Bright at night...

Hi everyone! Its ataken a bit to get back here. I had lots PC problems. And I lost my hard drive data. Along with my bookmarks.

But now that I am back, and looking around at some renders...an old question comes to mind....

Back with the science fiction shows we grew up with, all the ships were lit very brightly. Kirk's Enterprise looks white. All the ships in 2001 looked bright and white. So did battlestar Galactica and Star Wars.

But now everything looks DARK. The new galactica is so dark you can barely make out sections of the ships. Farscape also is darkly lit. The ST:TMP Enterprise is very dark.

But with modern day light amplification devices, and assuming the technology does improve, I would think that it wouldn't be unusual for future space ship photos to look very brightly lit. After all there is a TON of starlight in space. You can't escape it. So who's to say the original Star Trek show was "wrong"?

Just a thought. Not very elegantly stated but i think you get my drift.

TOS ships were white since most people still had crap little BW TVs and needed as much contrast as necessary to make anything out. I suspect 2001 was following perceived NASA style by having white ships; there might have also been issues with the large models, slow film stocks, and depth of field. The bright ships might have also been a carry over from 1950s-style silvery needle and saucers prevalent in movies and pulps.

Although ships are no longer white, they sure aren't colorful. They gone from being white behemoths to being olive drab and dark grey behemoths. B5 ships are rather more colorful, but I don't get B5 here in Japan! I suspect Chris Foss colored ships might tend to look to toy-like on screen.

[skyhawk223]

One can make an argument for just about any color ship. Given today's technology, we can assume that large parts of a ship would be steel or some other metal or perhaps some carbon fiber or other exotic blend. Without paint, that would leave you with either a steel color or black. Of course, paint could be applied, but for what purpose? One could argue that some sort of protectant is applied over a hull surface, which could lead to more colors. Who knows. I personally prefer well lit models so I can see the handiwork and craftsmanship that someone put into it.

All of our military planes and vehivles are painted. Every airlines except american. We did go for awhile in the I dream of jeannie era with fighter planes with shiny bare metal finishes.

But it is rare we don't paint the exterior of vehicles. Its a vanity/pride thing.

[skyhawk223]

Yeah, I guess. Even the space shuttle is painted. I am too much of a pragmatist. I keep asking myself "what purpose does paint serve in outer space?" On Earth you can sort of explain paint to say it helps disguise the vehicle in certain environments. A bit harder to make that argument for space. Of course I say this now, but will apply paint to my next spacecraft models

Paint is for uniformity of your fleet; for camouflage (visual and electronic); for visual appeal, identification, and unit pride; and protection from the elements. If you're not worried about these things, or can accomplish them in other ways, paint's not needed. The USN tried to go unpainted in the mid-1950s (as the Air Force did), but found the sea salt ate their planes.

[skyhawk223]

A rationale for paint in space could be for micro-meteorite protection. Perhaps the paints are formulated from some sort of very resilient polymer (space age polymer, anyone?) that can protect the hull from "space sandblasting".

I never understood why all ships have to appear so dark. And I keep hearing how bad the "old ships" look outdated. But to me... you are in deep space...there are starlight sources all around you. And during the Iraq war, even though it was dark night, we saw footage of everyone as if it was daylight, it was just tinted green. And I would expect that cameras in a few years will be able to shoot scenes by starlight alone and it will look like daylight.

Interstellar space is dark, like the dark side of the moon! Nightvision goggles aren't anywhere near to providing a daylight-like picture. Not just because of the low light level, but also because the spectrum of starlight and reflected moonlight is probably different from that of sunlight. Also to get anthing to show, you need to boost the contrast, which probably gets rid of all colors. But who knows what the future will bring?

Agreed. Current technology is unable to boost the light levels except in the most powerful of telescopes. Or should I say we are almost there? After all a handheld camera could take a well developed picture on the farside of the moon, you just need to keep it still nad have a looong exposure time.

I use to take photos at night in near darkness. I would measure my exposure times in minutes. or I would go about using a handheld flash device and make sure I would not get siloutted and walk arouns "flashing". But I can tell you from experience, photos taken in absolute darkeness looks alot like daylight photos if you expose it for a looong time.

The photos look like normal pictures, but the lights are REALLY bright.