AP Day!

[dreslism]

Today was a great AP day. I had a stadium photo shoot scheduled across the state from me, about 160 miles away.

Great blue sky day, and I got there about 10:30 AM, and got the AD to clear the field of practice.

I do a shot from the 50 yard line, and fly this from out side the stadium and like to push the heli out in front of me. To get the whole stadium in, you have to get pretty high. I am only using a point and shoot with a 37mm lens, so pushing the heli out in front of me allows me to not have to look straight up as it is pretty high to get the shot, and I don't like looking straight up and looking at the downlink at the same time while trying to take the shot. :D

Anyhow, they had a very small parking lot, so I could not really push the heli out in front of me, and the AD wanted to stand there and watch me.

I usually fly solo and am quite calm and fine with it. I hope this guy did not notice my leg going nuts while taking these shots as I was quite nervous doing this. He had just cleared the field of about 50 football players and they all walked over to the school and sat on the curb and proceeded to watch. ( How's that for an audience?? :shock:)

I'm sure it felt worse than it was, but to me it felt like my leg was trying to shake off a small dog who was humping my leg.

Anyhow the shoot went fine, the AD was all smiles when he saw a couple of shots, and it took forever to get out of there as everyone and his brother was coming over after that "Whoa, what's that dude?"

Here are a couple of shots from the shoot.

http://greatlakesap.com/recent/Vicksburg/Vicksburg50_600.jpg

http://greatlakesap.com/recent/Vicksburg/IMG_7241_600.jpg

DJ was in Michigan on vacation visiting his cousin and he was kind enough to extend an invitation to stop by.

Since I was more than half way across the state, and it was ONLY another 44 miles further from home, I gave him a call and the timing worked out for me to stop by.

DJ brought a heli and his cousin flys some planes, *but* his cousin has a real runway in his backyard with a 1946 Taylorcraft parked in it!

I stopped by, we chatted, DJ's esc went nuts, and chewed his main gear on his logo, so no more flying his heli.

I was getting ready to leave, and DJ's cousin say's "You should have had DJ take you for a spin."

I have only ever been in a commercial plane, so I was like oh, uh, well, uh. DJ says c'mon, I'll take you, nice easy spin around the patch.

I politefully decline. :oops:

His cousin says "You've never been in something like this? Oh you're missing out, tail dragger and all."

I say to DJ "Nice easy spin right?" He says yeah.

So here is the ride

http://greatlakesap.com/recent/Vicksburg/DSCN9272_600.jpg

I hop in, and it is nice and cozy in the cockpit, he taxis down and turns around, and off we go!

Here is a shot of the lake down the street from about 400'

http://greatlakesap.com/recent/Vicksburg/DSCN9258400_600.jpg

Another one from about 700'

http://greatlakesap.com/recent/Vicksburg/DSCN9266700_600.jpg

and here is some inflight video, it is raw out of the camera, hope it plays OK.

It won't stream from the server, and I am too lazy to convert it tonight, but a right click and save as will work.

http://greatlakesap.com/recent/Vicksburg/DSCN9269.mov

It was sooo cool, I loved it.

After we landed and said goodbye and thanks, I hopped in the car and drove 210 miles home, still with blue skies and sunshine. Ahhh, a nice 420 mile day.

I think I still have a smile on my face now, and that flight was about 7 hours ago.

Thanks again DJ, I really appreciate it.

[lowandslow]

The stadium shots are killer! Were you using an AP2000i or anything like that?

[dreslism]

The stadium shots are killer! Were you using an AP2000i or anything like that?

Thanks!

Yes, I was using the ap2000i.

It allows me to shoot solo.

[lowandslow]

Ahh yes, I'm gonna get one on order this week. I don't shoot solo but none the less I think it's really the ticket especially when pushing the altitude a bit.

[GGoodrum]

Great stuff, Scott, and a paying job, to boot! :D

The stadium shots are fantastic. I hear you about the "pucker" factor. I recently did a shot of a 5 acre estate near here and the owner, with her miserable little mutt insisted on standing right next to me. The damn little rat was nipping at me the whole time. :)

Anyway, maybe you can go back later and sell them on doing a VERY cool 360-degree VR shot from above the fifty yard line.

ANyway, the stadium looks amazing from those angles. Good time of year to do it, too, before a couple of months of "Friday Night Lights" chews the heck out of that perfect looking field. :D

DJ looks like he is having WAY too much fun these days, between tooling around in a tail dragger AND a full-size heli. ;)

-- Gary

[dreslism]

Great stuff, Scott, and a paying job, to boot! :D

The stadium shots are fantastic. I hear you about the "pucker" factor. I recently did a shot of a 5 acre estate near here and the owner, with her miserable little mutt insisted on standing right next to me. The damn little rat was nipping at me the whole time. :)

Thanks Gary, that would have drove me nuts!

Anyway, maybe you can go back later and sell them on doing a VERY cool 360-degree VR shot from above the fifty yard line.

Yeah, that would be great, I just need to have Tabb in my pocket when I got out there for those! He is the master! :wink: But that is really an excellent idea. The AD and principal from this school would have crapped their pants if I showed them a 360 vr pano. They were basically high fiveing each other in the parking lot after I landed and showed them a few samples from what I just shot.


ANyway, the stadium looks amazing from those angles. Good time of year to do it, too, before a couple of months of "Friday Night Lights" chews the heck out of that perfect looking field. :D

Oh actually it will be looking perfect for a long time. These are for my big customer, I do about 20 shoots a year for them. They are an artificial turf company, so that field will be looking the same for years to come! It is an expensive system, but it can rain all night and day, then you can have a soccer game at 4:00PM, and then a football game at 7:30PM all in the same day, and no dammage or standing water on the field!


