In article ,
Kevin Willoughby wrote:
It really is a sin and a shame that IMAX didn't exist quite early enough
to film a Saturn V launch...

Ayuh...
Except that IMAX was founded in 1967. The IMAX prototype was on public
display at Expo '67 in Montreal. Tiger Child premiered in Japan in 1970.
So IMAX was available during the all too brief time when we could walk
on the moon.

Except that any IMAX Saturn V footage taken then would have been like the
shuttle footage in "Hail Columbia": not bad, but not that impressive
either. That is, it would have been shot from the standard press-camera
sites, as "Hail Columbia" was. Not until people started dragging NASA
brass to see "Hail Columbia" did NASA wake up and really roll out the red
carpet for IMAX, notably allowing them to set up cameras much closer to
the pad, to get scenes like looking *up* at the shuttle stack at maybe a
45deg angle as the engines light. Even if IMAX had identified Apollo
launches as an early priority, I don't think there was time to gain NASA's
cooperation to that level.

I'm also not sure that IMAX had a self-contained remote camera early
enough. My impression is that the early cameras took a lot of babying
and really needed human operators on hand.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |