Aerial photos .....?

Aerial photos .....? (Full Version)

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AlphaWhisky -> Aerial photos .....? (8/19/2005 9:38:06 PM)
I`m new to this forum so maybe this has already cropped up somewhere before. I dabbled with airborne r/c photography several years ago and at that time used an 'old' Pentax 'Zoom 70-S' 35mm camera. This was mounted in a scratch-built model not unlike a reduced size Kadet Senior but was fitted with both ailerons and flaps. The camera was mounted in the cabin on the CG and fixed to shoot along the undersurface of the left wing at 90 degrees to the direction of flight. I fixed the camera for forced-flash so I could see when each photo was taken. All old-hat now, but amusing at the timeand worked OK. It occurred to me recently that I am just about ready to have another go at this and thought I might build something around my recently replaced my little Canon IXUS 300 camera - 2.1 megapixels (replaced with a Panasonic Lumix FZ5.) The weak point in my previous efforts was rigging up a servo to activate the shutter button. By chance I recently came across an advert on the Singapore Hobby Supplies website for a small 2 megapixel digital camera already rigged up to plug straight into a receiver. That would sure simplify that problem. Query, has anybody seen or used one of these cameras? Do they work OK? Are there any other (cheap) similar units around? Thanks, Alan W

marwen1 -> RE: Aerial photos .....? (8/20/2005 4:32:47 AM)
I'm not too sure about that particular camera but I'd like to toss a tiny bit of aerial advice into the mix. If I read your psec correctly, you had your previous camera installed soas to take a shot 90˚ to the flight path. In essence, straight down - if we are flying level. Up at altitude --- not too much of a problem, but at a lower range, it would give seriously blurred results. If you take a looka t the camera angle on military installs , --- they will be at a nice oblique. Anything being shot with movement coming "toward" the lens will almost look as though it were still. If this wasn't your data input, I appologize. Nevertheless, this kind of photography is very challenging. I tried it here locally for a while using a blimp. regards marwen

AlphaWhisky -> RE: Aerial photos .....? (8/20/2005 6:52:43 AM)
Sorry Marwen, Maybe I wasn`t too clear with my description. My camera was mounted in the cabin to in effect take a photo out the side window, not straight down. It was mounted slightly obliquely, and the underside of the wing tip just showed in the top of most pictures. This made aiming the camera reasonably easy, just manoeuvre the plane so that the wing more or less was in line with ground-based pilot and hit the button - in this instance the retract switch. The forced flash went off like a strobe light and was readily visible. Alan W

marwen1 -> RE: Aerial photos .....? (8/20/2005 7:03:46 AM)
Out of curiosity, what was the aircraft - back then? marwen

AlphaWhisky -> RE: Aerial photos .....? (8/20/2005 8:54:09 AM)
I`ll see if I can find a picture or two........ Seems I may have uploaded a couple of pictures - but not sure what..... If it all went according to plan there should be one shot of the model. As mentioned earlier it was scratchbuilt but based on the Kadet Senior, with a simplified LT-40 type fuselage. Wings were bolted on and incorporated both flaps and ailerons and it was a tail-dragger. First engine was an old OS40FSR and that was used for the photos. It struggled some so next powerplant was an OS 70 Surpass 4 stroke. That sure towed the camera around with ease. After ai removed the camera I flew it for some time with an OS 48 Surpass. That was a nice combination. One of my friends lusted after this plane for some time and eventually I gave it to him. It is still around and now powered with one of those weird RCV things. It makes a funny noise, but still flies well. One aerial picture may well be of our current flying site here in Tauranga, and another of our home prior to moving here upwards of 3 years ago. Alan W

Tall Paul -> RE: Aerial photos .....? (10/10/2005 5:58:53 PM)
A higher MP camera gives better images. This is with a Nikon Coolpix 7600 from an electric.

marwen1 -> RE: Aerial photos .....? (10/10/2005 8:27:22 PM)
TallPaul: You are 100% correct. The higher the MP - the better the quality. In fact, try to shhot an image with a much lower MP such as a 2.1 MP. The balcks (in particular) will look OK on screen, but if you attempt to make a print-out, they will look darn well AWFUL! marwen

Tall Paul -> RE: Aerial photos .....? (10/10/2005 9:19:07 PM)
Many of the photos on my websites are done with low resolution --- 1.2M-- cameras, or scanned to 640x480 if from prints. I'm almost interested in upgrading the images, now I have better cameras. :) And cable speeds are SO much better than DSL.

marwen1 -> RE: Aerial photos .....? (10/10/2005 11:10:08 PM)
If I'm not mistaken, that NIKON Coolpix camera is about 7.2 MP Nice photo that you posted. ----- Cable vs. DSL I've tried both. In fact, in my studio, I have my PC computer on DSL and the MACs, I have on Cable. The Cable is a touch faster but not enough to woory about. If I'm not too far off, there are different varieties of DSL's marwen

Tall Paul -> RE: Aerial photos .....? (10/11/2005 2:32:08 AM)
With the Coolpix, for AP I found I had to use the "sports" mode to get the pictures. The usual mode got confused with focusing on a moving object. The sports mode focuses much faster. And permits taking a strip series for stitching. There's much less vignetting/darkening at the frame edges with the multiple images taken in a burst versus those taken singly in a sweep. . I had Earthlink DSL for a year.. then tried Adelphia cable. The download speed increased something like 80x over DSL. Recently upgraded RealFlight G3, 140 Mb, in about a minute.

marwen1 -> RE: Aerial photos .....? (10/11/2005 3:36:45 AM)
Goes to show ya - there is a difference good stuff marwen

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