Hasta La Gadget!

For this week’s Shooting Challenge, we’ve brought in a special guest judge. Martin Waugh is not only a master of catching water drops in flight; he’s oft-labeled the inventor of the “drop collision” shot. More »

In a quest to get the perfect shot, Eric Austin, a Texas-based videographer, found a neat way to fuse a remote controlled helicopter and a Canon DSLR camera so he could shoot aerial videos easily and get the kind of footage that would otherwise be difficult to pull off.

“I took a hobbyshop helicopter and modified it to hold a camera, so I can get low altitude, close and tight aerial shots,” Austin told Wired.com.

An amateur videographer turned pro, Austin got interested in remote-controlled photography just four months ago.

“As I did more photos and videos, I realized I could develop a niche where I could use the advancements in technology to provide the kind of photos most people can’t get easily,” he says.

Austin is one of the many hobbyist photographers who are finding ways to use drones and remote-controlled helicopter toys to get a more attractive camera angle. Wired magazine editor-in-chief Chris Anderson helms a site called DIY Drones where users have found a way to use unmanned aerial vehicles to do aerial photography. Last year, New York City photographer Anthony Jacobs showed a helicam built using a German helicopter rig called MikroKopter. Jacobs used his helicam rig to shoot videos of neighborhooods in the city.

Austin, who has a website devoted to his RC helicopter videography, says he wanted to do something similar and offer HD-quality video and photos.

That’s why, he says, he decided to create a rig that would be reliable and produce the kind of footage that could be used by professionals. And as this clip shows, the video can be interesting.

Aerial video with a Canon 5D , 7D helivideo.com from Eric AUSTIN on Vimeo.

So far, Austin has helped shoot footage for TV shows including History Channel’s Sliced series.

Austin started with a remote-controlled helicopter called Align T-REX 700 and modified it to carry a special frame and camera mount. He tweaked the landing gear for the helicopter, covering it with a bright pink foam from the “noodles” used in swimming pools.

“The color stands out when I am flying the helicopter outdoors,” says Austin. “And if I crash into the water, my whole equipment won’t go to the bottom. It will be ruined, but at least I will get my gear back.” Austin says he hasn’t crashed his helicopter yet, but the foam ensures that in case of a hard landing, the equipment is less likely to completely fall apart.

He adjusts the camera’s settings when it’s on the ground and presses the Record button right before takeoff. For still images, Austin says he uses an external timer that activates the shutter every few seconds.

To create his flying video rig, Austin says he spent hours on the online discussion forums at the Helifreak.com website.

“I didn’t know anyone to talk to,” he says. “And then realized the only place to go was online where people were discussing this.”

One of the more challenging shoots that Austin has done with his helicam was flying over a cliff that was about 25 feet high with a river below. And he didn’t crash the copter.

“The probability that a crash will happen is there, but so far, I have been careful,” he says.

To download video, Austin has set up a 5.8-GHz video downlink feed using an on-board wireless transmitter.

All of this didn’t come cheap. Austin estimates the entire rig cost him about $15,000. But for those at home, who want to do something similar, he says there are cheaper alternatives.

“I went for the best and most expensive components because I didn’t want to risk it failing mid-air,” he says. “But you can get an RC helicopter for about $400 and put a point-and-shoot camera on it.”

See Also:

• Helinet Brings Live Aerial Video to Cops’ Smartphones
• World’s cheapest aerial video platform
• High-Tech Tomb Hunter Finds Unmarked Graves for a Living
• Aerial Stereoscopy Photography
• Flying Copter-Cam Swoops Over New York City
• They’ll Ride a Balloon Into Space

Photo/video: Eric Austin

[via DIY Photography]

Wildlife photographers will risk life and limb to get the perfect close-up, but a few ingenious hacks can make the process easier.

Shutterbug Will Burrard-Lucas and his brother Matthew rigged up a four-wheel-drive, remote-control buggy called BeetleCam that has a DSLR camera mounted on top. Almost Wall-E like in its appearance, the BeetleCam can click photos of African wildlife from a ground-level perspective.

