Hi All,
I use my phantom to take photos for archaeological projects. The photos we want are a birds-eye-view vertical shot down of archaeological features. GOPROS although great, I just don't trust the barrel distortion(and correction in photoshop) to give a truly accurate representation of the feature. As such, I try to fly up decent, but light, Point and Shoot cameras, such as the Canon S110.
I built my own mount out of perspex etc, and it worked but was heavy and ultimately if I could get say 1 out of every 3 shots being in focus, I was happy. I saw MonsieurAnon's post on building a 3D printed mount (viewtopic.php?f=24&t=9796).
So I ended up buying two of them, the heavy duty mount and the regular mount(https://www.shapeways.com/shops/Mortar_Art). I also used a horizontal mount made by Monsieur to get my vertical shots. Yesterday I finally managed to mount everything and go for a fly with good wind conditions so I thought I should review it.
The heavy duty mount is light but feels good in the hand and not flimsy, which I feared. Putting it together is simple as long as you have the required parts listed. I lacked the Vision dampeners but managed to find some ultra squishy ones I got when I bought a dampener pack from Helipal- they say they are (50) on the pack but I am unsure how much they differ from the regular white dampeners for the vision.
I attached the mount, my canon S110(approx 200 grams with battery), my Boscham transmitter, props etc and weighed it- it was 1340 grams. Excuse the wires, I just attached everything quickly to weigh it before I took it apart again to travel to the park.
The camera is held pretty tight to the body which is great as when you land you don't want to get the lens close to the ground.
I flew the P2 with regular flight settings and got massive oscillation. I then dropped pitch and roll to 110% instead of 120% and left everything else standard. This worked a treat. I did drop both down to 100% as well, but noticed no real difference between 100 or 110% so I left it on 110%. (On a side note- if I then swap this mount for the h3-2d and do not change these, will I notice any difference? I am fairly new to the world of gains
)
It was a bright day, full sun and a light breeze (5-10km/h max). The camera decided to shoot between 1/160- 1/250 at ISO 80. Which is quick but not crazy fast like 1/500-1/1000. So the conditions were pretty ideal. In the end, the mount worked really well. I think maybe 1 in every 4 or 5 were blurry, so around 75% were crisp and sharp. Pretty good considering the quad does continously move and I do suffer slightly from TBE. Here is one probably from around 5-6 meters. You can see all my fragile stickers from the various plane trips I have taken.
Here is a similar photo at similar height, cropped and at 100%. Remember my camera is only 12.1mp so it's not massively detailed.
I attempted to fly the lighter mount but I mounted it slightly differently(camera sticking out from the quad rather than under it). This caused it to wobble a lot- which I expected but I just wanted to test it.
In the end, I am really happy with this mount. It works a treat and is handling well. It does require some tinkering in the sense of gains but you'd expect that for any mount. With a 200g camera it worked really well. It is about to get put through the wringer as in a week and half I will be in Greece in 40 degree heat, shooting for an archaeological site, so that will be its real test. If it is anything other than great(which I think it is at the moment), I will let you know.
I use my phantom to take photos for archaeological projects. The photos we want are a birds-eye-view vertical shot down of archaeological features. GOPROS although great, I just don't trust the barrel distortion(and correction in photoshop) to give a truly accurate representation of the feature. As such, I try to fly up decent, but light, Point and Shoot cameras, such as the Canon S110.
I built my own mount out of perspex etc, and it worked but was heavy and ultimately if I could get say 1 out of every 3 shots being in focus, I was happy. I saw MonsieurAnon's post on building a 3D printed mount (viewtopic.php?f=24&t=9796).
So I ended up buying two of them, the heavy duty mount and the regular mount(https://www.shapeways.com/shops/Mortar_Art). I also used a horizontal mount made by Monsieur to get my vertical shots. Yesterday I finally managed to mount everything and go for a fly with good wind conditions so I thought I should review it.
The heavy duty mount is light but feels good in the hand and not flimsy, which I feared. Putting it together is simple as long as you have the required parts listed. I lacked the Vision dampeners but managed to find some ultra squishy ones I got when I bought a dampener pack from Helipal- they say they are (50) on the pack but I am unsure how much they differ from the regular white dampeners for the vision.
I attached the mount, my canon S110(approx 200 grams with battery), my Boscham transmitter, props etc and weighed it- it was 1340 grams. Excuse the wires, I just attached everything quickly to weigh it before I took it apart again to travel to the park.
The camera is held pretty tight to the body which is great as when you land you don't want to get the lens close to the ground.
I flew the P2 with regular flight settings and got massive oscillation. I then dropped pitch and roll to 110% instead of 120% and left everything else standard. This worked a treat. I did drop both down to 100% as well, but noticed no real difference between 100 or 110% so I left it on 110%. (On a side note- if I then swap this mount for the h3-2d and do not change these, will I notice any difference? I am fairly new to the world of gains
)It was a bright day, full sun and a light breeze (5-10km/h max). The camera decided to shoot between 1/160- 1/250 at ISO 80. Which is quick but not crazy fast like 1/500-1/1000. So the conditions were pretty ideal. In the end, the mount worked really well. I think maybe 1 in every 4 or 5 were blurry, so around 75% were crisp and sharp. Pretty good considering the quad does continously move and I do suffer slightly from TBE. Here is one probably from around 5-6 meters. You can see all my fragile stickers from the various plane trips I have taken.
Here is a similar photo at similar height, cropped and at 100%. Remember my camera is only 12.1mp so it's not massively detailed.
I attempted to fly the lighter mount but I mounted it slightly differently(camera sticking out from the quad rather than under it). This caused it to wobble a lot- which I expected but I just wanted to test it.
In the end, I am really happy with this mount. It works a treat and is handling well. It does require some tinkering in the sense of gains but you'd expect that for any mount. With a 200g camera it worked really well. It is about to get put through the wringer as in a week and half I will be in Greece in 40 degree heat, shooting for an archaeological site, so that will be its real test. If it is anything other than great(which I think it is at the moment), I will let you know.
