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More Cheap Aerial Photography

Posted by michael on from the looking-down-on-the-world dept.

ptorrone writes "If you have an old digital camera laying around and pick up a $1.50 Timer Chip from RadioShack or DigiKey you can turn it in to a great aerial photography camera, this how-to from Engadget shows how they did it along with some other projects with the modded camera." We also linked to part 1.

8 of 157 comments (clear)

  1. A Better Site by nemski · · Score: 4, Informative

    After the webpage in the article gets /.'d, take a look at this more comprehensive site on areial photography Kite Aerial Photography.

    --
    Some people have a way with words, others not have way.
  2. Legal ... for now by YetAnotherName · · Score: 4, Informative

    Get into this hobby while you can before it becomes difficult and/or illegal.

  3. A $1.50 timer chip? by Jason1729 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've never paid more than 20 cents for a 555, and I can think of at least 5 stores within 10 miles of my house that sell them for that price in single unit quantities.

    Anyway, this is the 21st century. Why not do it the "right" way with a $1 PIC12F629?

    Jason
    ProfQuotes

  4. Re:"they" ? by ptorrone · · Score: 4, Informative

    i wrote most of the article, but as always...there was and is a team of us, so it's more fair to say "they and we". i can't take credit for everything, it's a group effort.

  5. more fun /. projects by alatesystems · · Score: 4, Informative

    The guy behind this, Phillip Torrone, has done a TON more cool stuff. Check out his site/blog for tons more stuff.

    This dude is now my personal hero of geekdom. He builds robots and gear and has pics of tons of stuff on his site.

    Chris

  6. Re:DHS by morcheeba · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's interesting, but I don't know how effective it is.

    First, at altitude, focus isn't necessary because everything will be close enough to infinity (hyperfocal). So destroying an autofocus sensor won't help.

    Second, my camera can withstand looking at the sun for a period of time (not much time, I'm sure). And that's a focused light source -- it'll be hard to make a laser brighter than the sun over such a large area. (easy to do if you point the laser, but hard to do if it's diffused). No real use in using a laser, though - you don't need the monochromaticity or the coherentness, so you might as well use a large xenon strobe behind an IR filter.

    Lastly, won't stop any film-based camera: a cheap disposable or an Estes Cineroc.

    Hope not too much taxpayer money is spent on this system!

    --
    HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
  7. Re:"they" ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative
    1. They: those ones -- used as third person pronoun serving as the plural of he, she, or it or referring to a group of two or more individuals not all of the same sex
    2. We: I and the rest of a group that includes me -- used as pronoun of the first person plural
  8. Re:DHS by radish · · Score: 3, Informative

    Most decent digital cameras don't actually use IR for autofocus. For example, dSLRs like mine use image processing on to look for sharp lines and focus on those. Your super-dooper IR laser will just show up as a nice white spot on such a camera.

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    ---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"