Why was NASA shooting black-and-white?

[zahc]

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dE-vOscpiNc&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DdE-vOscpiNc

In the video, the Apollo crewmembers have to scramble to load a roll of color film so they can take a color picture of the Earth.

Why weren't they always shooting color? I know that people in 1968 were much more used to black-and-white photos, but for a scientific trip, with no budget concerns, I would have expected nothing but color. His exposure settings show they had 100-speed color film, so it's not like they were stuck with Kodachrome 25. Was it a reliability concern? Longevity/archival concern? Discuss.

[bedlamite]

Color film has less contrast and coarser grain than B&W, color would have less detail on what is essentially a greyscale rock anyway.

[230RN]

Yes, you can get incredibly fine-grained high-res pix with diluted Kodak Microdol developer and B&W Panatomic-x film.

Color film has (had!) three layers of emulsion for the light to get through, which inevitably scatters the light to the lowest level slightly.

[RoadKingLarry]

What they said.
Even in the '90s we were still using B&W for periscope photography. 70mm film in a aerial photog camera modified to attach to the optics in the periscope.

[zahc]

Periscope like for submarines? That's badass. I used to have a radioactive Kodak Aero Ektar aerial lens. I sold it but it was a beast.

I shoot a lot of black and white myself, but I never though of it as having more resolution than color. Then again I don't use custom Hasselblads either.

[RoadKingLarry]

One of my collateral duties was "photographic officer".  Ran the surveillance photography ops. In addition to the 70mm rig we also had a couple of Nikon F1s that could be mounted to the regular eyepiece. We'd run Kodachrome, poloroid slide film and T-max of various speeds.
I had a big honkng automatice developer for the 70mm stuff. It was a major pain in the butt to set up and use.

I had a huge stack of periscope photography we did for training exercises that was classified due to source since it had the scope cross hairs in it. Quite a few military surface ships and I even had a panarama of the fan tail of the Ike (CVN 69) that took 3 frames in low power. My dept head had me destroy all of it a week before he told me it had been declassied and now was only to be classified due to subject. He was just that kind of asshat.

[HankB]

Yes, you can get incredibly fine-grained high-res pix with diluted Kodak Microdol developer and B&W Panatomic-x film . . .

My father used to do exactly that when he wanted extra detail in his B&W shots. I remember helping him develop prints when I was a kid on an old Omega enlarger; it originally had a Wollensak Velostigmat lens (based on a Tessar design) and he was tickled pink when I gave him a Wollensak Enlarging Raptar (an updated design) that was a direct upgrade.

Later on, I remember reading that Kodak Technical Pan film out-did Panatomic-X in terms of fine grain, using a "Delagi" developer.

. . . I used to have a radioactive Kodak Aero Ektar aerial lens. I sold it but it was a beast.

Sounds like it was made when they were still adding thorium to the glass to boost the refractive index. (They don't do that any more.)