New camera & mount - maiden flight

[crewchief]

I wanted to move a step up from my Panasonc FX07 (still a nice little camera). I got the Canon S5 IS, which has lens stabilization and continuous exposures - two features I'm pretty dependent on right now. I'm OK in the mechanical and electrical departments, but I'm pretty much a newbie with digital photography. I know I'll eventually be moving towards a pro-grade camera, but right now I'm still struggling to learn how to reduce the amount of noise and artifacts in the images. Any advice would be WELCOME!

I bought the camera @ 10AM on 9/11, built the rig and test flew this afternoon (9/13). Since I don't need pan and I pre-set tilt, my goals were to have the camera sit directly under the main shaft and as close as possible to the helicopter's center of inertia, so it mounts directly to the frame instead of the landing gear tabs (which are not designed for that sort of thing anyway). The servo is a Hitech HS-81. The washers on the trigger servo arm are a really soft material - they feel like gummy bears. The small screwdrivers at ACE Hardware are packaged with two of them to hold the shank in the plastic package. I KNEW they'd come in handy some day!

The camera weighs about a pound and the landing gear probably weighs less than that. It flies really nice even with the 8000mAh battery (> 2 lbs), and there's no noticeable pendulum effect. I think the T600 could lift any of the larger SLR's no problem with this setup. I also did myself a favor and allowed the camera to self-correct for hover tilt, with slight dampening accomplished by setting the pressure between the two facing extruded aluminum pieces with a 1/4" bolt and nylock nut.

Here's one of the first frames:

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d85/bboatner/_GI13044a.jpg

Can anybody tell me how to reduce the noise? I was shooting ISO 400, and other than that all auto, I think.
THANKS!

[bullaculla]

I think sharpening is too high, and i'd stick to 200 iso max on sunny days. high iso=grain.
also i'd try to set ev to -2/3 of a stop when shooting lots of greens or dark areas. Auto will compensate for dark areas and shoot over exposed, which also leads to grainy pics.

[MLaBoyteaux]

Try shooting at the lowest ISO setting you can get away with. Usually in bright daylight, you can shoot at ISO 100 and still have a fast enough shutter speed to prevent blurring, unless you've got some vibrations going on in the heli.

Dpreview mentions some of the limitations of this camera http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canons5is/page6.asp

Set the ISO to 100 and go shoot more practice shots and see how they look. They should look a lot better than the one at 400.
I

[crewchief]

Iven & Mark,

Thanks, that's very helpful. I got spoiled by the Panasonic Lumix. It creates some incredibly rich and clear images even at ISO 800. Unfortunately I noticed a very slight smudge in one area of all the images, so either there's an abberation in the lens, or the sensor's got some dust on it or something. Also the image stabilzer on the Canon seems to be much better. I'm going to send the Lumix in for repair, so I needed something to work with in the meantime.

Mark, what kind of mount is that with the legs that fold up to the sides?

[MLaBoyteaux]

Those are the Mark IV prototypes. They're home-made designs using Spring-Air retracts.