Only back for a question
- Thread starter Peter b
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I have been a serious amateur since high school. I started processing my own film in junior high and when I could afford an SLR in my senior year I also started shooting color slides and doing my own processing.
The good thing about digital photography is it makes shooting a lot to get “the shot” a lot more affordable. Drones just add an extension to the arsenal of tools.
Of course flying is also fun all unto itself also. It is great fun just to fly and forget the camera is even there.
The good thing about digital photography is it makes shooting a lot to get “the shot” a lot more affordable. Drones just add an extension to the arsenal of tools.
Of course flying is also fun all unto itself also. It is great fun just to fly and forget the camera is even there.
The gene for arts runs in my family. Both my parents were serious with watercolours and ink drawing. My son was a professional photographer before he gave it up for a MSc in engineering. My partner is an avid photographer. I am hopeless with ink or colour. So photography became my way of artistic expression since the age of 8. I develop the films in black and white and also did it with transparencies in colour. I am not overly impressed with digital cameras, videocams being the exception of the rule. I am more of an analogue guy in the field of photography.
Aerial photography with drones are enriching my perspective in a true sense of the word. I really enjoy the change in the point of view. Here I can combine two skills, flying and taking photographs.
Aerial photography with drones are enriching my perspective in a true sense of the word. I really enjoy the change in the point of view. Here I can combine two skills, flying and taking photographs.
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I have loved photography since my late 20s. (1978 - present) I started with landscape/wildlife photography. In my later years I took up studio/outdoor portrait photography, specializing in high school seniors. For about 10 years, slightly before retirement and about 5 years after, I had a studio in our basement. It was a really neat set up! However, we moved into town (we live in a rural area) and there was a question of zoning, so I "retired" from my business. Drones came along and opened up a whole new perspective of photography for me. (my wife wasn't too happy as she thought my days of spending money on photography equipment were over at that point! 
) I don't fly as much as I would like, but enjoy flying when I can!
) I don't fly as much as I would like, but enjoy flying when I can!
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I am a long time photographer/videographer and hold a 107 and do work for my wife's photography business. That said - I would say I am a serious amateur since it's her business and I just support her when she needs it but I also have a passion for the craft. I've been photographing and making video for over 35 years but I must admit, I have been a remote (RC) pilot for 43 years - but since 'drones' didn't exist back then, I would say the I was a photographer before a drone flyer.
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This is truly amazing to me. I have to be honest and with embarrassment I never thought about the photography until after the flying part. Now I can really understand the whole new world you guys discovered before drones. The added attraction must be awesome. I am just now looking at the video from the bebop 2 and it's cool but naive and not serious however funny. My wife and I are not ready yet to look at sd cards because they contain a lot of footage of our 4 legged daughter that we had to put down last summer. There is over 2 years worth of mostly video that is of no importance or putting up. I would like to see a put together version sometime.
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A Little Long But Here Is Some History.
I've always said there are two facets to the modern drone - the flying and the camera. As an RC pilot, I'll always remember the first time I commanded something (fixed wing) in flight . . . successfully? From that day forward the thrill was always there, but over the years that feeling needed to be recharged by reaching new goals in flight. Most drone pilots today, are getting that 'high' from the flying and I totally get that. But as some may find, adding that new component can be a whole new experience and as many will see; the photography or video side of 'drones' is a whole hobby/profession in and of itself.
Some backstory. In the mid 90's, a friend who was an RC helicopter pilot and I decided we would try and start an aerial photography business - and this was waaaaay before the FAA had put any limitations or exclusions to commercial flight because there was really no one doing it since the technology wasn't there. This was about 12 or 13 years before the emergence of the "GoPro" and about 15 years before the first commercial drone with camera.
I designed a 2 axis gimbal (non stabilized but servo driven) that would hold a full size DSLR which happened to be slightly more weight that the helo should have been able to carry.
