Before the 110 film version, in 1969 or '70, I had the Estes Camroc. It used single discs cut from a roll of black-and-white Kodak Tri-X film. The camera was the nose cone, with the plastic lens at the tip. The shutter was tripped by releasing a string held between the base of the nose cone and the body tube. This happened at ejection, so the rocket had to be heading down by then or you got a picture of clouds. Did I mention you had to assemble the camera with plastic model glue? Keeping the glue off the lens was a pain, for a ten-year-old. And you had to load the camera's film holder in a darkroom, one shot per flight. I spend a summer flying the thing; I got three recognizable images for my trouble. Fun times! Estes at the time also made the Cineroc, resembled the modern Astrocam but used a short clip of 8mm (I don't think it was big enough for 16mm) film. Never could afford one on my allowance.:) Imagine loading the film, praying you didn't screw that up, launching and praying the shutter tripped properly (powered by a rubber band!) and then unloading (more prayer) and sending the film to a lab. Two weeks later, you were lucky as hell and there's a picture of your house or the ballfield that someone else could actually recognize. But it was awesome fun to try.
Mannnnnnn…thank you so much for this video! Built and flew lots of Estes rockets back in the 80s. My buddy had the 110 film model and it really wasn’t practical because there was no nose cone stabilization technology on that one. It took photos yes but, they were blurry and showed lots of crazy angles. It was more art than it was documenting a flight like this modern version. Very cool…again, thank you.
Brings back memories! I was into model rockets as a kid and I picked up the old astrocam rocket kit that used actual film for $10. Never developed the film but it was easy to build and it flew extremely well as I recall.
Heh. I remember flying the 110 film version of this. Fun. Though if you'd told me we'd have this tiny movie camera a few decades later, I would never have believed you. :D
This rocket was a childhood dream of mine. Sometime in the mid '90s. Now I'm 34 with kids with my own and I think I'm going to buy this. I swear it's not for me I swear it as far my kids 😂
Right!! Thats me too, I am 35 with kids and use them as excuses to buy stuff constantly :D :D :D. I have one of the original 110 film astrocams still in the box, i should see about getting it airborne!
I wonder if you could get more stable images if the nose cone with the camera completely separated from the rocket, say using a 12" chute on each section (if they would deploy from the body tube)? Or maybe cutting a spill hole in the center of the chute? I love how inexpensive high resolution rocket videos can be done these days, but still, a stable, non-rotating or gyrating image would be nice.
