Aerial Photography With RC Helicopter

[jason lam]

Here is a recreation of the famous earthquake shot. I didn't shoot the shot at the same angle as it's a very busy ferry port. I shot it about 2 blocks off center from the original location. Here is a link to the

 

San Francisco Aerial photo.

 

http://www.jasonlamphotography.com/sfpano.jpg

 

 

 

 

Here it is in color.

 

http://www.jasonlamphotography.com/sfpano2.jpg

[Ryan McLemore]

Dranganfly carry some where around 1 to 2 lb payload. My helicopter carries up to 10 plus lb payload.

 

nice. i noticed they have a new model coming out that can handle a professional camera.

[Ventseslav Kolev]

Hello,

I have rc quadrotor which can carry RED one. You can see some shots . There is long time with level horizont. No stabilization software used - raw material from the camera. The wind is 4-5 m/s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68PDecRi3Ts

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyfNXoTA9Wo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1tgBpOKf6w

 

The aircraft

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUMkJKd_m6w

Regards

Venci

 

 

Promising, but to be brutally honest, it lacks precision. This is probably somewhat inevitable with a small remotely controlled platform like a helicopter, but the biggest issue I see is the constant loss of a level horizon. This could to an extent be corrected in post, at some cost in resolution, but I think you will need to do something about this before it can become a really mainstream tool.

 

My impression was that when the camera is looking directly ahead, all is well, but if you're looking sideways and the aircraft pitches its nose down to gain speed (since it's a helicopter, albeit a small one) you end up with a pretty severe loss of horizon. I don't know what you're using for a pan and tilt mount, but I would suggest that you might need to look into some sort of solution for holding the camera level. This could be manually-controlled, or as simple as a gyroscope mounted on a free-swivelling roll axis cage, or as complicated (but lighter) as a tiny reference gyro slaved to a servoactuated roll axis. I presume these things exist, but perhaps not at the scale and weight you can deal with.

 

Otherwise not bad - the most common plaint I've had about radio-control camera platforms is repeatability, and I'd be interested to see you fly the same shot several times. It needs to be able to hit its marks.

 

P

[jason lam]

That is great. Wow, Red on the quadCopter.

 

Here is my design of All In One HeliCam, AeriCam.

 

http://www.AeriCam.com

 

 

Jason

 

 

 

 

 

Hello,

I have rc quadrotor which can carry RED one. You can see some shots . There is long time with level horizont. No stabilization software used - raw material from the camera. The wind is 4-5 m/s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68PDecRi3Ts

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyfNXoTA9Wo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1tgBpOKf6w

 

The aircraft

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUMkJKd_m6w

Regards

Venci

 

 

Promising, but to be brutally honest, it lacks precision. This is probably somewhat inevitable with a small remotely controlled platform like a helicopter, but the biggest issue I see is the constant loss of a level horizon. This could to an extent be corrected in post, at some cost in resolution, but I think you will need to do something about this before it can become a really mainstream tool.

 

My impression was that when the camera is looking directly ahead, all is well, but if you're looking sideways and the aircraft pitches its nose down to gain speed (since it's a helicopter, albeit a small one) you end up with a pretty severe loss of horizon. I don't know what you're using for a pan and tilt mount, but I would suggest that you might need to look into some sort of solution for holding the camera level. This could be manually-controlled, or as simple as a gyroscope mounted on a free-swivelling roll axis cage, or as complicated (but lighter) as a tiny reference gyro slaved to a servoactuated roll axis. I presume these things exist, but perhaps not at the scale and weight you can deal with.

 

Otherwise not bad - the most common plaint I've had about radio-control camera platforms is repeatability, and I'd be interested to see you fly the same shot several times. It needs to be able to hit its marks.

 

P

[Ventseslav Kolev]

Hello,

the new version of the aircarft will be ready this month. All this corections will be made. See www.ufo-camera.com

Regards

Venci

[Phil Rhodes]

Hey, Jason, I somehow completely missed that recreation of the famous photo when you first posted it! Brilliant!

 

P

[jason lam]

Phil,

 

Thanks for the suggestion and I just happen to be in San Francisco at the time. So it was the perfect project for me. Glad that you like it.

 

 

 

Jason

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hey, Jason, I somehow completely missed that recreation of the famous photo when you first posted it! Brilliant!

 

P

[Guest]

Here's an interesting blimp system. The problem with a simple balloon system is steering and framing shots as an extension of that. There are a few systems around, and I've worked with tethered blimps, but they're all stopgap solutions and not really predictable ways to get images. The biggest cost factor is the helium thrown away each time you fill the balloon (recovery systems are available but are also very expensive). As you can see fro the size of this blimp, a lot of lift is needed to get even a small camera and remote head package off the ground.

 

http://soulcam.fr

 

As to vibration, it's absorbed by the balloon and a shock mount for the camera. Fuel drips are so far away from the lens they're not an issue.

 

If you ever get a chnce to work with or observe the Flying-Cam guys in action, it's worth it. They are GOOD!

 

Wow! The shots from this blimp system are really amazing. The shots have a "majestic/heavy" feel that the shots from the RC choppers lack. The RC choppers seems to bounce around too much in the air, these blimp shots have a rock steady flowing feel to them.

 

I wonder what the cost of getting this blimp into the air is vs a full sized helicopter? I'm sure the blimp isn't cheap?

 

The most promising aspect I see for RC technology is the ability to physically get the chopper into small places that a full size chopper could never go. I know that's being done now, and once the stabilization issues are worked out with RC it could really do some great things.

 

Full sized choppers will I'm sure always have the edge for speed and power. But the cost is just astronomical even for a one hour rental, once you add in the costs of gear and crew, you are up easily over 10K.

 

R,