[LRflex] RE: [LRflex] Aërial photography
- From: chfalke@xxxxxxx
- To: leicareflex@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2010 17:33:53 -0500 (EST)
Jeff,
I was away from my mail for a couple of days, and answered your
first email
before seeing all the other replies. These are all good stuff, I will
add
some things from my experience.
It's nice to have the door off, and it's straightforward and legal
in
helicopters. In fixed wing aircraft you can get an approval from the
local FSDO, you might get away without it, but they can really spoil
your day if they want to, so it's best to ask. Having said that,
Steve's
suggestion about removing the window arm, allowing the window to
float up against the wing, is much easier than policing the cabin and
your
persons adequately to avoid showering the countryside with eyeglasses,
pens, photographers, and the like. An fully open window is is
how Garnett worked with his Cessna 170B. Garnett had Leicas also,
and wrote an aerial photo chapter for the later Leica Manuals, but
mostly used a Pentax 6x7 later in his career.
Echo everything else Ted and Steve said. 1/500, Kodachrome is
wonderful. Shooting right after a cold front has gone through makes
the air nice and clear, but the turbulence induced by the wind
may bruise you where the belt is holding you down on the seat.
If the pilot hasn't flown in the NY corridor before there is a
pretty extensive set of rules a pilot needs to be familiar with
to stay legal and safe. These were put in place after the midair.
There are now specific altitudes you need to fly at depending on
what you are doing in the area. It wouldn't hurt to review your
plans with ATC beforehand, so they can suggest the easiest ways
in and out. There are around 200 airplane operations in the
corridor a day. On a nice day, there will be several other
aircraft making photos while you are, and probably a few dozen
helicopters full of sight seers.
Give your pilot the same safety reminder Ted does:
FLY THE AIRPLANE. You won't hit the ground right away,
but you can put yourself in an unrecoverable situation
in three seconds at these low altitudes.
Suggest to your pilot to do the photo runs with 10 degrees of
flaps, and at best rate of climb airspeed, or maybe 5 or 10 knots
above. This is a good compromise between slow to reduce blur,
and to allow a bit more time to compose, and fast enough to
have good margin above stall and good airplane energy.
It also makes your turn radius much smaller, so you can turn
around in a smaller space. Going too fast is what killed that
Pitcher over the East River a while back.
Watch out for parallax in keeping the wing strut and landing
gear out of the photos. Try to avoid needing to crop. Aerial photos
are inherently full of interesting detail, and people always look
close to see more of it.
If it is hazy, go closer to the subject and shoot more nearly
straight down.
Consider practicing on something easy first, far away from
cities, so your pilot doesn't need to learn how to coordinate
with you while performing the demanding airmanship task
of navigating in crowded airspace.
If you want to know anything else, sing out.
Charlie.
On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 6:46 PM, Jeffrey L. T. Gluck wrote:
> Charlie,
>
> As a small airplane owner, have you done any aërial photography with
> the
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