Sigma Sent Two Cameras Into ‘Space’ to Capture Earth from 100,000 Feet

 

Sigma UK recently teamed up with the company Sent Into Space to… well… send a couple of their cameras to space. The group tied a pair of Sigma fp’s to two weather balloons and sent them each to an altitude of ~100,000 feet so they could capture some stunning photos and 4K RAW video of Earth from the upper atmosphere.

The little marketing stunt is, of course, meant to highlight the gear onboard. The Sigma fp, the world’s smallest and lightest full-frame mirrorless camera, and the 14mm f/1.8 DG HSM Art lens, the “brightest and best 14mm lens on the market.”

But it’s also about doing something that, to the best of our knowledge, hasn’t been done to this level of quality ever before. We’ve seen plenty of footage and photos captured by GoPros and other smaller cameras tied to weather balloons, but Sigma says this is “the first time a full-frame camera has captured stills and video from the upper atmosphere and we think this is the best quality video footage ever taken from this viewpoint.”

We’ll let you be the judge of that last claim.

The team’s reaction when they plugged in the hard drives and found their footage and stills intact.

A low-res version of one still photo captured by the Sigma fp from ~100,000ft

Whether or not this is a true “first” is really irrelevant. After all, astronauts on the ISS have been taking stunning high-resolution photos from about 1.34-million feet for many years now. But it’s still cool to see what the latest and greatest camera tech can capture when you put it near the edge of space… and click record.

To watch the full experiment, hear all about how they ensured these cameras would continue working in “near-space,” and see the final photos and footage that they were able to capture, check out the full video up top.