fire scene with plenty of red trucks, flames, dark smoke, and lots of wet surfaces. The composition was enough for a good grade, but the color depth pushed it over the top.

The stuff was expensive back then, especially compared to Tri-X Pan that we normally used. Now days, B&W film and processing costs more than color!

tim

Yeah, when I lived in NYC one of the local (Photo District) labs put in a full-blown Kodachrome processing facility for something like $3- or $4- million. Went from the basement up through to the first floor. They had to hire a full-time chemist to run process control. They lost a *ton* of money on the deal. There was no way they could do the volume needed to make the costs amortize out.

I'm the regional photographer for the American Orchid Society's Pacific Northwest Judging Center. After a bunch of film testing I've standardized on Fujichrome Astia. It's a *real* nice ISO-100 film with an extremely neutral color balance and the best (read: true-to-life) color renditions I have seen. I've never used a slide film that did whites as well. I understand that the fashion industry has also pretty much gone over to this film. I used to use EPN (Ektachrome Professional), but the Fuji is currently running a little over 1/2 the price and the color rendition is a tad bit better, so I stick with the green boxes instead of the yellow. (The only problem I have had with it is that it sometimes will not feed properly in one of my backup camera bodies; the body is the problem, but for some reason it feeds EPN just fine.)

They have a new version that is supposed to have the same color balance but an even finer grain. I haven't had a chance to test it yet, but as soon as I run out of my current stock I'll have to switch to it; they don't make the old version anymore. I have been assured that everything except the grain size is the same. If so it'll be a truly outstanding film stock.

Does the Fujichrome use the same "E-6" processing as the Ektachromes, or something different?

-dave w

Yep...standard E6 processing. Kodachrome is really the only one in fairly common use that's different nowadays, and there are only 2 or 3 labs in the country that can process it.

Yeah, they were photos of the Soyuz that went up early this morning. Launched at 1:38AM EDT.

tah

Believe it or not, CNN and Fox news actually carried it live. Since I'm a night owl anyway, I was up to watch it. Fox put it in a window and kept running their regular show, but CNN let it run full screen and audio. They don't even show live US launches half of the time so I was surprised.

tim

ht tp://

Notice the "shuttle-like", or "Buran-like" thing in the background?

I thought they got rid of all of those...

They discontinued the 25 a couple of years ago, they still make a 64, and I think a 200 ISO (ASA). It still has to go to Kodak for processing. Kodak is being a real PITA with their dealers. You have to do so much $$$ a year for them to consider keeping your dealership, and they keep raising the limit. I work at a photo lab, a lot of the smaller mini-labs lost their dealerships and were sending there stuff to me to send to the big yellow father. They yanked ours a year ago (and did us a BIG favor in the process).

Years ago Kodachrome ruled, someone even wrote a song about it; but now the rules have changed.