Passenger Trains > Like A Hot Knife Through Butter

Like a hot knife through butter, the Coast Starlight slices through the fog at Gaviota this afternoon.

In the second shot, twin bridges span Arroyo Honda Creek, a few miles south of Gaviota. The fog was so photogenic today that I stopped and snapped this shot on my way home from Gaviota.

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awesome stuff. how far away from you can your machine fly and take the pictures?

66

It seems to vary somewhat, but a couple of hundred feet anyway. For the Gaviota picture I was right there. For the twin bridges shot I was over on the concrete arch bridge, but back out of the shot where you can't see me. The two guys on the bridge are a couple of tourists who happened by while I was there.

I did a couple of shots today where I sent the copter up above the fog, and that was 330 feet up.

You Da Man, Brian. Nice!

-john

That is too cool!

I'm glad you made that purchase. Keep 'em coming!

walstib Wrote:
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> It seems to vary somewhat, but a couple of hundred
> feet anyway. For the Gaviota picture I was right
> there. For the twin bridges shot I was over on the
> concrete arch bridge, but back out of the shot
> where you can't see me. The two guys on the bridge
> are a couple of tourists who happened by while I
> was there.
>
> I did a couple of shots today where I sent the
> copter up above the fog, and that was 330 feet up.

what are looking at(monitoring device) to position the drone right where you want it ... good stuff

Looks like a nice "Beach Day" at Gaviota. Gerry

YES! The cure for "skunked by fog at Gaviota!"

Very cool atmospheric scenes along the Coast. Well done!

I have question about how you take photos with the copter. How do you know when the shot is good? Does it have a remote LCD? Or is it just hope and pray then crop and level as necessary? You've captured some neat stuff so far. Keep them coming.

oilcan Wrote:
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> Very cool atmospheric scenes along the Coast. Well
> done!
>
> I have question about how you take photos with the
> copter. How do you know when the shot is good?
> Does it have a remote LCD? Or is it just hope and
> pray then crop and level as necessary? You've
> captured some neat stuff so far. Keep them coming.

I was curious about that too.......

66

Thanks, glad you guys find them interesting.

On the ground I use my iPhone as the camera viewfinder and when I see the image I want I click the button. This is accomplished using the DJI quad-copter app on the iPhone. I think they have an android version, too.

The camera itself has a built-in wi-fi transmitter, which beams the image to the ground. More specifically, it beams the image to a wi-fi base station mounted to the flight controller, and then I connect my iPhone to the base station. So, there are essentially two sets of signals between the ground and the copter — one using wi-fi for the photos, and another in the 5-ghz range for flight controls.

The camera on the copter has a Micro SD memory card, which is where the images are actually stored. You can either remove the memory card and plug it to a computer to download the photos, or you can transmit them over wi-fi from the copter to the camera roll on your phone if you want more immediate access to e-mail them or whatever.

The camera has four quality settings: small, medium or large JPEGS, and RAW. The higher the quality the longer it takes to write the image, and thus the fewer shots you can take of a train moving at 70 mph. I have been using the large JPEG setting. For the Starlight pics I have been posting, it means I get one shot of the engines of a moving trains. So I wait until the shot appears on my iPhone screen and then I snap the picture. It's something of an inexact science and I have learned to snap sooner than later.

The camera takes a fairly wide shot, so there is some margin of error. The shots right out of the camera also show the earth's curvature similar to a fisheye, so I run them through the lens correction filter and crop them as needed using Photoshop CC.

The camera also has a feature where it will fire shots continuously, or it will switch to continuous mode is the camera loses contact with the base station while flying. I have lost contact with the camera a few times while flying, although I am not exactly sure why. Might be because I didn't have the base station properly pointed toward the sky, or maybe it's interference.

The camera also shoots video, but I haven't even begun to explore that feature yet.

walstib Wrote:
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> Thanks, glad you guys find them interesting.
>
... snip...
>
> The camera also shoots video, but I haven't even
> begun to explore that feature yet.

Check out this video from a DJI Phantom quadcopter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWedSayZ64A

The video with music will give you chills! Folks first seeing it swore it was made with CGI (computer generated images)!

