Planning The RC Aerial Photography Flight

Consider these points when planning your flights:

• Lighting effects RC aerial photography - The Sun is the only source of light available to the RC Aerial Photographer, so the time of day and the season of the year will dramatically affect the look of your aerial photos. Generally, it is best to do RC aerial photography between 10:00 AM and 4:00 PM to avoid the shadows that are cast by the setting or rising Sun. In some cases, you can use the shadows from tall buildings to create a dramatic effect in your pictures, but it can add complexity to the final result and make it harder to read. Daylight hours change with the seasons of the year, so plan to take your pictures when the sun is highest in the sky for each season. Taking your aerial pictures early in the morning will result in a colder, more blue color while taking them near sunset has the opposite effect. You will need to choose what time to take your aerial photos, depending on the desired look.
• Weather effects RC aerial photography - Check the whether before you go flying. Winds should be your primary concern, generally the less wind there is the easier flying your RC aircraft will be. Try to fly only when the winds are 10 km/h (6.2 mph) or lower. Besides the wind, you also need to check for haze. Haze consists of water droplets, suspended in the air. It is most common on warm summer days with relatively little wind. Haze severely limits visibility, and can cause your pictures to become blurred if they are taken looking towards the horizon. Color distortion due to haze is known to happen frequently depending on the time of day. Smoke has a similar effect, and can blur an otherwise good picture. Be sure to check your flying site for any signs of atmospheric interference before you attempt aerial photography.
• Equipment for RC aerial photography - Make sure that you have all the equipment that you will need with you, before you go out flying. What you will need depends on which aircraft you are using, but make sure that you have all of the basic tools, such as screwdrivers, glue, and pliers. This RC Helicopter Field Accessory Guide will give you a general idea of what you need to take with you. Some RC aerial photographers find it useful to take a laptop computer, so you can immediately see the results of your work.

Getting Great Results From RC Aerial Photography

Angles Change The Look Of Your Image

When taking RC Aerial pictures, you need to consider the angle at which the photo is being taken. There are three common angles used by Aerial photographers:

1. High Oblique - Pictures taken from this perspective are taken from an angle at about 70 degrees, relative to the vertical axis. This type of picture includes the sky and the horizon, and so it is best used on exceedingly clear days. Try to take the picture at least 10 degrees off of the horizontal axis (ground), so that you don’t have too much sky in your picture.
2. Low Oblique - These pictures are taken at an angle at approximately 40 degrees from the vertical axis, so that they don’t include any of the horizon or sky in the finished image.
3. Vertical - Vertical images are taken with the camera pointing straight downwards. They are useful when you need to produce a map like image.

Of all of these, the high oblique angle covers the greatest area, while the vertical angle will show the least haze.

Use Sunlight To Your Advantage

Remember that the sun is your only source of lighting. Before you plan on taking any pictures, go to the area you will be photographing and look around at different times of day. This will let you know when the glare is worst, and what lighting makes the subject look good. Try to take pictures with the Sun to the back of the aircraft, this helps to reduce visible haze in the atmosphere.

How to Avoid Reflection

Reflected sunlight can spoil an aerial photo easily. Most often, sunlight is reflected by water on a lake or river. The easiest way to avoid reflected sunlight is to simple maneuver your RC aircraft until the angle of the camera towards the ground is different than the angle of the sun to the ground. On windy days it may be even more difficult to avoid water reflection, because the wind can cause small waves on the surface of the water. Try taking several pictures in rapid succession.

Wireless Video Can Help You Aim

If you are doing RC Aerial Videography, then you can most likely configure the camera to send wireless video to a base station. This can show you what you’re filming, as you film it. If you are doing RC aerial photography, then you can add a small wireless camera to your aircraft, pointed in the same direction as your still camera. If you send the video to a small laptop or television screen, then you can see a preview of each image before you take it.

Additional Memory Is Important

Most digital cameras have memory expansion ports. Getting a large memory card will allow you to take many pictures during one flight, and then choose from the best of them. If you think that you have the aircraft in a good position for a picture, take several pictures in rapid succession. Depending on your resolution, anywhere from a 128 Megabytes to 1 or 2 Gigabytes will be beneficial. Memory cards are removable, so you can take them out of the camera and download your pictures, without having to remove the camera from the RC aircraft.

Get A Book On RC Aerial Photography

Photography is an entire hobby in itself, and a thorough exploration of it is beyond the scope of this article. If you are interested in Professional RC aerial photography, or just want to know more, get a book from the library on photography and read it. Many of the techniques used in regular photography also apply to RC aerial photography, so you should become familiar with them. RCAPA.com is an excellent resource on aerial photography, with FAA information and a photo gallery.

The final part of this article will explore professional RC aerial photography, and how to be successful in it.

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Phone: 1-800-979-9794 / 306-955-9907
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• Amateur RC Aerial Photography - Taking aerial photographs from RC aircraft provides an easy and cheap way for amateur photographers to get aerial pictures. Before RC aircraft were as advanced as they are today, getting aerial photos required hiring or accessing a commercial plane and pilot, then flying all the way to the target location and back again. Using a regular aircraft is expensive, and this expense repeats for each trip you make. Getting a suitable RC aircraft and adding a digital camera only has to be done once, the expense after that is minimal. Amateur aerial videography is also possible, by using a camera which supports taking video as well as still pictures.
• Professional RC Aerial Photography - Many professional aerial photographers use RC aircraft to help them in their work, due to their low cost and versatility. A potential client can ask for an aerial picture of an object, and can have results in less than an hour. After taking the aerial pictures or video, the RC aerial photographer can download them to a laptop, burn them to a CD - ROM, and give them to a customer immediately.
• Getting Pictures Of Hard To Reach Locations - Conventional aircraft cannot fly below 500 ft over the target location. This requires the aerial photographer to zoom in with his / her camera, reducing the final image quality. This is not good, unless high altitude pictures are required. RC aircraft are more versatile, due to their small size.
• Photographing Potentially Dangerous Situations - There are some situations where sending a human photographer or manned aircraft would be too dangerous, like riots, fires, or other disasters. Sending an RC aircraft with a camera attached can be the perfect solution because it gets the pictures you need, without unnecessary risk.
• Usage Where The Expense Of Hiring An Actual Aircraft Is Unjustifiable - As said previously, hiring a conventional aircraft is expensive. Depending on budgets, projects like photographing traffic accidents might not justify this expense.

