I've been wanting to see a Space Shuttle launch in person for quite a while. I finally made it, along with a gazillion others! Since NASA has announced the end of shuttle missions, the crowds to watch launches have gotten enormous. I was fortunate to find a good unobstructed view, although it was 10 miles from the launch site. This was recorded in full 1920x1080 HD using a Panasonic DMC-GH1 with a Panasonic 100-300mm lens. The first portion of the launch was shot with the aid of a tripod, but eventually I couldn't tilt the pan head any higher, so everything after the cross-fade at 2:08 was hand-held. Sorry about the JPG compression artifacts - not sure how that happened. I haven't had that problem with any other videos. Maybe I had a wrong setting in the camera? Unfortunately videos don't record Exif info so no way to see what the settings were. After uploading the video, I used YouTube's stabilization filter to smooth out the jitters of the hand-held portion.
The royalty free music is "Backed Vibes Clean" by Kevin MacLeod at [ Ссылка ].
More info on the STS-133 mission at [ Ссылка ]
