More Cheap Aerial Photography

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.

Comments

Re:DHS

[morcheeba]

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!