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

Geocaching aerial geekiness!

[garcia]

I used to live in Bowling Green, OH and while I was searching around for caches to do in the area (and talking to someone I knew from Toledo) I was directed and half stumbled upon this cache. Basically you need to take pictures from the air of an assigned number. The cache owner didn't particularly care how you accomplished that (whether it was by plane or some more inventive means).

Well, this group did it with helium balloons, ethernet cable, and a webcam. Just as inventive, a lot less solder, and if your picture taking device falls you aren't completely out of luck as it may actually survive the fall.

The only difference I see is that you aren't going to be able to have pictures with the same quality which is certainly a bummer but the coolness/geek factor certainly is way up there :)

"they" ?

[Quixote]

ptorrone writes .... this how-to from Engadget shows how they did it along with some other projects with the modded camera.

You know, I hate to be the "astroturfing nazi" of /., but seeing that the article is written by Phillip Torrone, shouldn't the submitter (Phillip Torrone, it appears) say "... how we did it" ?

I don't like it when I see people submit stories as if they are a third party and just "happened" to come across an article, which they themselves have written.

If you wrote something and find it worthy of the /. crowd, then step forward and claim ownership, dammit! We won't hold it against ya.

Re:"they" ?

[MrBlue VT]

How much are you paying Slashdot for getting all of these Engadget crap articles on the front page? It looks like you just take old concepts that have already been on Slashdot in the past a million times and do a half assed job of copying them:

• link 1
• link 2
• link 3
• link 4
• link 5
• ad nauseum

Seriously, I've seen 8 Engaget crap articles this month alone.

Note: I'll probably get bitchslapped or have this post deleted by Slashdot editors. Why don't they just admit they are taking money for posting these "articles" on the front page?

RC Glider Photography

[potus98]

Back when I flew Radio-Controlled Gliders ( Gentle Lady in particular), I used a third channel servo to click the button on a Kodak 110 Instamatic. This was waaaaay before small digital cameras.

The contraption was very simple: I duct-taped the servo on top of the camera and rubber-banded the camera to the plane. I made sure the center of balance remained exactly the same.

Although the plane was relatively MUCH heavier, it was flyable. Certainly, I was not able to catch thermals or stay up long, but I was still able to take some cool shots of the surrounding area. Since the picture taking was servo activated, I could point the plane at an area I wanted to photograph and snap the picture.