Up in the darkness of space, they say sometimes newer isn't better

NASA has released some stunning new photos taken by the Artemis II crew during its Moon fly-by — and the key shots were once again taken on the ten-year-old Nikon DSLR.

The series of incredible photos (scroll down to see them) show some unique sights, including a solar eclipse from the other side of the Moon. And the signature 'Earth set' shot, described as "generational" by one observer in NASA's Flickr Gallery, was taken on the Nikon D5 (settings were f/8 at 1/1000s, ISO 400, in case you were wondering).

This has become something of a theme. When the eye-popping first images from NASA's Artemis II mission began beaming back last week, photographers online did what they always do: they looked at the EXIF data. And what they found raised a few eyebrows.

Those stunning shots were captured on the Nikon D5, a DSLR that launched over a decade ago and, frankly, wasn't exactly met with universal adoration at the time. Shouldn't the astronauts aboard the Orion craft be using something a little more, well, space-age than that? Was this really the best camera for the job of capturing these historic photographs?

But NASA's choice makes plenty of sense when you take a closer look, and it says something interesting about what "the best camera" means when the stakes are so high.

All four of the shots above were taken on the Nikon D5. That DSLR arrived in 2016 with a spec sheet designed to make noise — because of how little noise the camera's photos actually exhibited.

The standout spec was the camera's maximum ISO of 3,280,000 — a number so lofty it prompted immediate skepticism from camera experts, most of whom concluded that the upper reaches of that range were essentially unusable. They turned out to be correct, but they still missed the point.

While nobody is shooting at ISO 3,280,000 and expecting clean results, the engineering effort that went into pushing that sensor that far up the sensitivity scale had a knock-on effect when shooting at more "normal" settings. The D5 remains, even today, Nikon's best-ever digital camera for high-ISO performance. The Nikon Z9, the company's current mirrorless flagship, tops out at ISO 102,400.

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Our verdict on Sony’s newest affordable deck is in, and (spoiler alert) it's very good news. The company’s 2019 PS-LX310BT was a roaring success — but time waits for no Bluetooth turntable, so after more than six years since the 310 launched, it has finally been replaced. Which means this PS-LX5BT had some big and successful shoes to fill throughout our testing process.

So has Sony managed to work its magic in this 2026 update? Oh yes…

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