DJ looks like he is having WAY too much fun these days, between tooling around in a tail dragger AND a full-size heli. ;)
-- Gary

He says he is ready to go home, it's too humid in Michigan. He want's his 100 degree dry weather! I told him it has been a very mild low humidity week here while he was here. It has been dropping down to the upper 50's at night here, and the coolness has allowed for some great non haze shooting days.

[Tonystott]

Cool Scott! That's both the stadium shots and the AP from DJ's Taylorcraft!

Brings me back 30 odd years when an uncle had a Beechcraft Bonanza and took 5 of us up for an awesome flight. As part of the trip he put it into a very tight turn (wings vertical!) and got permission from the tower for a full speed gear up pass at 90 feet. Boy does the ground go past quickly at that height!

[WillJames]

Great shots Scott! Cool description of the events of your day!! Thanks for sharing!! Your stadium shots are great, very nice.

:glasses2:

[MLaBoyteaux]

The stadium shots are awesome. For me, the best part would'be been flying off of grass in a ragwing :D Thanks for sharing the pics!

[AZ ChopperCam]

those stadium shots are fantastic! Glad you had a chance to stop by my cousins while I was here. I'm here every 3rd weekend in August so next year keep it in mind. We'll take the Taylorcraft up for more than just a spin around the patch.

DJ looks like he is having WAY too much fun these days, between tooling around in a tail dragger AND a full-size heli. wink :D yep it's been fun, but it's soon over and time to get my butt back to work. :roll:

[dreslism]

The stadium shots are awesome. For me, the best part would'be been flying off of grass in a ragwing :D Thanks for sharing the pics!

Thanks Mark. Yeah that was definately the best part for me also.

Everything went perfect yesterday, weather, equipment, shots, and flying out of someones backyard was the icing on the cake. So many things could have went wrong being out of town with equipment and all, and I am not fortunate enough to have a backup heli with me at all times.

In my mind, I basically got paid to mess around all day yesterday! :D :D

[LoopBaCK]

Scott - Already said but I'll say it again: Excellent work! How high do you typically have to go to get a good spread of the field?

[enigma]

DJ's esc went nuts, and chewed his main gear on his logoWas this his 45HV or the old Hacker esc that did this?

[dreslism]

Scott - Already said but I'll say it again: Excellent work! How high do you typically have to go to get a good spread of the field?

Thanks Loopback,

You know I have a zlog, but have not put it on when doing these shoots, so no hard numbers on the height.

I would say 250 - 300 feet. My current camera is not a DSLR, so my lens is 38mm so that makes me go higher.

If I had a DSLR, I would use a 20mm lens and not have to go so high.

Mark shot some the other day too, and he shoots a DSLR. Let's see what he has for a guess.

[dreslism]

DJ's esc went nuts, and chewed his main gear on his logoWas this his 45HV or the old Hacker esc that did this?

It was his hv45. He was having some issues with power getting to the Rx, and jiggling wires made things work then not work. He said as he flipped into idle it happened, you could hear the gear go.

Wondering if the issues he was having had something to do with it.

[Teej]

Actually, depending on what grade of DSLR you're talking about, 20mm may not be significantly different from your p&s 38mm.

The P&S is rated at a 38mm "on a 35mm equivalent".

A 20mm on a canon 10D/20D/30D/dRebel or a Nikon D100/D70 etc will give the field of view of a 32mm lens on a 35mm equivalent.

That is, of course, unless you're spending ~ $5000 or whatever for a "full frame" sensor dslr...

Apologies if you already knew that....

[dreslism]

Thanks Teej. Yeah I forget that x 1.6 factor all the time.

And no, not fortunate enough to have a 5D.

[MLaBoyteaux]

Yeah, I'm using the Rebel so my 17mm setting is actually around 27mm. To get just the field I'd guess around 150', but more like 200' to make sure we get the stands and everything and there's enough buffer for any straightening that may be needed.

Since I'm using a camera operator, you have to make sure they understand you just need a little buffer, not an extra 10 acres! (go higher....higher) I don't know how you guys do it by yourselves flying the heli AND trying to frame up the shot with the glasses. All I know is everytime I fly it's an adrenaline rush, bigtime.

[dreslism]

Yeah, I'm using the Rebel so my 17mm setting is actually around 27mm. To get just the field I'd guess around 150', but more like 200' to make sure we get the stands and everything and there's enough buffer for any straightening that may be needed.

Since I'm using a camera operator, you have to make sure they understand you just need a little buffer, not an extra 10 acres! (go higher....higher) I don't know how you guys do it by yourselves flying the heli AND trying to frame up the shot with the glasses. All I know is everytime I fly it's an adrenaline rush, bigtime.

Glasses? I wish I had glasses. I am looking at a 7 inch lcd on a tripod.
One eye 250 ft up on the heli, one eye on the lcd screen which is about at eye level.

Fun stuff! Oh yeah, my adrenaline was going the most ever on this shoot since they stood there watching.

I would like to try glasses, I know some guys on RR use some CV-1's or something like that, but they are $1200!!! No thanks unless my business REALLY picks up.

[miami6]

those Stadium pictures are great lighting condition really make a big difference

[AZ ChopperCam]

It was his hv45. He was having some issues with power getting to the Rx, and jiggling wires made things work then not work. He said as he flipped into idle it happened, you could hear the gear go.

Wondering if the issues he was having had something to do with it.

BEC had a loose ground wire. good thing I caught it before it was airborne.... coulda been a very bad thing.

Fixed her up the day after I got back and all is well!