“We like to get really close to the animals with a wide-angle lens,” Will Burrard-Lucas told Wired.com. “That’s the photo we really enjoy getting.”

Conventional photographers use either a telephoto lens or camera traps — stationary cameras triggered to click when an animal breaks an invisible infra-read beam — to get close-ups of wild animals. But while telephoto lenses zoom in on the animal, they cut out the beautiful landscape, while camera traps require a great degree of patience and more than a fair share of luck.

A remote-controlled buggy with a wide-angle lens could offer a new perspective, says Burrard-Lucas.

“We can find the animals and use BeetleCam to approach it and we wouldn’t have to fear for our lives,” he says.

To build the BeetleCam, the Burrard-Lucas brothers used a Lynxmotion robot chassis and a Hitech 6-channel radio control. They reinforced the chassis and replaced the wheels with bigger, sturdier versions, then added a tripod plate.  Two 7.2 Volts Ni-MH 2800mAh battery pack also from Lynxmotion offers day-longer power to the device. Tweaks ensured that the camera, a Canon EOS 400D, would interface with the same controller used to drive the buggy.

They also put together a split ETTL off-camera flash cord that would allow the camera to control the output of the two flashes on board the BeetleCam. To have the camera take an exposure, they use the remote control to activate a relay switch that tells the camera to fire.

BeetleCam’s biggest challenge has been getting over the uneven terrain in Tanzania’s national parks with a heavy camera, lens and flashes on its back. But the buggy did pretty well, says Burrard-Lucas, capsizing completely only about twice. The duo are always about 50 meters (approximately 165 feet) away in a land rover trying to make sure that the BeetleCam’s view is unobstructed by the grass or flipped over. They have chronicled their adventures with the BeetleCam on their blog.

Once on the ground, Burrard-Lucas says Beetlecam offered some interesting lessons. Elephants, for instance, turned out to be very tricky to photograph using the buggy because they are wary of unfamiliar objects and have extremely sensitive hearing. But putting the BeetleCam in front of the animals and letting them walk up to it worked well.

Lions were tricker. On the BeetleCam’s second day in the jungle, the device was mauled, smashed and carried off into the bush by a pack.

“We were extremely lucky to retrieve an intact memory card from the mangled Canon 400D body,” says Burrard-Lucas.

The photos from the card survived the wrath of the lions and a few pieces of string and wood later, the BeetleCam was on the ground once more.

This summer, BeetleCam will be back in action in Kenya, says Burrard-Lucas, but with a less expensive camera. “We will use a Canon 500 or 500 D,” says Burrard-Lucas. “We don’t want the camera smashed again.”

Check out some of the photos shot by the BeetleCam:

To see video clips of BeetleCam in action and more of the resulting photographs, check out the BeetleCam project page.

Photos: Burrard-Lucas.com

We thought the vast majority of our EOS 7D’s image problems were over, fixed in November’s firmware, but just to nip any final nuances in the bud, Canon’s released another update for the DSLR that fixes, among other things, “a phenomenon in which vertical magenta-colored banding appears in still images taken in movie-shooting mode.” And here you thought your MGMT concert footage was just naturally that stylish. Download via the source link.

[Thanks, Daniel]

Canon EOS 7D firmware kills the magenta phenomenon originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 17 Apr 2010 07:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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‘Tis a nice day to dream about how much you could capture with a shiny new point-and-shoot, isn’t it? Our best buds over at Engadget Chinese were recently able to swing by an exhibition far, far away from US shores in order to catch some of the Spring’s finest new pocket shooters in action. The standouts? Canon’s succulent PowerShot SX210 IS (spotted in a variety of hues), Nikon’s 12 megapixel Coolpix S3000 and Pentax’s Optio I-10. We’ll confess — that I-10 really has our number, and its retro styling and accompanying leather case could find its way into our pockets any day. Just sayin’, is all. Hit that source link for the rest of the action.

Pentax Optio I-10, Nikon S3000 and Canon PowerShot SX210 IS seen in the wild originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 06 Apr 2010 01:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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