This helo had a rotor diameter of around 75 inches and was driven by a 38cc gas engine - fairly big for it's time. The truth is; it could lift and hover the load in good conditions (low wind, low heat) but as we found with even slight wind and high temps (we were in South Florida) these conditions almost never existed. Typically we had a max of about three minutes before over heating and loss of power would force a landing. Needless to say; that business went nowhere. I mean, a 25 pound lawn mower with a 75 inch cutting circle - yeah, lets take this into a neighborhood and shoot photos!
?
But the idea of marrying a camera and an aircraft was not over and I had several attempts at a similar rig, mounted to various fixed-wing planes that could lift the load, but due to having NO screen to see what the camera was seeing (miniature signal transmission like we have now did not exist) therefore rarely did the shot ever come out composed anywhere near right.
The search for smaller cameras inevitably led to pay dirt - sometime around the late 90's early 2000's - CVS Pharmacy's began selling these little video cameras that were not much bigger than a GoPro. Actually they weren't selling them as much as they were renting them. The way it worked was like this - these cameras were video only, you turned it on and hit 'record' and it would do so for about 45 minutes and once it was full, you would take the camera back to CVS and they would plug into the camera with a special connector and off load your clip(s) and put them on an SD card and keep the camera and they would just recycle. So, for about 26 dollars you had a little camera that could capture a whooping 480 (interlaced) footage of up to about 45 minutes and you could make one long clip or several short ones! And keep in mind, video cameras at this time were two to three times bigger than most DSLR's - the miniature camera boom had still not started in earnest.
Well, well. It didn't take long before we had to tear open one of those cameras and figure out what was what - and we did. And once we did, the possibility's became endless. One of my jet buddies and I decided to go and raid our respective CVS's of about a dozen of these little cameras. The deal was that if you broke or lost the camera, that was okay, you could buy (oops - rent) another. We guess CVS had a business model that allowed for losses.?
Once we figured how to offload from the onboard memory and reset the camera we were off and running. There was one summer I remember where Jay and I put five of these little cameras on each of our jets and flew missions were we tried to capture in flight video of each other and there were times when we did; and the footage was STUNNING - again this was a time when there was nothing (at least in the consumer world) that could get footage like this. I made several videos with this footage but sadly never uploaded anywhere, as Youtube was not yet around, or I hadn't heard of it yet.
But without a doubt it was right around this time that things started happening that led to the modern Drone. I remember when I saw the first quad show up - they were little more than trinkets to us at the time. Our thinking was; it had no payload, was very slow, couldn't fly in wind or very long and certainly did not carry a camera - so as a flight-only platform, it did not appeal to any of us "real" flyers.
(that emphasis) was to show that we didn't see what was coming - but we should have.
It was not until the first commercial drones with cameras showed up that we started to take notice. Keep in mind - a fixed wing aircraft had many limitations as a camera platform, and one of the biggest is that it moved too fast and certainly could not stop in mid air and let you frame a shot. When the DJI Phantom 1 hit stores, everything changed, and suddenly the world of aerial video began to show up on sites like youtube, and though the shots were crude and un-stabilized (still no 3 axis gimbals) but the view from above was great AND, these things flew themselves! This is important to understand - never before was there a craft that had all the tech married into a single package - an aircraft with all of it's gizmos, keeping it level and in place until commanded to move, and it had a camera that a pilot could control - in FLIGHT! Even though seeing what the camera sees was still a few years off, this was groundbreaking.
By 2008 or so, the final piece of the puzzle brought it all together, and IT is the unsung HERO of the modern drone - the 3 axis - stabilized camera and gimbal. It was at this point that the true marriage of flight and camera began. In 2009 I had to have one of these things so I got a DJI Phantom 2 with the Zenmuse 3 axis gimbal for GoPro Here 2. The video and pictures were awesome but even then - the ability to have a real time view of what was going on was still a little ways away from the consumer drone market. Within a month I saw that you could buy a transmitter and receiver for the video and kits were available to allow you to splice into the drone's wiring to hook up the transmitter and you had to build your own ground station but it could be done. All in I think I spent about 1800 bucks on that Phantom 2 rig with all the video gear, camera, batteries, hard case and so on.
