Mars Rover 17 Cameras?
lifeinfocus
Registered Users Posts: 1,461 Major grins
Mars rover Curiosity has 17 cameras. I did a web search to try and learn what type of cameras and lens they are using. No luck.
Anybody have info. on this?
Just Curious
Phil
Anybody have info. on this?
Just Curious
Phil
0
Comments
Good find. I sent email to NASA asking for details. i wonder if they will respond.
Phil
"You don't take a photograph, you make it." ~Ansel Adams
Phil
http://msl-scicorner.jpl.nasa.gov/Instruments/Mastcam/
and other links to the left.
http://www.youtube.com/user/NYCFilmmakersGroup
http://www.meetup.com/NYC-Filmmakers-and-Actors-Meetup-Group/
If they had taken a Nikon camera instead, we'd be getting a transmission
from Mars every 30 seconds, saying "Hi, I'm a Nikon".
― Edward Weston
Interestingly my understanding is they use primarily Kodak sensors and all of the images returned so far have been from those. The MastCams use 2MP HD-capable sensors, and the MSL is able to compose large panoramas similar to its twin rover predecessors.
[Edit]: Four sensors (2 Mastcam, MARDI, MAHLI) are a Kodak sensor produced by Truesense Imaging. Twelve other sensors (2 Hazcam at each corner, 4 Navcam) are produced by Teledyne DALSA using a NASA design. The Navcams are the same as those on the current rover twins Spirit and Opportunity.
Some additional detail:
http://www.truesenseimaging.com/news-and-events/34-msl-landing
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/pdfs/MSLLanding.pdf
http://www.asdnews.com/news-40023/Teledyne_DALSA-Manufactured_Sensors_to_Guide_NASA_Rover_on_Current_Mission_to_Mars.htm
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2011/pdf/2738.pdf
http://www-robotics.jpl.nasa.gov/publications/Reg_Willson/2003JE002077.pdf
― Edward Weston
The one before was simply trolling. To avoid a flamewar I exaggerated his
false statement with another, obviously even more false statement. I thought
it would be a nicer way to tell the person that his statement can only be taken
as humor, instead of saying what he said was preoccupied, nonsense.
It is known know by now that shaddow noise/banding is no issue in real
life, and that it can usualy be avoided by making a proper exposure, provided
the person operating the camera knows what he/she is doing.
― Edward Weston
OK, so platform wars aside, I was watching a playback of one of the NASA press conferences and they have the project's imaging chief on the panel. The guy responsible for all the cameras. A journalist asked how true the soil color was in the photo from the camera under the rover. The NASA imaging guy explained that he wouldn't trust the color because the shadows were boosted significantly, and they did that because they intentionally underexposed a lot of pictures, and they did that because they hadn't yet run their calibration routine to understand where the highlight exposure cutoff should be. And that was a concern because they didn't want to assume something was specular when it wasn't. And that was because the hazcams don't have calibration targets within their field of view, while the much nicer mast cams can have the rover's calibration targets in the scene. (I might have remembered some of this wrong.)
So if we're going to assign meaning to banding in the shadows, it might actually be wrong to blame it on the specific hardware, but on conscious exposure and post-processing choices made by the team. In the photo being discussed at the press conferences I watched, banding was due to boosting intentionally underexposed shadows a lot in post.
Those press conferences are massively informative as far as hearing the thinking and strategies behind the camera hardware, shot selection, etc. behind the photos. So many very basic Mars photography questions being asked on forums all over the world get answered in seconds by listening to the NASA techs speak, but not a lot of people watch the conferences, they only read the highly watered-down non-technical sound bites they get in the local paper. Watching at least one of those daily press conferences is highly recommended, they repeat them every couple of hours on NASA TV, which I watch as the NASA channel on my Roku.