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 | Posted On: 17/02/2010 At: 20:36:10 |
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evening all,
An upcoming project for me is to build a platform for AP.
I am in the design process and have already got the basic idea in my head.
However, i have been looking at cameras and although i know SLR cameras offer the best quality images i have a problem in that they are too heavy for what i want.
The spec for my AP Platform is:
Vertical take off and landing for tight spaces
Stable hands free flying once in the air
Long flight times
Slow horizontal flight
I need a camera that:
Takes the best quality photos possible while being light weight.
Needs a good amount of zoom on it
Needs to be automatic in regards to ISO/exposure/focus etc
Needs to be simple to operate so it can be controlled with servos
Image stabilisation/anti shake
A decent battery life
...And as sturdy as possible to help resist the bumps of landing.
I would like the whole unit/plane to be as small as possible. Small light weight cameras are two a penny - but ones that take decent quality photos are hard to find.
I was talking to a full out professional photographer, who told me there is a new market of cameras emerging atm...which is a hybrid between compact & SLR cameras.
These sort of "bridge" cameras are relatively new to the market - hence no one really knows a great deal about it.
Any photographers on here with any advice?
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From when the wheels leave the ground to when they touchdown, i Dare not look!!!  2]
Models: A Hyperion Sniper, Thunder Tiger Mini-Titan e325, T-rex 450 clone, and a genuine T-rex 600. All Electric & Brushless. |
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Are they the "two thirds" cameras?
I'd be tempted to think about a flying wing.
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Bridge cameras cover just about anything larger than a holiday snapshot/pocket camera up but smaller than DSLR. They have been around for a while but the "four thirds" format with interchangable lenses is relatively new.
They're smaller, ligher and cheaper than DSLR but you'd still struggle to lift it *AND* keep it steady.
A large QuadroCopter/MikroKopter might do it, but I doubt it'll have good flight times - you've got to trade off battery for camera weight.
There's a very long thread on RCGroups about AP using these - a mate of mine built one, and despite it having a 500-600mm span, it can still only carry a regular Canon Powershot plus power for 5 minutes.
Aren't you better off with a big sailplane and a compact with the biggest lens you can find?
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Thanks for the responses guys, Some of the points you have brought up are very helpful
In regards to the platform, i have been assessing the cons & pros.
A heli: vertical flight but flight times are an issue and it can't glide.
A glider: long flight times but cant land vertical (or, it isnt suppose to anyway!)
Wings/planes: same as above really, an in-between flight time, good weight lifting but lack vertical takeoff and landing.
So i thought about Tiltrotors, vertical take off & landing AND it can convert into horizontal flight, BUT when in horizontal flight we have a few issues.
1) the large props/blades will cause too much drag when gliding & so need to fold away somehow.
2) the wingspan of a typical tilt rotor is too small - so we need the wings to expand somehow when i horizontal flight
I will point out that this plane is not intended to be cosmetically pleasing - it just need to function well.
I did ponder the idea of a flying wing, with a heli rotor built inside it for vertical flight, then a standard prop on the back for horizontal flight - but theres a fair few issues with that idea too.
I have had a fair few other wild n wacky ideas too but that was just for kicks lol.
As said here - the cameras, mainly because of weight i think it is just a case of finding the best compact possible for the lowest weight. Even these mini-SLRs are too heavy.
I did wonder if it would be possile to power the camera from te flight battery through some sort of regulator...that when the flight battery gets low the camera shuts off. we could loose the cameras battery & maybe save some weight - but this depends on the camera itself.
so lots of qs but could be exciting.
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From when the wheels leave the ground to when they touchdown, i Dare not look!!! 2]
Models: A Hyperion Sniper, Thunder Tiger Mini-Titan e325, T-rex 450 clone, and a genuine T-rex 600. All Electric & Brushless. |
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Have to say this topic is huge with no real conclusion for anyone who wants to re-invent the wheel, which by the way "most" seem to want to do, going round in circles forever and getting nowhere.
The first question is what is it you want to do Take Aerial Photo's or create something that fly's and give it a purpose? Both are fine by the way, its just that they are different subjects. One is easily achieved in about a week (with limitations) the other will take about 2 years of development.
If its about the photo, then there is no single platform, I have a couple of customers who do this for a living and use a number of platforms including Rc heli's, RC aircraft, Blimps, Poles and even real aircraft, and one that has just put an order in for a £20k flying RC set up with a camera value under £200.
The fully loaded domestic SLR's (and variants) are superb for studio's and holiday shots but lose bucket loads of functionality as an autonomous aerial device (no hands no eyes). Whilst a few do a reasonable job with their image stability, most suffer badly from vibration especially on RC heli's without additional dampening(extra weight) and of course you start to add extra servo's for shutter, zoom, pan&tilt etc etc and the weight just goes up & up.
