What setup do i need?

Hi Bob,

This is probably not the best place to find information for such a specialised task. RCGroups.com has a forum dedicated to this kind of thing. Having said that, here's a little bit of information to get you started.

The video cameras you see on HobbyKing are designed for live video streaming, rather than instant image capture. They are typically used to provide a video downlink (via radio) so the pilot can operate the aircraft as though they are sitting in the plane itself. This is called "first-person view" or FPV.

TV lines is an old-style measure of camera resolution. The number of "TV lines" is equivalent to the number of vertical pixels in the image (eg 420 TVL means the image has 420 vertical pixels). These cameras typically provide a 4:3 image so a 600 TVL camera outputs 800x600 pixels. The video cameras you see here are therefore not very useful for still-image capture - they're just too low-res to be useful.

There are a couple different approaches that people have taken:
1. Capture frames from a HD video camera mounted on a gimbal - this will yield 1920x1080 pictures, which is a lot better than 640x480. Some HD video cameras have a low-resolution live-video out (which can be sent over video transmitter/receiver for framing) while recording in HD to a memory card.

2. Mount a "proper" still camera on a gimbal for image capture, and mount a second small low-res video camera (with video transmitter receiver) beside it on the same gimbal. You can frame your shots with the low-res video camera while capturing in much higher resolution on your still camera. (Exactly how to trigger a shutter via radio control is still unclear to me, but it shouldn't be too difficult with the right equipment). You can choose the type of camera to suit your requirements - a compact point-and-shoot would be perfectly viable if you don't need anything too flash, but full-size DSLRs are commonly used in professional applications.

I suspect that for what you're proposing, you'd need a 2-man team - a pilot who can control and manoeuver the craft, and a photographer operating the camera gimbal. Trying to do it all with one person would be rather difficult and you would need a LOT of practice to do it alll on your own - crashes would be rather expensive!

Bear in mind that to carry a big camera, you're going to need a pretty serious multi-rotor frame. The very biggest of HobbyKing's quad- or hex-copter frames would be a bare minimum if you're serious about carrying a good (heavy) camera. There are companies that offer a turnkey solution, with all of the gear, ready to bolt your camera onto - but these are typically in the thousands of dollars. You can get good results by building your own, but it will require a lot of research, development and fiddling around to get a properly professional result.

As I said, head over to the RCGroups forums, there are plenty of hobbyists and professionals there who can give you better information about this sort of thing.

Edited by klaw81 - 20/Aug/2012 at 10:58am