n5lp
fugio ergo sum
Many people have done clever camera mount systems on the the tail or under the wing or fuselage. That is great but I'm not that ambitious.
There are several cameras capable of being wirelessly remote controlled from a smart phone. I recently acquired one and as I also recently added two mounts for smart phones to my panel so I did some basic experiments today.
I wanted to keep it simple, so I put a tripod into the copilot seat with the help of a bungie cord. I tried to make it so it was about at the position of a right seater eye level.
With this stuff I can aim the camera using my panel mount iPhone as a monitor. I can also trigger the phone from that same panel mounted iPhone.
I didn't do extensive tests but this does work better for me than a dedicated GoPro mount that I tried previously. That had vibration problems that I couldn't solve. The massive tripod mount showed no such problems. There was a curious slow movement visible on the live view monitor that stumped me for a while. I decided that was the image stabilization in action and I kind of like it. It makes it look like a person is holding the camera during videos, even though the camera is mounted rigidly.
For stills I had the camera set on a 2 second delay so would just press the button on the phone and then resume normal operations. If I had the camera aimed forward I found that 1/125 second would show no propeller. Videos showed the propeller (curved) and I haven't experimented yet with how to eliminate that.
This is a still capture from a landing video.
Pressing the button on the phone that starts the two second delay before the still photo.
It is possible to take photos of yourself doing aerobatics.
This is my normal method of taking photos and it is better for what I normally do. Longer focal length and proximity to the canopy are important.
I like this system for wide angle stills or for video but not a mixture of both. With my camera, I had to demount the camera to change modes and I found it too distracting at low altitude. If you stick to one mode, just reaching to the panel to poke a button wasn't very distracting at all.
There are several cameras capable of being wirelessly remote controlled from a smart phone. I recently acquired one and as I also recently added two mounts for smart phones to my panel so I did some basic experiments today.
I wanted to keep it simple, so I put a tripod into the copilot seat with the help of a bungie cord. I tried to make it so it was about at the position of a right seater eye level.
With this stuff I can aim the camera using my panel mount iPhone as a monitor. I can also trigger the phone from that same panel mounted iPhone.
I didn't do extensive tests but this does work better for me than a dedicated GoPro mount that I tried previously. That had vibration problems that I couldn't solve. The massive tripod mount showed no such problems. There was a curious slow movement visible on the live view monitor that stumped me for a while. I decided that was the image stabilization in action and I kind of like it. It makes it look like a person is holding the camera during videos, even though the camera is mounted rigidly.
For stills I had the camera set on a 2 second delay so would just press the button on the phone and then resume normal operations. If I had the camera aimed forward I found that 1/125 second would show no propeller. Videos showed the propeller (curved) and I haven't experimented yet with how to eliminate that.
This is a still capture from a landing video.
Pressing the button on the phone that starts the two second delay before the still photo.
This is my normal method of taking photos and it is better for what I normally do. Longer focal length and proximity to the canopy are important.
I like this system for wide angle stills or for video but not a mixture of both. With my camera, I had to demount the camera to change modes and I found it too distracting at low altitude. If you stick to one mode, just reaching to the panel to poke a button wasn't very distracting at all.
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