Getting over all the initial stuff it is possible to add something like First person view to assist camera direction although again extra weight, and another possibility is the use of laser pens for pinpointing subjects (area’s not people lol).
It also depends if production is for broadcast or print which may decide the quality and price of the camera. No point trying to sling a £1k Nikon when all you want is to upload a few pics for your photo album on RCTALK 
Autonomous sports/camera have a lot going for them in this environment, because they do not require all the junk to operate and are built for extreme abuse, so crashes bad weather/temperatures vibration are no problem and being autonomous you can focus on flying the platform as they don’t need any input. However virtually all are video machines either with or without the camera option and none zoom although I struggle to see how that’s particularly useful in flight without additional visual equipment.
There are a few but as an example look at the Go Pro Hero 139g (sold everywhere even on ebay) which whilst a video machine will also take stills in 2 and 5 second interval or 3 frame bursts at 5meg or alternatively they now do a HD version which will do 2/5/10/30/60 second intervals HD version a bit expensive though. The RC version has all the mounts. This might be all wrong for what you are thinking of (especially if you want all the tinkering ) but does away with so many problems and of course you can zoom and crop the area's you need after.
Other then that, think we are gonna need a bit more info on what your trying to get to photo wise.. 
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| Life is what happens, while you make other plans JL |
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Haha - how close together would those be flying?! Good luck keeping them stationary with all those rotors causing down draughts!
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David: Thanks so much for your post, There is a lot to consider, but i will bring up the subject nearer the time on the forum, once i have decided on what i'm going to be doing.
Giskard, that little light heli thing looks interesting, but i would love know how they can fly so close together lol!
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From when the wheels leave the ground to when they touchdown, i Dare not look!!! 2]
Models: A Hyperion Sniper, Thunder Tiger Mini-Titan e325, T-rex 450 clone, and a genuine T-rex 600. All Electric & Brushless. |
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Ok, I have bought a camera... But i didnt intend to use it for AP!
I bought a cheap (well £80) Fujifilm digital camera for when i go out up the town/pub and things like that.
So i wanted The smallest, compact camera i could find that would take "ok" pics...but it had to be small, compact, light weight, easy to use, and very quick at taking & saving photos.
I bought the Finepix Z35
It has a built in 3X optical zoom (not as much as i wanted for AP)
But i am thinking of trying this camera 1st and see how we go before buying a more expensive camera.
Also as i bought this camera with the possibility of damage in mind, i wont be too distraught if i crash and break it.
It weighs 132 Grams with battery & SDHC card...so as light as we're gonna get for a "proper" compact camera.
I took some quick picks with it today, here are the scaled down versions as the photos are 10 Megapixel.
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From when the wheels leave the ground to when they touchdown, i Dare not look!!! 2]
Models: A Hyperion Sniper, Thunder Tiger Mini-Titan e325, T-rex 450 clone, and a genuine T-rex 600. All Electric & Brushless. |
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Can we come and do some indoor flying around your palm tree? Thats a cracking little camera 
How are you going to press the button and does it auto shut off after a minute or so?
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| Too bad stupid isn't painful. |
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in 2 recent top RC plane mags they reviewed this subject. They used some cheap finepix from ebay £30 & the aerial pics were more than good enough. You can't re invent the wheel. You can't risk even more expensive gear from been smashed up. Plenty of cheap vid cams in the mags too. Go to WHsmith & buy some.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Richard Archdeacon
Can we come and do some indoor flying around your palm tree?
That was in Manchester this weekend, was my birthday late feb but only just got round to the celebrations lol - The Place Hotel, very nice if you ever stop in Manc. We should hold an RCTalk meet there and do some indoor flying LOL!
Quote:
Originally posted by Richard Archdeacon
How are you going to press the button and does it auto shut off after a minute or so?
The auto shut-off can be set to 5mins, 2mins or turned off completely so it just stays switched on until you close the slider thing.
The menu & settings a pretty good to be honest, the LCD can be set to OFF or timed etc.
It is nice and quick at taking & saving pics too. Powers up quick.
To press the button i'm thinking of putting a servo on it with a bit of rubber on the end of the servo arm, fixed just over the shutter button.
The servo will then be attached to a 3 position switch, with the end points/positions set as follows:
Off = Off
Position 1 = Half shutter for focus
Position 2 = Full shutter take photo
Thats the initial idea anyway.