Part III of this series will explain how to consistently get great results in RC aerial photography, and how to get the proper angle, light, and position will be explained.

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© Draganfly Innovations Inc.
Phone: 1-800-979-9794 / 306-955-9907
Email: info@rctoys.com
Web: www.rctoys.com
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RC aerial photography is a relatively recent development, brought on by improvements in radio control and camera technology. Many RC enthusiasts attach conventional digital cameras to their aircraft, and use them to obtain pictures of where they fly. RC Aerial photography is a challenging and rewarding hobby, but it is also turned into a thriving and valid business. Aerial photography owes it’s success to the huge demand for aerial pictures and video of different real estate properties. One of the best ways to describe a property to a potential buyer is to show them an aerial picture, which can provide a view of the entire area at a glance. Many real estate companies are interested in low cost aerial pictures, so they are the primary customers of the business.

Full size aircraft must always fly higher than 500 ft above ground level, so this severely limits the types of views which can be obtained when taking pictures. RC aerial photographies main advantage is it’s versatility, you can do RC aerial photography anywhere at almost any time.

Getting Started with RC Aerial Photography

The first thing to do is to get a suitable beginner RC model aircraft and learn how to fly it. You can learn to fly in many different ways, but the most common is to get a trainer aircraft and learn with a more experienced instructor. Once you have mastered your trainer aircraft, you are ready to proceed to more specialized areas of the hobby.

Equipment You Will Need for Doing RC Aerial Photography

• RC Model Airplane or Helicopter - After you have learned to fly a trainer aircraft, you will need to choose one to use for aerial photography. In most cases any RC aircraft will do, as long as its able to carry the weight of the camera you are using. RC helicopters are best for aerial photography, because of their ability to hover in one place while taking pictures. This can help reduce blur and make taking steady images easier. Some RC airplanes have also been designed for aerial photography, including the Tango Surveillance Aircraft.
• Camera - The most important thing to consider when buying a camera for RC aerial photography is the weight. Make sure that the aircraft can carry the weight of the camera before you attempt a flight. It is best to keep the weight of the camera as small as possible, but any with a weight less than 5 ounces should be within the carrying capacity of most RC models. Check the memory capacity of the camera - will it allow you to take as many pictures as you need? Most digital cameras come with a memory expansion port, but make sure of this before you buy. Find out whether the camera can be remotely triggered or not. Some cameras can be modified to include switches, which will interface to the radio system of an RC plane. This is by far the most common and most reliable method of remotely triggering a camera. RCGroups.com has a thread listing supported cameras, look there for ideas. If you are interested in RC aerial videography (taking aerial video) then there are several pre made solutions available, many of which just need to be strapped to an RC aircraft and turned on. These include the Eyecam, Eyecam Extreme, and the SAVS camera (only available with the SAVS helicopter) .
• Chargers, tools, and batteries / fuel - Depending on the model that you choose, you will need several different accessories. After you learn to fly you will probably have most of these, but you can refer to the field accessories guide if you need a list.

Setting Up Your Model for RC Aerial Photography

There are several prebuilt aircraft available, designed for aerial videography (taking aerial video). You can retrieve still images from them, but they will not be of a comparable quality to still images obtained with a still camera. If you are interested in aerial videography, then you might want to look at the Draganflyer series of RC helicopters, which have been designed for this purpose.

Preparing the Camera for RC Aerial Photography

If you want to take high quality aerial pictures, then you will need to modify a digital camera and install it on your RC model aircraft. The hardest part is getting the camera to trigger remotely, at the flip of a switch on the radio transmitter. In order to do this, you will need a spare channel on your radio system. The simplest way to trigger the camera is to attach a spare servo to the camera, so that when it moves it pushes the trigger on the camera. Some cameras can also be modified and wired directly to your radio system. The latter is the most popular method, and the most reliable. You can find more information on cameras and how to wire them to your receivers. The exact procedure varies between cameras, but the end result is the same.

Mounting The Camera on The RC Aircraft

Your camera will need to be mounted to your aircraft in such a way that it does not interfere with flight, and is able to take pictures without interference with the propeller or other aircraft parts. Mounting the camera can be as simple as attaching it to the fuselage or wing of the aircraft using rubber bands. This is one of the most popular ways to attach the camera, because its cheap and temporary. The camera can also be permanently mounted in the fuselage, or attached using an articulating, adjustable mount. How you mount your camera is up to you, just make sure that whatever you choose doesn’t interfere with the aircrafts flight and provides a clear view. It is important to keep the propeller out of the cameras view, unless you want it in your aerial pictures.

Once you’ve got a camera attached to your RC aircraft, you are ready to begin doing aerial photography. In the second part of this article we will discuss the different applications of RC aerial photography, and then show you some great tips that will let you get great pictures, every time.

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© Draganfly Innovations Inc.
Phone: 1-800-979-9794 / 306-955-9907
Email: info@rctoys.com
Web: www.rctoys.com
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