Sunita Williams Gives a Tour of International Space Station

Shimano pedals on the ISS exercise bike
closeup of Shimano pedals on the ISS exercise bike
Nikon cameras and lenses on the ISS

Sunita Williams gave a video tour of the International Space Station a few hours before her return to earth on November 18, 2012. I found it fascinating because her tour gives a great sense of the layout of the interior of the ISS and what it actually looks like. Also, in a weightless environment, the meaning of up and down have different definitions.

There were a couple of things that were especially interesting to me. When the crew uses the exercise bike, they don’t need a seat because they don’t sit down. They use clip-on pedals to hold them to the “bike.” The pedals look very similar to the Shimano road pedals that I use on my De Rosa. The exercise machines need to be isolated from the walls of the space station so they don’t put any forces into the structure of spacecraft and solar arrays.

When Commander Williams entered the Russian segment where Service Module Central Post of the space station is located, there was a nice assortment of Nikon photography equipment on both walls.

Nikon D700

Nikon introduced the new D700 SLR, their second digital camera with an FX format CMOS image sensor. The sensor is 23.9 x 36mm, almost the same size as 35mm film camera.

Why do photographers want a 35mm film sized sensor? The lenses on the FX format cameras don’t have the 1.5x crop factor of the DX sensor cameras, so you can spend a lot more money getting wide angle lenses. For example, this AF NIKKOR 14mm f/2.8D ED lens on the D700 is going to be the equivalent of a 21mm lens on a DX format sensor camera.

Priced at $2,999.95 USD, the Nikon D700 is a little more attainable than the Nikon D3 at $4,999.95 USD, I guess.

With all the improvements over a few short years, the Nikon D700 is at least 10 times better than my D70.

Nikon D700 (Nikon USA) press release.