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From when the wheels leave the ground to when they touchdown, i Dare not look!!! 2]
Models: A Hyperion Sniper, Thunder Tiger Mini-Titan e325, T-rex 450 clone, and a genuine T-rex 600. All Electric & Brushless. |
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Being able to disable the auto shut off makes it for me. I like your servo idea, strap some wings to it and go fly 
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| Too bad stupid isn't painful. |
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Yeah,
Well like i say i bought the camera for going out with, so i was a bit lucky with the "auto-off" feature!
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From when the wheels leave the ground to when they touchdown, i Dare not look!!! 2]
Models: A Hyperion Sniper, Thunder Tiger Mini-Titan e325, T-rex 450 clone, and a genuine T-rex 600. All Electric & Brushless. |
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My need is simply to video any aspect I can ... later to overfly my house if possible, ( I live well out of the way so no residential area problems ).
So I bought a Helmet cam and here's it fitted to my ME109 electric job.
Weight of cam is just under 130gr ... so brings plane to max with the brushed set-up fitted - 640gr. If I go to brushless, I then get extra thrust which will exceed all-up weight nicely.
The cam has a click mount that allows it to be angled to suit a more downward view ...
Works with SD card up to 8GB size ... and only switches of when card is full or batterys give out.
Just needs clam day now to test it out.
Vid format is avi, but large file sizes ... needs conversion to more compact format on PC .. giving a 4:1 compression in comparison - a major reduction.
Cost ? About a tenner on ebay.
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Most of the crash is fine - it's the last mm and second that's not !.... Ex Model Display flyer returning to hobby after 25yrs in the wilderness !
.....http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Flysky_RC_radio/ if user of FlySky Radio where I hope to collect together helpful data |
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that seems very good for a tenner!
Would like see a video from it once you've got it up in the air!
Its funny this topic has been brought up today as i've just bought a Lumix DMC-TZ8 digital camera for my AP platform. more to come on that in a week or two.
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From when the wheels leave the ground to when they touchdown, i Dare not look!!! 2]
Models: A Hyperion Sniper, Thunder Tiger Mini-Titan e325, T-rex 450 clone, and a genuine T-rex 600. All Electric & Brushless. |
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I have bought the Panasonic DMC-TZ8 as my AP camera.
Just went out and took some quick snaps with it using auto mode.
Just a note: The original images are 5 megabytes each...i have had to compress them right down to 0.1 megabytes to put on the forum, hence a lot of quality has been lost...but you get an idea!
The 12X OPTICAL zoom is great...
In the centre of the frame is a green sign with writting on it...
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The same sign, with 12X optical zoom AND the camera is being held by hand, no stand or anything, i was impressed by the anti-shake feature.
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The camera features "Extra optical zoom" by using a smaller portion of the image sensor...so you get a lower resolution image, but gain a bit more optical zoom...
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From when the wheels leave the ground to when they touchdown, i Dare not look!!! 2]
Models: A Hyperion Sniper, Thunder Tiger Mini-Titan e325, T-rex 450 clone, and a genuine T-rex 600. All Electric & Brushless. |
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Quote:
Originally posted by Andy_Mann
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI....280503026125
try these cheap and are going like hotcakes
I saw the key chain vids when looking for a vid machine, but found it hard to believe such a small item could perform well. Since buying my larger Helmet Cam - I have seen a few vids on Youtube where a guy selling Key Chain vidcams has uploaded flight vids ... surprisngly good.
I am considering whether to relegate my Helmet Cam to on-board my yacht use - it can clamp to a rail nicely for vids of my cruising in Baltic !! and get a Key-chain vidcam ... certainly a lot less drag and weight ... the specs actually give the same 30FPS and 640x480 res.
mmmmm weathers rubbish at moment and no flying ... so will think about this one !
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Most of the crash is fine - it's the last mm and second that's not !.... Ex Model Display flyer returning to hobby after 25yrs in the wilderness !
.....http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Flysky_RC_radio/ if user of FlySky Radio where I hope to collect together helpful data |
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Quote:
Originally posted by Andy_Mann
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI....280503026125
try these cheap and are going like hotcakes
Or same item at 99p + p&p .... Item # 290416832119 on ebay !
Finally after a lot of thought, I decided that seeing the vids and also that the Key Chain Vid is small and light - I've bought one. So just wait for Hong Kong Post now !
Example vid here ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8Kj...yer_embedded
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[ Edited by: solentlife on 07/05/2010 06:36:23 ] |
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Most of the crash is fine - it's the last mm and second that's not !.... Ex Model Display flyer returning to hobby after 25yrs in the wilderness !
.....http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Flysky_RC_radio/ if user of FlySky Radio where I hope to collect together helpful data |
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