another round of shooting cell towers

[AZ ChopperCam]

made some changes to the Logo. removed base loaded antenna and now using full length wire antenna. Placed RX about 5" from the AP2000i, wrapped the RX in thick aluminum foil.

Went out to another site today to do tests. This site is nothing but alfalfa field on one side and huge dirt lot on the other. Flew 4 packs worth at 7 minutes each. Directly overhead at 150' AGL for vertical shots, and plenty shots with the helicopter right in front of the arrays maybe only 20' away. Never went into lockout.

I need to do more but looks like I may have something that'll work for these tower jobs.

http://azchoppercam.com/cell_towers/1.jpg
http://azchoppercam.com/cell_towers/2.jpg
http://azchoppercam.com/cell_towers/3.jpg
http://azchoppercam.com/cell_towers/4.jpg
http://azchoppercam.com/cell_towers/5.jpg

[GGoodrum]

Were these done with your A640? They are very sharp! :)

[AZ ChopperCam]

yup. the A640. some in auto mode and some in Tv (1/1000). All at full 10mp res in super fine mode. The high res shots at full size look great.

[MicroMan]

Thats some nice shooting.

[oscillator]

Nice work DJ. I'm guessing your client would need the full res and as many angles as possible to detect any damage or maintenance issues.

[AZ ChopperCam]

thanks.

they like the obliques for inspection reasons, but they are mostly concerned with the verticals for other purposes.

[dreslism]

Those shots look great DJ. I have always set my A620 up for 1/1000 in Tv mode with safety mode set in the menu. (Safety mode means if it can't get 1/1000 with correct exposure, then it will drop shutter until it can. With your sunshine though, should be no problem always getting 1/1000)

Colors look great also, do you have vivid colors set?

[AZ ChopperCam]

yep. vivid is turned on. I also have safety turned on. Many of those shots were at 1/1000 and F4.0 so I'm thinking that with abundant lighting I may try 1/1250 and see what happens. I also try to keep the ISO set to 80 if the weather is nice and the sun is shining (90% of the time :D )

[dreslism]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, weather nice, sun shining, blah, blah ,blah...

I always run my ISO at 100 when doing shoots and have good results.

Funny, I was just looking at your 2nd and 3rd shot, and you are so close to those towers, it almost looks like it could not be real, like they were photoshopped in. I know there not, just saying it is definately a unique perspective when the cell array takes up the whole frame of your image basically!

Perfect application for our AP.

[advoloastra]

I second Scott's reply. I could almost reach out and touch the antenna. Great shots!

Tim...