I still have that Phantom2 and when I compare it to my current Typhoon H Plus it's hard to believe how far the tech has come in such a short time. And during that same period, the leap from a 480 interlaced standard for video through 540, 720, 960 to the (then penultimate goal) 1080 - but in the blink of an eye as if in a time warp, the industry decided to make the next jump without rest - to 4K and beyond. The standard for video for nearly 70 years quadrupled in less than a generation.
I would say that we were exactly in the right spot at the right time to take a heck of a ride.
I've always said there are two facets to the modern drone - the flying and the camera. As an RC pilot, I'll always remember the first time I commanded something (fixed wing) in flight . . . successfully? From that day forward the thrill was always there, but over the years that feeling needed to be recharged by reaching new goals in flight. Most drone pilots today, are getting that 'high' from the flying and I totally get that. But as some may find, adding that new component can be a whole new experience and as many will see; the photography or video side of 'drones' is a whole hobby/profession in and of itself.
Some backstory. In the mid 90's, a friend who was an RC helicopter pilot and I decided we would try and start an aerial photography business - and this was waaaaay before the FAA had put any limitations or exclusions to commercial flight because there was really no one doing it since the technology wasn't there. This was about 12 or 13 years before the emergence of the "GoPro" and about 15 years before the first commercial drone with camera.
I designed a 2 axis gimbal (non stabilized but servo driven) that would hold a full size DSLR which happened to be slightly more weight that the helo should have been able to carry.
This helo had a rotor diameter of around 75 inches and was driven by a 38cc gas engine - fairly big for it's time. The truth is; it could lift and hover the load in good conditions (low wind, low heat) but as we found with even slight wind and high temps (we were in South Florida) these conditions almost never existed. Typically we had a max of about three minutes before over heating and loss of power would force a landing. Needless to say; that business went nowhere. I mean, a 25 pound lawn mower with a 75 inch cutting circle - yeah, lets take this into a neighborhood and shoot photos!?But the idea of marrying a camera and an aircraft was not over and I had several attempts at a similar rig, mounted to various fixed-wing planes that could lift the load, but due to having NO screen to see what the camera was seeing (miniature signal transmission like we have now did not exist) therefore rarely did the shot ever come out composed anywhere near right.
The search for smaller cameras inevitably led to pay dirt - sometime around the late 90's early 2000's - CVS Pharmacy's began selling these little video cameras that were not much bigger than a GoPro. Actually they weren't selling them as much as they were renting them. The way it worked was like this - these cameras were video only, you turned it on and hit 'record' and it would do so for about 45 minutes and once it was full, you would take the camera back to CVS and they would plug into the camera with a special connector and off load your clip(s) and put them on an SD card and keep the camera and they would just recycle. So, for about 26 dollars you had a little camera that could capture a whooping 480 (interlaced) footage of up to about 45 minutes and you could make one long clip or several short ones! And keep in mind, video cameras at this time were two to three times bigger than most DSLR's - the miniature camera boom had still not started in earnest.
Well, well. It didn't take long before we had to tear open one of those cameras and figure out what was what - and we did. And once we did, the possibility's became endless. One of my jet buddies and I decided to go and raid our respective CVS's of about a dozen of these little cameras. The deal was that if you broke or lost the camera, that was okay, you could buy (oops - rent) another. We guess CVS had a business model that allowed for losses.?
Once we figured how to offload from the onboard memory and reset the camera we were off and running. There was one summer I remember where Jay and I put five of these little cameras on each of our jets and flew missions were we tried to capture in flight video of each other and there were times when we did; and the footage was STUNNING - again this was a time when there was nothing (at least in the consumer world) that could get footage like this. I made several videos with this footage but sadly never uploaded anywhere, as Youtube was not yet around, or I hadn't heard of it yet.
But without a doubt it was right around this time that things started happening that led to the modern Drone. I remember when I saw the first quad show up - they were little more than trinkets to us at the time. Our thinking was; it had no payload, was very slow, couldn't fly in wind or very long and certainly did not carry a camera - so as a flight-only platform, it did not appeal to any of us "real" flyers.
