Starting up in Aerial Photography

Aerial Photography can be a fun activity and can be profitable as well. There are several ways of getting your camera up in the air depending upon needs and budget.

Full size helicopter or fixed-wing aeroplane (with pilot and photographer). In practice, this is probably the most expensive option as aircraft are very expensive to keep in the air, cannot fly to close to the ground and aeroplanes are not very good at staying in one place, but need to make multiple passes. Aircraft are only really suited for large-scale operations such as film studios, tracking vehicles on the road, say or eye-in-the-sky travel reporters. The photographs produced are quite often unflattering as they are taken from directly above.

Tethered balloons are generally stable and are quiet. However, they are fixed and to move to a different place for alternative angles is time consuming. They are also dependent upon the wind direction and speed, which can restrict the viewing angles.

Fixed masts, attached to either a solid base, or to a vehicle are very good for fixed point observation and time-lapse photography. They are very good for photography for durations greater than, say 1 day, but not for short bursts, nor multiple angles. Nor for manicured lawns.

Remote controlled craft provide a very good compromise between flexibility and cost. Although they can suffer from restictions such as limited payloads and flight durations before recharging, they are very versatile and manouverable. Helicopters and drones have the ability to stay in one place, especially when coupled with a GPS system to fix the location. Aeroplanes are easier to control and are better for filming a path (e.g. golf course hole layout), but cannot hover. Live video can be viewed via a downlink and saved to disk and thence DVD if required. Stills can be framed and taken remotely. Low light and infra-red cameras can also be epurchased, but are not a cheap option.

If you fancy having a go yourself, you can get decent lightweight cameras with easonable resolution. These can be strapped to a Remote Controlled Helicopter and or aeroplane and you can generate your own pictures. I'd suggest the following three-step plan:

1. Buy a small craft (ideally a helicopter as these will hover, making framing a picture easier, but a plane will be easier to fly)
2. Once you have mastered this, you can move onto a craft with enough lift to take a payload. Nowadays you can get very lightweight cameras that weight a few tens of grammes which will take adequate pictures. However, for decent size prints you are looking at 10 Megapixels or above, which means 1-200 grammes payload requirement (but allow some spare capacity for later). Firing the shutter can be via an infrared link or a mechanical 'finger' pressing the shutter - driven by a servo which, in turn is driven from a spare channel on the Transmitter.
3. Once you have worked out a way of flying up and taking a picture, you will realise that the biggest problem that you have is framing it - unless you have very good eyesight, then you will not be able to see through the viewfinder. Time to add a downlink of the viewfinder image, GPS hold, and perhaps some waypoint programming. Suddenly, you are in a position to offer a commercial service. After a bit of practice, of course.

Click here for some suggestions as to commercial options open to you. After that, we'll expand on the three stages above and make some suggestions to pull the kit together.