Time for another home-made camera mount. This one has a rather grander ambition that the humble home-brew Steadicam, though: it flies.
The flying camera was made by NYC photographer Anthony Jacobs. It consists of a quadrocopter (think four helicopters pulling on one platform), a gyroscopic balance, an HD video cam and one steel-nerved pilot — Jacobs himself. The video above shows footage from the camera as it swoops up over the newly-opened High Line, the Manhattan public park built on top of a disused elevated railway line. If you’re anything like me, you’ll probably gasp as the point-of-view switches to that of the aircraft and the camera swoops up into the sky.
The platform – one of two working models used by Jacobs – is built on a German-made Mikrokopter, although Jacobs is keeping the fine details under wraps: his hobby has turned into a business and the design is one of his trade secrets. In an interview with the Photo District News he did reveal that he has so far spent $15,000 on the project. This is much more than the typical homemade kite-cam a beginner might use for aerial photography, but a lot cheaper than paying for a full sized chopper, fuel and a pilot.
This is where the business angle comes in, as Jacobs’ shoots cost relatively little. According to PDN, he’s soon to start shooting NFL games, although hopefully his ‘copter won’t get knocked out of the sky by a long pass. But amusingly, most of his gigs come from real estate sellers who want dramatic, sweeping fly-bys of properties but don’t want to pay for a real helicopter.
While Jacobs’ main use now is commercial, a look at his site, Perspective Aerials, shows other uses for a flying camera. A short film showing stalled construction site in the Williamsburg district of Brooklyn illustrates that it’s not just about the vertiginous angles. “It’s not about how high you can go,” says the tagline “it’s about where you can go.” The movie shows fly-bys inside and above these ugly sites, locations which are “totally out of view from the ground.”
If you don’t have the money to build a high-tech, gyroscopically-stabilized platform, there are options. One is the kite-cam mentioned above and featured long ago in the excellent Make Magazine. Another is to visit DIY Drones, a site started by Wired Magazine Editor Chris Anderson, which is both resource and community for makers of unmanned aerial vehicles. To give you a taste of hat can be done, the site will sell you the ArduPilot, an autopilot based on the Arduino platform, for just $25.
Risky? Yes. Expensive? Maybe. Fun? Hell yes.
Aerial Photography, No Pilot Required [PDN]
Project page [Perspective Aerials]
See Also:
- Shaky-Cam: DIY Bike Tripod
- Garrett Brown Gives You a ‘God’s Eye’ View of the Olympics …
- Homemade Steadicam Almost as Good as Real Thing
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