(that emphasis) was to show that we didn't see what was coming - but we should have.It was not until the first commercial drones with cameras showed up that we started to take notice. Keep in mind - a fixed wing aircraft had many limitations as a camera platform, and one of the biggest is that it moved too fast and certainly could not stop in mid air and let you frame a shot. When the DJI Phantom 1 hit stores, everything changed, and suddenly the world of aerial video began to show up on sites like youtube, and though the shots were crude and un-stabilized (still no 3 axis gimbals) but the view from above was great AND, these things flew themselves! This is important to understand - never before was there a craft that had all the tech married into a single package - an aircraft with all of it's gizmos, keeping it level and in place until commanded to move, and it had a camera that a pilot could control - in FLIGHT! Even though seeing what the camera sees was still a few years off, this was groundbreaking.
By 2008 or so, the final piece of the puzzle brought it all together, and IT is the unsung HERO of the modern drone - the 3 axis - stabilized camera and gimbal. It was at this point that the true marriage of flight and camera began. In 2009 I had to have one of these things so I got a DJI Phantom 2 with the Zenmuse 3 axis gimbal for GoPro Here 2. The video and pictures were awesome but even then - the ability to have a real time view of what was going on was still a little ways away from the consumer drone market. Within a month I saw that you could buy a transmitter and receiver for the video and kits were available to allow you to splice into the drone's wiring to hook up the transmitter and you had to build your own ground station but it could be done. All in I think I spent about 1800 bucks on that Phantom 2 rig with all the video gear, camera, batteries, hard case and so on.
I still have that Phantom2 and when I compare it to my current Typhoon H Plus it's hard to believe how far the tech has come in such a short time. And during that same period, the leap from a 480 interlaced standard for video through 540, 720, 960 to the (then penultimate goal) 1080 - but in the blink of an eye as if in a time warp, the industry decided to make the next jump without rest - to 4K and beyond. The standard for video for nearly 70 years quadrupled in less than a generation.
I would say that we were exactly in the right spot at the right time to take a heck of a ride.
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My story with rc models began in far 1978, when due to a friend of my father, me and my brother began to learn the "how to" of avionics flying with small models equipped with Cox engines.
I start flying with a glider, and after few time I install on one of his wings the famous (for that time...) Canon Snappy, a 35mm camera that I could control with a servo, so I obtain my first photos from the sky. Fantastic!
Than, due to marriage, family, childrens, job troubles, for more than 30 years I forget totally the rc world, but keeping my passion for photography. Many cameras pass into my hands, hundred of prints up to the actual smartphones that avoid the heavy weight of reflex cameras giving the possibility to take pictures in digital at any time with good quality.
I love to take underwater pics too.
About 7 years ago I saw for the first time a drone, a simple toy, and I was really attracted from that tecnology.
It was like love at first view, in a remote part of my brain the rc memory wake up again, now I've 3 drones all equipped with HD camera (one with 4k too) and one of them is always into my car trunk ready for lift up at any time, just the time to fill up the battery.
Also when I go on vacation or in tour with my Harley Davidson, one drone is a part of my luggage.
I'm just an amateur, but with enough experience to take pictures into the right way.
I start flying with a glider, and after few time I install on one of his wings the famous (for that time...) Canon Snappy, a 35mm camera that I could control with a servo, so I obtain my first photos from the sky. Fantastic!
Than, due to marriage, family, childrens, job troubles, for more than 30 years I forget totally the rc world, but keeping my passion for photography. Many cameras pass into my hands, hundred of prints up to the actual smartphones that avoid the heavy weight of reflex cameras giving the possibility to take pictures in digital at any time with good quality.
I love to take underwater pics too.
About 7 years ago I saw for the first time a drone, a simple toy, and I was really attracted from that tecnology.
It was like love at first view, in a remote part of my brain the rc memory wake up again, now I've 3 drones all equipped with HD camera (one with 4k too) and one of them is always into my car trunk ready for lift up at any time, just the time to fill up the battery.
Also when I go on vacation or in tour with my Harley Davidson, one drone is a part of my luggage.
I'm just an amateur, but with enough experience to take pictures into the right way.
- Joined
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- copperdawg.com