Cumbresfan Wrote:
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> The video with music will give you chills! Folks
> first seeing it swore it was made with CGI
> (computer generated images)!

And if you hadn't told me that it was done with the 'copter, I would have been one of those who swore that it was CGI. Just flat-out, unbelievably awesome!

Now I am officially torn and having a serious bit of cognitive dissonance. The potential for privacy violations with these things is genuine and disturbing. But the images and the photographic potential, oh wow! I have imagined stuff like this in my photographer's mind's eye for a long time. The ability to be able to do it to a degree through computer simulation is a big part of what attracted me to rail sims and keeps me there. But this...OMG. Out of my price range, but talk about temptation....

MC
Columbia, Missouri

grabiron Wrote:
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> I'm glad you made that purchase. Keep 'em coming!


x50! Keep feeding us this eye candy

ironmtn Wrote:
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> Now I am officially torn and having a serious bit
> of cognitive dissonance. The potential for privacy
> violations with these things is genuine and
> disturbing. But the images and the photographic
> potential, oh wow! I have imagined stuff like this
> in my photographer's mind's eye for a long time.
> The ability to be able to do it to a degree
> through computer simulation is a big part of what
> attracted me to rail sims and keeps me there. But
> this...OMG. Out of my price range, but talk about
> temptation....
>
> MC
> Columbia, Missouri

If you have the time and the money, I recommend you get started as soon as possible. For the hobbies I got involved early on, like personal computing in the early 1980s, RC helicopters in the mid-to-late 1980s, pre-social networking in the mid 1990s, Handheld GPS in the early 2000s, and so on, once the hobby becomes mainstream, the fun seeking hobbyists get booted out and the creeps take over which will invite regulations to make it less fun. In my opinion, this pattern has never failed.

So don't just get tempted. DO, before the fun goes away.

walstib Wrote:
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> Thanks, glad you guys find them interesting.
>
> {snip}
>
> The camera also shoots video, but I haven't even
> begun to explore that feature yet.

What type camera do you use..?

This is definitely a game changer. As with everything that is invented there will be those who will use it for evil and ruin it for everyone else.

AmHog Wrote:
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> This is definitely a game changer. As with
> everything that is invented there will be those
> who will use it for evil and ruin it for everyone
> else.

Heck, forget "evil", the FAA has already banned its use in search and rescue situations:

Search teams that rely on drones run afoul of FAA

HOUSTON — Texas EquuSearch volunteers are gearing up for their next search, this time for a 31-year-old man who went missing more than a week ago in rural Louisiana. But if they use drones to help out, they could run afoul of the federal government.

The group relies mostly on horseback and all-terrain vehicles to search rough terrain. But it also employs 4-pound aerial drones to survey the ground with digital cameras.

If they launch them this week in their search for James Stephens in Vernon Parish, however, they will violate a Federal Aviation Administration order not to fly the unmanned aircraft.

“There is a possibility he (Stephens) could be still be alive out there, so yes we’re going to use it” said Tim Miller, who founded Texas EquuSearch.

Miller said Texas EquuSearch has used drones since 2005 to locate 11 bodies, including those of a Houston man floating in Buffalo Bayou and a 2-year-old boy in Liberty County.

In all, the group has been involved in over 1,350 searches in 42 states and eight foreign countries, and provides its services to families free of charge.

“The bottom line is they won’t let us fly, and that drone has been so very valuable on so many searches,” Miller told the Houston Chronicle. “When someone disappears, time is of the essence and it saves us a lot of time. And it’s very inexpensive.”

Brendan Schulman, a New York attorney representing Texas EquuSearch, said the FAA ordered the volunteer group to halt its use of drones on Feb. 21. Schulman has asked the FAA to reverse the ban and let the Houston-area group operate legally by April 16. If not, they plan a federal court challenge.

http://www.abqjournal.com/382675/biz/search-teams-that-rely-on-drones-run-afoul-of-faa.html

A link that may not require a subscription:
http://www.govtech.com/public-safety/Feds-Order-EquuSearch-to-Stop-Using-Drones-in-Search-of-Crime-Victims.html

A separate link on the coming regulation:
http://reason.com/archives/2014/03/24/hey-faa-let-the-drones-go-free



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/11/14 12:15 by Cumbresfan.