Photography - Alternate Cameras?

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I have been flying my phantom for a week now, great fun. I am a pro still photographer. I have been using the gopro3 in intervalometer mode. I hate the quality and not being able to work in raw.
Has anyone put a Canon Powershot on board and used the CHDK hack to get raw?

Would be very interested in your thoughts.
 
24pfilms said:
I have been flying my phantom for a week now, great fun. I am a pro still photographer. I have been using the gopro3 in intervalometer mode. I hate the quality and not being able to work in raw.
Has anyone put a Canon Powershot on board and used the CHDK hack to get raw?

Would be very interested in your thoughts.

You and I are in the same boat. I'm used to shooting raw with my Nikon D7000. The photos I get with the GoPro3+ black, though way better than my original GoPro, still suck compared to what I'm used to working with.

I have canon S95 and have read about the CHDK setup with great interest. I'd love to mount the S95 and shoot some raw shots as a test. Just got my gimbal and the S95 is a little too big. So I'm considering creating or finding some way of mounting the S95 with only a jello reducer and setting the camera to shoot every 3 or 5 seconds. It would blow away the gopro.

I've also considered strapping my Galaxy SIII to the Phantom. It shoots great HD video without the mega lens distortion the GoPro has.

One of the biggest things I find I can do is try to make sure the GoPro is level and that the primary subject is hitting the center of the lens, where the least amount of distortion is.
 
Hey Mediaguru...good to have a ally in this.
I will be buying a Canon powershot and hacking it then strapping it on.
I can live with the gopro for video but I cannot for stills...it is too hit and miss for me. Plus color correcting the jpeg's is a painful process. But I have had some luck...but not like - I like it. PM me and we can talk offline. Curious to hear your results. We are not alone...I am sure of it...
 
24pfilms said:
Hey Mediaguru...good to have a ally in this.
I will be buying a Canon powershot and hacking it then strapping it on.
I can live with the gopro for video but I cannot for stills...it is too hit and miss for me. Plus color correcting the jpeg's is a painful process. But I have had some luck...but not like - I like it. PM me and we can talk offline. Curious to hear your results. We are not alone...I am sure of it...

Hello buddy. GoPro JPGS have so many artifacts and such crappy compression... They're just not good.

Yes my S95 shoots raw and there is very little lens distortion even though the lens is a fairly wide angle lens. The photos from the S95 would be about 123,039,032 times better than any GoPro will ever be. I'm more into photography than video, just for stills I'm not as concerned about a gimbal, though I have one.

One quick way to mount it would be to take a GoPro tripod mount and put a dual male screw in on it. Though adjusting the tightness could be hard.

I'll DM you sure.
 
Same here!!

I'm looking for a decent camera for mapping purposes: I'm learning a lot reading the posts and considering all options. It seems I'll go for a GoPro for video and still looking for a camera for stills.

Looking forward for learning from your experiences and advise
 
I agree with those who are looking for a higher quality camera. Maybe the next step for DJI will be to bring out a mount that might allow a few different cameras to attach to the tilting mount. I have the Vision and, while I don't know that much about the GoPro, the abilities of the Vision camera were big factors in my decision to go with the P2V. Since my real interest in the Phantoms is centered on photography as opposed to the flying aspect, I liked the fact that the mount can be controlled from the ground, I can switch between stills and movies, I can shoot both jpg and RAW, I have control over the exposure and I have a much longer flight time than the Phantom 1.

That being said, I'd really like to have the options of a non-fisheye lens, better resolution, maybe even control of zooming functions? I'd also like to see bracketing available so that I could easily do HDR (High Dynamic Range) photos without taking flight time to 'fiddle' with the exposure settings.

The incredible ability to place my "Point of View" nearly anywhere there is airspace...given reasonable limits of course, is just amazing. Oftentimes just having the camera in the 15-50 foot altitude range gives very dramatic photos or scooting along just a few feet above the ground can really make for some eye-popping views. So far my experience has been pretty limited, but I feel very confident in my ability to control and maneuver the Phantom, it seems pretty intuitive to me.
 

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