Apollo 17 Transparency-Gene Cernan on the Lunar Rover

The Before the arrival of the digital camera there were three types of film in everyday use. Black and white negative film, colour negative and colour reversal film (transparency). B&W negative film produces an image on the film surface in which the tones are all inverted… Black becomes white and white becomes black, likewise all the tones in between. To see a recognisable image, you must make a print on photographic paper. The same for colour negative film, all the colours on the film inverted. Again, you must make a paper print to see an image in true colours. With colour reversal film, ‘transparency’, ‘slide’ or even ‘colour positive’ as they are sometimes called, when you hold the film up to the light you can see a true-to-life image. Colour reversal film produces an incredibly fine-grained image with true colours. Examples of colour reversal film would be Ektachrome and Kodachrome. Some B&W film can also give a very fine-grained result (even finer than the colour reversal film). As far as I know, NASA didn’t ever use colour negative film. They used mostly versions of Ektachrome for colour and B&W negative film where they wanted fine details and colour wasn’t so important. I wrote a section on NASA the Ektachrome film in my book. The 70mm colour film that we know from Apollo are all Ektachrome. Back in the early days, NASA used to publish and annual 'NASA Photo Index' booklet. That gave details of how you could order reprints and even duplicate rolls of film from NASA.

The book that Jon refers to is the book that he authored called "Apollo 11 Lunar Photography-The journey of Magazine S"

Follow this link to a description of the book