One longtime spectator of Nasa’s space launches on the Florida coast decided to shoot this month’s Artemis II launch with a camera that could have captured the first American to be blasted into space in the early 1960s.
Anthony Rue, a camera collector and one of the hosts of the Camerosity podcast, combed through his archive to find a camera that could have been used to document the launch that made John Glenn the first American to go into orbit around the Earth.
Rue decided to use a Voigtlander Bessamatic, a German leaf-shutter SLR first released in 1959 and a favourite of enthusiast photographers through the 1960s.
“For Artemis II I wanted to honour Nasa history and also capture something of the feel for what it might have been to photograph the first launch to put an American astronaut in orbit.
“John Glenn’s Mercury Freedom7 flight was in 1962, so I combed through my cameras to find an appropriate set-up that might have been able to capture that historic launch. I settled on the Voigtlander Bessamatic Deluxe from 1962, a typically over-engineered German leaf shutter SLR.
“For a lens, I have an appropriate vintage Voigtlander Super Dynarex 350mm telephoto for the Bessamatic. It is a beast of a lens, with a minimum focal distance of 90ft (27.4m) and fine-focus adjustments at one mile. Mounted on the Bessamatic, the rig probably weighs 3kg (6.6lb). I was loaded up with Eastman Kodak Vision3 5207 250D cinema film.”
Rue has been visiting Nasa’s Cape Kennedy (formerly Cape Canaveral) launch site since he was a child. “My family began visiting Florida when I was very young, around six or seven, and Cape Canaveral satisfied two of my parents’ favourite things: nerdy
science and a love of photography.
“I still have the Snoopy-in-a-spacesuit figure they gave me when they woke me up in the middle of the night to watch the blurry images of Apollo 11 landing on the Moon. They have photos of me as a kid in front of Mercury and Gemini rockets, taken with my dad’s Kodak Retina Reflex III. My parents made sure that we were there for the launch of Apollo 12.”
Rue’s family moved to Florida and he was able to watch launches through the 1970s. He also made trips back to watch several Space Shuttle launches on trips back in the 1980s before he moved back to Florida in the 1990s.
“I’ve been on hand for Atlas, SpaceX Falcon and Falcon Heavy launches, and I was as close as I could get for Artemis I.”
Rue’s favourite spot to photograph space launches is the Playalinda Beach in the protected Canaveral national Seashore, but he couldn’t capture Artemis launches from it because the beach was under the rockets’ flight line. Instead, he headed to Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge a few miles inland.
Rue says he usually shoots both film and digital at rocket launches, and usually has less than a couple of minutes to get the pictures he needs, and has tried all sorts of different cameras over the to get different perspectives.
“I’ve made some quirky attempts at mixing it up over the years: Graflex Super Speed Graphic 4X5 (not entirely successful), the Horseman Convertible wide-angle 6X9, a Fuji G617 panoramic. My standby 35mm cameras for launches are the Contax ST with the Zeiss Tele-Tessar 300 and an Olympus OM-1 with a Zuiko 300mm lens. I also take my Pentax K1 DSLR with a Tamron 70-300mm zoom to take a few failsafe raw files.
“It is surprising how fast launches go in person – by 90 seconds you don’t have much to shoot but the vapour trail unless you are shooting an ultra-telephoto.”
Despite his familiarity shooting rocket launches, Rue says the early April launch using Nasa’s new Space Launch System (SLS) rocket was still impressive. “The SLS launch is unlike any other. It might have been the impression it made on me as a kid, but the Saturn V [used for Apollo launches] seemed louder – but the SLS accelerates into the sky faster than anything I’ve seen. The burn is so bright that it is almost impossible to find a balance between exposing for the engines or exposing for the rocket itself.
“When Artemis I launched in the middle of the night, it was so bright that our viewing stand looked like a brightly lit football stadium.”
Rue took other cameras with him for the launch, including a Pentax K1 for digital shows, and another Voigtlander – a medium format Bessa II folding camera. “I had never used either Voigtländer camera for a launch before, and I rather preferred the Bessamatic for its faster frame advance. You don’t really want to mess with the ruby window on a 120 folder for frame advances during a launch. It really slows you down, in the worst way.”
Rue’s 60+-year-old camera, however, successfully captured several images of the historic launch, the second in a programme that will eventually put humans back on the Moon after a gap of more than 50 years.
“I can’t lie, it is a considerable challenge shooting a launch with a 63-year-old rig,” he told Kosmo Foto. “As the sun was setting just after launch, I was re-metering the sky every few minutes up to the moment we heard the engines fire. From there it was set it and forget it, and hope there is enough latitude in the film to deal with the vast contrast between the sky, the rocket, and the flames from the exhaust.
“The Bessamatic doesn’t have an automatic mirror return, so the viewfinder blacks out after every shot. With such a fast-moving target there was a bit of luck in reframing after every frame advance. All told, I am very pleased with the look of my final images. They will never match the detail of the latest digital bodies with their 600mm lenses used by the credentialed photographers at Nasa’s viewing platform, but there is a connection with the history of Nasa launches that I find in the film shots. The success is all the sweeter for Rue after the launch was delayed a few times. “We had about 50 people on a viewing platform about six miles from the launch pad, and it didn’t begin to fill up until the hour before the launch.
“It was a party for science nerds. Science teachers on spring break. Former Nasa engineers. Parents bringing their kids to witness history. Everyone was talking about Project Hail Mary. A cheer broke out at 6:34 when the Artemis engines could be heard moments before we could see the rocket lift off.”
I'm a New Zealander who has been living in London since the mid-1990s, shooting film seriously since the year 2000. Kosmo Foto was launched in 2012 and has since become a film brand, with the release of my first films Kosmo Foto Mono 35mm (2017) and Kosmo Foto Mono 120 (2019).
I’m doing everything I can to promote film photography in the 21st Century, and help it survive and thrive. If you want to write something for Kosmo Foto, please drop me a line at foto.dowling@gmail.com.
