F55: New F55 owner, new to forum, new to industry - any advice, hints etc

I have designed, built, and operated a number of aircraft mounts in both fixed wing and rotorcraft. I am a pilot and have coordinated air/air and air/ground sequences. The biggest lesson I have learned and can pass on to others is this: If you want a good shot you need LOTS of money. JET-A alone goes very fast in a Twin-Star.

As already pointed out, shooting through plastic windows is a no go in almost all situations.
If you are using bungie cords - your lens cannot be wide enough. You will be surprised how small those objects attached to the ground get with a lens wide enough to mask how much the camera is shaking.

Tyler mounts have been around for a very long time and are certainly a step up from bungie cords. They still have limits that are quickly discovered in the air. Just zoom in a pinch to see what happens. The side mount has the option of 3 gyros that really help, but only go so far. The nose mount is a hard mount therefore only a wide lens option. Also putting these on an A-Star with tight balanced 3-blade rotor is better than an old bargain 206L Long Ranger that shakes your teeth out.

Gyron, Wescam, Nettman, etc get the job done really well. You will need a specialized technician, and sometimes a specially configured aircraft, along with an FAA inspection if the installation depending on the STC status of the system. Shipping for the gear, travel and expenses for the tech will probably exceed the airtime of the aircraft. In the end you will have a TON of options and get very stable shots even with long lenses. In my opinion, it's worth the cash if the production has it because you can get the shot you were dreaming of in a fraction of the the airtime compared to missing the shot altogether after spending hours in the air. Been there, done that. After only a few experiences, I spent more time talking producers and directors out of the doing the aerials at all unless they were willing to do it right. The problem was always that they had a "dream" in their heads that would never be achieved with the budget allowed and would therefore be disappointed.

All this reality is why so many are trying the drone concepts. The problem with these things is that I have yet to see anyone pay any attention to safety. "Closer! Closer!" The director yells to the operator.......
 
The replies below your question are right on the money - once you get into STC's with the FAA... think time and big $$$ - I am sure in time drones will get as sophisticaled and safe as a helicopter - but like one guy already pointed out- there are no regulations and people will push the envelope a little too far. I don't like regulations and would prefer small government etc etc, but in some ways regulations are in everyones best interests. That is why I have been such a proponent of regs desire the fact the FAA is, well, the FAA ;)


but I wanted to add that polarizers can be a real problem in aircraft for the same reason pilots aren't supposed to wear polarized sunglasses while flying. The windscreen on most planes have a very fine mesh of wires used to keep ice from forming on them. They are extremely small, not like the ones on your car that can be easily seen - these are nearly invisible to the naked eye. but when you wear polarized sunglasses they act to cancel out the light an you see huge rainbows, and moire patters in the windscreen.

Of course shooting out the front is not ideal, the visibility forward is pretty horrific really - from the pilots seat, you don't see over the nose very well - even at just 5,000 feet up if seated in the pilot seat the closest you can see over the nose is probably half a mile if not more away at a pretty unusable angle, maybe 40 degrees. Unless you want to film what a pilot sees, shooting out the front is not a great idea. I do have some pretty nifty clips from the cockpit, but it would be useless for shooting people on the ground.

I flew a few photographers and they always shot window free. One guy had a hole in the bottom of his plane, and he stuck his camera in the hole to shoot straight down (satellite view). For footage in a movie you really need a helicopter or drone. And like the other answer, the day of the helicopter are numbered because the cost is so damn high - and you can do more,
 
Great tips and advice re: aerial. I would like to get a night shot "over the city" where glare might be reduced and the only option for me might be to shoot through glass.. bungee is good ideal, maybe a higher speed too to minimize some motion blur incase some post stabilization is needed. what do you guys think?
 
At night you have some risk of reflections from the panel lights & instruments if you can't fly with a window open. A Cessna 172 has a window that can be opened in flight and you can film at a slightly aft angle. Also at night the air is smoother so you main problem will be the airframe vibration. So as Carlos indicated it depends on your production values.
 
The problem with shooting through the "glass" is that its never glass. Aircraft windows are variations of plastics. Windscreens are laminates of glass and plastics. Non of them have even slightly ideal optical properties - generally wavy. They are usually crazed or mechanically scratched which makes it even tougher. For night stuff, if it is your only option, bring some duvetyne and black PAPER tape. (please don't goop up the aircraft with gaff tape). Tape out a cone of black that is attached to your lens shade/matte box on the window to avoid any cockpit reflections. This would give you the best chance.

As for the bungee cords, the thick ones are useless as they are too stiff to isolate the higher frequencies that are the most noticeable. Artificially weigh the camera down and use the 1/8" shock cord you can get from REI. Use as many as it takes to get to roughly 50% stretch while the camera is free hanging. If you get that far, most of the vibration you will see will be from your hands touching the camera - so be light and operate from as close to the CG of the rig as you can.

