Ariel Photography

cdac

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Teetorbilt

Contact this guy, ANTONIOTAHAN@cs.com He's the guy that helped me with the tail rotor gyros that I was working with. I haven't been in touch with him for a while but he knows his 'copters big and little.

Glasshousebltr

Teetor.......You get your hands in about everything on the planet.

More power to ya!

Bob

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Bob

Teetorbilt

I get bored easily.

Mike Finley

I used to be a commercial photographer, and back then I knew about 5 different guys that did ariel work, almost exclusively they did it from fixed wing aircraft when the budget was average, from Jet Bell Ranger copters when the budget was fat, and only one guy did anything for low budget stuff, but he used a small blimp. He like the blimp because it was so stable, cheap and I guess idiot proof to operate. Couldn't use it on windy days though. I think there is also something about local laws concerning not being able to fly those hobby aircraft anywhere you want that the blimps got around.

Teetorbilt

I found Antonio's site http://www.minihobby.com/index.htm have a look around. I thought the turbine go-kart was pretty cool.
Antonio is a pilot, electronic wizard, owns an electronic component manufacturing company and this business he does just for fun. Tell him what you want to do and let him guide you, he's probably done this before or knows of a specialist in the field.
Tell him Steve Teetor said Hi, might get you a price break.

cdac

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Mike Finley

These were small blimps made specifically for ariel photography and video. Remote controlledm all you needed was a canister of helium. Some sort of auto gizmo if it went out of range it would automatically start circling so you could go after it and not lose $10,000 worth of photo equipment. I remember they had a coupled video camera option to tape onto the camera so you could see what you were shooting or something like that. Remember this was about 12 years ago, so my info is far from current.

I think that some photographer built them originally and was making big money with shooting with them at the time and then started making them for other guys and gave up photography because it was more lucrative, I think he might have even went into the rental business of them too.

There has got to be something on the Internet now I would hope, or maybe one crashed and blew up a school bus full of kindergarteners and that was the end of them?

Grumpy

The ones I've seen have a loooong string on em for this reason

I've seen websites with these blimps for sale, specifically for the arial photgraphy. I've also seen long telescopic poles with a flat base at the bottom and you roll over the base with your car tire to "mount" the pole in place.

cdac

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Mike Finley

Is that for real or are you just kidding? If this is a low budget deal I guess whatever works. If you are going to do this for money, you should look at a wireless remote shutter release system. Having the camera hooked up to a wireless pan and tilt servo is also something it will be hard to work without.

Teetorbilt

I was looking at the prices and you could buy a lot of helicopter rides for that kind of dough. Heck, I just saw a Piper 140 for sale for under $15K and you could do a lot more with that.