Riding the wind of rebirth

"Of course, no problem! The military and the people are one family!" Commander Zhou said. "Old Tu has been promoted to town party secretary. Please give him my regards when you go back!"

"sure."

"Let's go, I'll take you to the observation deck."

"A viewing platform?" Zhou Zhi was a little puzzled. When did the base get a viewing platform?

"It's the place where you watched the launch last time," Commander Zhou said proudly. "I thought it was a good spot, so I had the soldiers clean it up so that it would be more comfortable for the reporters to come. Come on, I'll take you to see it."

There's now a small road leading to that hill, probably opened up by Commander Zhou and his soldiers, and military vehicles can drive up it.

A platform has been carved out at the top of the hill, covered with gravel. Outside the small gravel plaza is a rough railing made of logs, which can actually be used as a bench.

The only decoration was a simple cement platform in the middle of the platform, with a large stone on it bearing four characters written in artistic font: "Chasing Dreams in Space".

"This place is really nice." Although it was rather rough, Zhou Zhi still had to praise it: "It's much more comfortable than when we came last time. Thank you for your hard work."

Commander Zhou was very happy: "We will do even better in the future."

There were still a few people on the platform facing the base's railing. Seeing people approaching, a man in a gray vest walked over: "Commander Zhou, who are these people...?"

Zhou Zhi had already clearly seen the CCTV logo on the man's vest and knew that he was a reporter who had come to record interview material.

Commander Zhou introduced, "This is Xiao Zhou, and this is Mr. Li. They brought their team to observe the launch."

Reporters are naturally very sensitive to current affairs. They didn't know Zhou Zhi, but they were very familiar with Li Laosan. They quickly extended their hands to Li Laosan and said, "Hello, Mr. Li. We heard that this launch mission is for your foundation's satellite. Would you mind giving us an interview?"

“Uh, that’s not convenient.” Li Laosan declined directly: “First of all, this mission is confidential, and secondly, I’m just accompanying a friend to take a look. It’s a private trip and I don’t have any work arrangements.”

Zhou Zhi secretly praised him, "Third Brother is so magnanimous now, huh? He even dares to speak like that to the uncrowned kings."

The reporter looked at Zhou Zhi suspiciously, his mind filled with doubt. It seemed that Li Laosan's trip was just to accompany this young man? Who was this young man?
However, since Li Laosan had already refused, they didn't dare to inquire any further. Fortunately, Zhou Zhi spoke up: "We're just here to take some photos of the rocket launch. Will that interfere with the work of the reporters?"

"It won't bother you, it won't bother you!" The reporter quickly waved his hand, then turned to call out, "Xiao Wang, Xiao Zhang, move the equipment around and make room for Mr. Li and his team!"

These days, digital cameras are extremely rare, even in organizations like CCTV. When Zhou Zhi pulled out his camera, the guy fiddling with the equipment next to him whistled in surprise: "Kodak DCS420! Awesome!"

"What?!" The entire CCTV filming crew immediately swarmed around: "Look, look!"

This is currently the world's most advanced commercial digital camera. At that time, Kodak dominated the digital camera market, with no rivals. Released in 1994, this camera used a 2.1-megapixel sensor with a resolution of 1524*1012 pixels, equipped with an LCD screen and a single-lens viewfinder, and offered a wealth of automatic functions in addition to full manual mode. Before this camera, digital cameras were almost all "full-reflective" (SLR). It was only with this camera that the familiar "SLR" concept emerged.

The price is also very high, reaching a staggering $24,000.

The prototype originally only cost $20,000, but that was a version inherited from the DCS200 with an external data storage hard drive.

The memory card was larger than the camera itself, about the size of a small battery, and very heavy, making it extremely inconvenient to carry.

Kodak then collaborated with the Clover Group to replace the hard drive with a flash memory module, which could be easily connected to the bottom of the camera, making it an integral part of the camera. The capacity was increased from 200 MB to 2 GB, a tenfold increase, and the ability to store RAW format photos was increased from 150 to 1500.

Although this increased the cost by $4,000, its portability and tenfold increase in capacity made it an instant mainstream choice for high-end digital cameras, with sales far exceeding those of the original basic version.

The locals didn't understand these things, but the CCTV crew was different. When they saw this "legendary" camera, they all treated it like they had found an incredible treasure.

“You’re all professionals, so you can give it a try,” Zhou Zhi said with a smile, “provided that you’ve already completed your preparations.”

"The preparations were all done a long time ago," said Xiao Wang, who had just helped move the machines, eager to try it out: "Are you really going to let us try it out?"

Zhou Zhi stepped aside behind the tripod: "You come here. You're already very familiar with the Nikon F90. The body of this camera is actually the Nikon F90, so it'll be easy for you to master."

Xiao Wang carefully stood behind the camera. After Zhou Zhi replaced the camera with a telephoto lens, he began to guide Xiao Wang in operating the launcher in front of him.

They were all professionals who were good at using the fully manual mode. Xiao Wang quickly learned the camera's functions, then began to study the camera's automatic functions, and finally laughed and said, "The biggest advantage of this thing is its convenience! It can capture decent photos in a short time, but if you want to add artistry, you still have to go for the fully manual mode."

Zhou Zhi gave him a thumbs up: "That's right, not blindly believing in the capabilities of equipment, that's called being pragmatic!"

"It would be great if the resolution were higher," Xiao Wang said regretfully. "Modern digital cameras have basically solved all the problems, but their resolution is still far behind that of film cameras."

"There's no way around it. Film cameras produce images at the molecular level, while digital cameras currently use CCDs with only 230 million total pixels on a 1/2.7-inch sensor, and only 210 million effective pixels. No matter how much they develop in the future, they will never reach the molecular level. So, in terms of image quality alone, digital cameras will never be able to match the level of film cameras," Xiao Zhang said.

“It doesn’t necessarily have to develop that way.” The photography team leader who had just shaken hands with Zhou Zhi said, “Ninety-nine percent of the applications of photographic images are for human eyes, so as long as the image resolution can fool the human eye, it is already at its limit. Except for a very few professional scenarios, there is no need to reach the molecular level. It’s the same principle as a television signal of 24 frames per second being sufficient.”

"Actually, besides the resolution, the lens performance is also just average." Zhou Zhi has been using this camera for a while and can now give a more accurate evaluation: "I mainly chose it for its convenience and timely feedback on image quality, but its performance at the telephoto end is too average, with the light spots becoming very hexagonal."

"Such a high-end digital camera has this problem?" Xiao Wang was just as surprised as he was when he saw Zhou Zhi own such a camera: "How can you use it like this?"

"It depends on the situation," Zhou Zhi said with a smile. "You're professionals. Aside from capturing breaking news, digital cameras aren't really suitable right now; the image quality doesn't even meet the requirements of professionals." (End of Chapter)