Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Mirrorless Cameras => Topic started by: kayakfari on May 29, 2013, 06:28:41 pm
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.. a behind (and above) the scenes look!
Kayak Aerial Photography Method – a behind (and above) the scenes look! | kayakfari ( kayak .. far .. i ) (http://kayakfari.wordpress.com/360-vr-panoramas/kayak-aerial-photography-method/)
Enjoy!
-Flex
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Cool! Thanks for the post. Certainly worth the effort getting the camera even 20 ft up.
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Thanks Peter! Funny you should mention 20ft .. that seems to be the magic number to get over for that "aerial" look.
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I use a Panansonic GH3 for this, via WIFI I can monitor and control the camera on my iphone conveniently.
I enjoyed your post. Thanks, William
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I use a handy 7 meter tripod from manfrotto. I'm always worried when I hoist up the last section as a DSLR does feel vulnerable when the pole goes off the perpendicular. The tripod has to be carried in the car which is not so ideal... so this post is very interesting to me. Has anyone ever thought about the possibility of being struck by lightning?
:o
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The 20 ft. high goal to look "aerial" is probably a good one with a wide angle lens as the wide angle accentuates the illusion of height.
I don't particularly like the aerial look for my golf course or landscape photography. It has a certain wow value to be sure, especially with a wide angle lens, but it also isn't a vantage point most art buyers can relate to. To get the extra height I need I've found that an 8 foot aluminum ladder serves nicely, and it fits into my car. You get an effective 10 or 12 foot high vantage point that eliminates most of the foreground clutter and serves as an angle that the point-and-shoot crowd would never think of.
As to the lightning threat, I'd never venture outside under those conditions. Luckily most golf courses have early lightning detection sirens.
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Creative...NICE!
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I use a handy 7 meter tripod from manfrotto. I'm always worried when I hoist up the last section as a DSLR does feel vulnerable when the pole goes off the perpendicular. The tripod has to be carried in the car which is not so ideal... so this post is very interesting to me. Has anyone ever thought about the possibility of being struck by lightning?
:o
Be careful out there .. def no go with storm activity around!! And don't set up anywhere near power lines, etc .. or crowds!
Sometimes though it's the little unexpected things that will get you.. for instance, while doing my aerial pole photography (https://kayakfari.wordpress.com/360-vr-panoramas/kayak-aerial-photography-method/) thing recently. Everything was going well until I stepped off a boulder which then unexpectedly shifted, causing me to step off the wrong way and nearly breaking my ankle. That hurt really bad, but back to about 95% now. In the middle of the incident I let go the pole and my Pentax Q hit the rocky ground - breaking the rear LCD glass.
The cam actually still works fine, LCD is OK, lens did not touch ground (T.G.) but I'd like to replace the cracked glass. Does anybody have experience with this already??
Here is the patient, alive but eagerly awaiting an lcd glass transplant ..
(http://i220.photobucket.com/albums/dd99/digital029art/cracked-pentax-q-500.jpg)
(https://kayakfari.wordpress.com/360-vr-panoramas/kayak-aerial-photography-method/)
Also, good point about the vantage from user louoates - makes perfect sense for product (golf course) shots. Though I'm going more for a much higher and wider view to reveal the (hidden) flatness of the landscape!
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Big storms over the last 3 days here so no poles of any sort outside! I'm attaching some shots which are not meant to be examples of my best work. I am interested in this thread as I have been using this 7m tripod for a couple of years intermittently on architecture and landscape jobs. It is very useful to get an image from the back of a garden towards an extension or to show a house in context but it will form a max of 2 finished shots per job. I'm attaching some shots of a recent golf course. I had intended to use the tripod for most of the shots but it was a 50 50 split between the eye level shots and the 7m high shots. Two shots here show the same area at high level and then a bit lower. The lower one works better even though you don't see as far. The two individual shots are ones you couldn't get normally; one is taken from behind a green at a lower level ... but with the tripod you can see right up the fairway (? not a golf person!)
The last shot here is a quick shot I took during a recording session in the concert hall here. I would need to get rid of the overhead mic to make it work properly but I only had about 5 minutes. It's a handy tool to have and it's nice to offer it to clients but as I said it really is best as a complement to the main set. (The golf course ones are taken with a D800e and it was a D700 in the concert hall.) The golf course images look a bit jumpy here on my laptop so might need to have another look at them. I used to use a laptop and connect the camera through wifi and camera control which is great but I found just putting it on an intervalometer shooting every 6 seconds works well after a bit of trial and error, leaving me with both hands free!