This post could be a book.
 
Shooting at night will definitely decrease the thermal updrafts from surface heating that you get during the day. Around tall buildings expect turbulence even if it's a calm night and only a light breeze because the air is chopped up by the buildings and as the wind channels around the buildings the air gets bumpy. Helicopters are much much better for aerial footage... except maybe for high speed flight around the cloud tops, dogfighting (aerial combat) or air to air footage (i.e. footage of a jet flying around)

You are apt to find a lot of misinformation about "drones" because pilots don't like the idea of not being needed. They will argue till they are green that the platform is not a good as piloted aircraft. In reality most of the platforms you see like the octocopters are not flown as drones at all - and still have a pilot.. just not on board. A "drone" by definition is an aircraft that flying autonomously, something that you program before the flight and then press a button and it does the whole flight on it's own. There aren't many drones out there - most are remote piloted aircraft but you will find most people still use the term and probably will stay that way at this point.

The idea of using tape to make a funnel matte box is spot on. Most of the windscreen glass out there is curvy- rendering all sorts of distortions.. but you can find a spot or two where the distortion is at a minimum. In truth most pilots don't look out the window all that much anymore- I mean professionally. It's pretty accurate to say that once the auto-pilot is on and the aircraft is above lets say 10,000 the eyes start focusing inside the cockpit more and more... by the time we get to the high twenties our eyes are in the cockpit for at least 50 percent of the flight. Some of that time is looking at approach charts, or reading a manual , or bidding a schedule - reading the newspaper and only occasionally looking up when our TCAS picks up a close aircraft or when ATC (air traffic control) calls out traffic... or we see something really neat outside like a huge thunderstorm, or mountains, or a large fire down below.

Because of this, and the huge expense of windows, not only the materials (some windows cost over 70,000 dollars per panel) but also the weight. Every extra pound the plane has to carry, over the course of it's life will cost an airline approx. 100,000 dollars they say. Windows also are hard to make aerodynamic , if it weren't for windows the aircraft would usually be more aerodynamic. Very few planes have a windscreen as aerodynamic as the rest of the plane. One of the planes I used to fly (before my spine injury) is the Piaggio P180... now that plane has a very aerodynamic windscreen. Forget about taking quality photos or videos through them though - it has hard enough just trying to see out the damn things visually. Because of the bending of that planes windows you often saw your own reflection while trying to spot traffic etc etc. What a pain in the arse.

Back to remotely piloted aircraft, they are far superiors in many ways. They are much much smaller and can maneuver in places a help just can't or shouldn't go. They are more maneuverable simply because of their size. You can't operate the camera by hand but in reality the better aerial shots aren't hand shot anyway. Helicopters with those STC'd pods that house the camera gear on gimbals and stabilizers and gyros take the best shots anyway - so what does it matter if you are operating the device from inside the helicopter or from the ground - either way there is no direct linkage. Yes- I am sure there are some reasons why being in the help is an advantage - but I am willing to bet that in 5-10 years there will be more benefits to "drones" than helo's by a large margin. Those Taredek instant video transmitter/receivers bridge a huge gap all by themselves!!

These rigs will get pretty damn expensive (as if they weren't already, but they will be even more so when they are required to have a mode C transponder and two way radio communication, position lights, regulations for inspections and TBO times... but electric batteries are much cheaper than kerosene which is pretty much what Jet-A is... and there is an economy of scale. Anyway you look at it, a proper rig may end up costing 150,000 dollars or more - but that is NOTHING in comparison with a Jetranger or larger helicopter price tag or maintenance costs.. hell, today you can buy a pretty good "drone" for less than the cost of an hour in a real helo .. seriously, for 3000 dollars you can either pay for the jet ranger to just deadhead from the airport to your location - or you can buy a medium sized rig. By the time you outfit the rig with everything you want you can have a rig that you can use over and over for about --- i don't know, 25,000 dollars or so, whereas if you went with a chartered help - you would pay that much for the footage you need for ONE project and thats it.

Jman
 
I wouldn't want anyone touching the plex on my plane, much less applying tape or "cones".

As for drones, I was speaking to an IA (the guy who inspects the airplane every year) the other day who has been attending FAA meetings on the subject and he's pretty sure you won't see any proposed rules on the subject in 2015, more likely 2018. The FAA moves very slowly, probably worse than usual with the budget constraints.
 
Welcome to DVX quattro33, are you shooting with any of the Sony's?

Cheers,


P.S. lol on the uptight people, there are definitely a few. :)
 
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