Job opportunity: Aerial Pictures needed

[Asellith]

Anyone got a camera rig for a UAV or RC plane? I need high res low altitude pictures of terrain. I'm working on a project that requires HUGE photos. I can stitch stuff together so each picture can be smaller but the higher the res the better. I'm aiming for 1cm to 2cm per pixel. I need city streets, industrial, farmland, forest, and snow. It will probably require several passes and rather low flying. I can't pay a lot and I will need rights to the photos so I can print them myself. I was going to make a balloon rig and hang the camera from that but I thought I would ask if someone here could do it before I start on that project. The final images need to be 16200 by 9000 that's roughly 4 pictures by 5 pictures for 8M pixel camera. I'd also like to know where you are able to shoot so I can check them on google earth and see if that's what I can use.

[dunk]

this forum specialises in such things:
http://www.rcgroups.com/video-piloting-fpv-rpv-469/

be prepared for lots of legal issues though.


dunk.

[Razor Concepts]

Best way would be to go to your local hobby store or flying field/club meeting and ask for help there.

[Asellith]

I plan to talk to the RC guys at my hobby store but I'll have to dig around to find the right people. They are not organized out of that shop so I have to find where they hang out.

What kind of legal stuff? I know I can't walk around peoples land without permission but if I walk down a city street with a balloon tied to my then I don't see much of a problem. I'm planning to edit moving cars and people out anyway. As far as taking photos of private property I was planning to ask permission from anyone whose land I would be on. Also plan to perfect the method then shoot my Dad's farmland this winter anyway if I can and I don't freeze to death trying to do it.

[abuse.bot]

Good quality, high-res pictures will be impossible from an RC toy I'd expect.  I fly a paramotor, which is 3 to 4 times slower and 10 or more times more stable than a remote controlled toy, and even with that it's really hard to get non-blurry photos.
Check out your phone book - look up paragliding or hang-gliding schools or clubs, and see if you can find someone with a motor (or even more cool - learn to fly yourself - you can be up in the air for under $5000 even).

Depending on what country you're in - I don't think you'll have any legal problems.  The concept of a "right to privacy" is just that - a concept - it does not really exist - so as long as you're not taking photos of army stuff you're fine.  Also - if you're in the air - you're never trespassing.

[abuse.bot]

OK - 1cm per pixel is *really* going to be hard.  Here's a 12megapixel (3072x2304) jpeg of my neighbours house, shot from about 100ft.  This is about 1/4 of the size you're wishing to photograph.

http://geek.net.au/2008-11-25_06.20.27_u790SW_pb250170.jpg

His entire car is about 90 pixels long... that's about 4cm per pixel

To get 4x better resolution than that, you're going to have to "zoom in", or fly lower - which is going to make everything move a lot faster, which will make it very blurry unless you can find something *ultra* stable, with a very fast shutter speed.

You're almost better off walking around with a long pole, and the camera on the top I'd expect - especially if you only want a grid of 20 photos.  16200 pixels is about one and a half football-fields in length - you could take those photos in less than an hour with a long stick, some string on the shutter, and a camera taped up the top :-)

[azy]

1cm to 2cm per pixel

you know not what you ask....


theres only way to do that cheaply, buy an slr/prosumer camera and some long poles. Just walk/drive around with the camera above your head, you can shrink the pics to get the 1 cm per pixel u are after. Google earth streetview done by car, u need to do do the same except point your camera down at the ground

U can get acces to roof tops, with a bit of blag and a legitimate reason. Stitch the whole lot together

1cm per pixel is realy close range , thirty foot? from target , if the cam is 10ft above ground level u will get good quality pics that u can shrink down.



if its just any location....just hit google images and use that,  or go to a photo library

Q whats it for anyway ?


lol , just buy a big bunch of helium ballons and 50ft line, walk round with that raising and lowering the line as u need to, attach an HD video cam and leave it running. sift through the footage after....this is the safest and most sensible way and you can do it yourself

its way to dangerous to fly an RC heli or plane that low over people and buildings densley populated areas, crash and u could kill someone , wreck property, get nicked by the police....yeah its been done, but u aint gonna pay someone pennies for the risk so u can profit

2000 dollar rc plane/heli and a very skilled pilot , and a prayer theres no radio interferance, and do it on wind free summer day

[Asellith]

I thought about the pole idea a few days ago. I'm not sure my sister will let me put her SLR on the end of a 15 foot pole. I also need to get to just above the tree level. I've seen balloon rigs that work great but they are hard to control. I may need to take samples from various terrain and stitch them together to make a map. At those resolutions it would be less boring to have repeatable patters.

What are they for?

Well I'm making maps for table top gaming and I can get 1/285th maps by using USGS images on select areas. However other scales are more popular such as 15mm (1/122) and 28 (1/67?) My 1/285th maps are scaled 200% as it is. The same image needs to be scaled 400% for 15mm and 800% for 28mm. I'm going to work on designing a rig for my camera and make it strong enough for my sisters bigger camera. When I get home for Christmas I can take shots around my parents farm with my camera or my sisters if she lets me.

[Asellith]

I got a 23 foot painters pole with an erector set nightmare on top. Connected a servo with my laser cut erector adapters and I was ready to go. Add some batteries and a zip tie and I'm good to go. I'll be writing the code tonight and doing some shoots this weekend I hope. Then I need to take some measurements so I can work out how to scale the images.

more info/photos here: http://www.corseceng.com/blog/2010/11/28/good-news-bad-news-and-photos-from-france.html

[Soeren]

Hi,

I'd go with a quadrocopter and a DSLR with good optics for this.

I plan to build one for the very purpose and even if I like Pentax better, there's a tempting couple of Canon's with wifi transmission in real time (as close as it gets anyway), so you can frame and shoot on a netbook if within range.

Another way is to have a timed release - snap, fly to new position and wait for next snap etc. (an LED or a xenon strobe could be used to signal "snap taken").