Sorry if this is being posted long after the question first appeared, as I have been on the road for 10 days. Gotta earn a livin', ya know. Here are some random notes on aerial photography in no particular order.
Airplanes are practically worthless for aerial photos of trains 'cause they have to fly at higher altitudes (1000 feet city, 500 feet country) as mandidated by the FAA. No, telephoto lenses do not work too well from that higher altitude as the longer lens imparts greater motion and camera shake into the photo--your pix WILL be blurry. Remember, every little "bump" in the air will be magnified on the film by the magnification power of the lens--that is, a 200mm lens will make a motion blur or "camera shake" four times larger than the normal 50mm lens on a 35mm camera under the same conditions. And you get a lot of motion and bumps in the air. More importantly, airplanes take forever to get into position and then have to "go around" to get back into position again for another shot, or if they are not lined up just right the first time. This takes time and starts to approach the cost of a helicopter at the end of a photo session. Planes are OK (but still not preferred) if you have to photograph large pieces of property, but trains are too tiny to get onto film from a plane. If you do have to shoot from a plane, a high-wing Cessna 160 or 180 are good, although the small observation planes formerly used by the U.S.Army are really great as they were designed with oblique aerial photography in mind. I am sure that these are around in private hands, but the only one I ever used was at a private airfield in Nashville, TN. Never, NEVER stick your camera out of the aircraft's window when you are shooting!!! The movement of the air across the fuselage of the airplane or chopper creates a partial vacuum called the Venturi Effect that will suck the film off of the film plane in the camera giving you hopelessly out-of-focus photos (I mean, even unrecognizable, with blobs of unsharp color). A photographer I hired to shoot some aerials (when I was in another part of the country shooting aerials of other locations for a big project) told me that he had lots of experience shooting aerial photos. He lied. He had never been in a chopper, and every photo he shot that day was n.f.g, er, no good. Not only was it a nightmare trying to reschedule the locations (we had over 120 sites to be shot in 110 cities within two weeks!), the chopper cost us a cool $450 an hour for about seven hours of flying time that day, plus the loss of the film (20 rolls or so) and processing. I was p.o.'ed. As an aside, as part of this big project, we commandeered a CSX corporate jet and started one day's shooting south of Miami, Fla., and had choppers waiting at each little airport we flew into, ready to take off as soon as we landed. We shot aerials in 14 Florida and Alabama cities that day, ending up in New Orleans that evening. Had we flown on regular commercial airlines, we could have gotten only 2 sites photographed in one day. Anyway, the use of a gyro-stabilizer is nice, but not absolutely necessary. I own a Ken-Lab model KS-4 ($2200.00 in 1988), which is about as small as you want to get for 35mm camera use. Bigger gyros give you greater stability, and you will need a gyro larger than the KS-4 if using 2-1/4 or 4x5 cameras. One pilot I use has a chopper with an electrical supply outlet plug for the Ken-Lab gyros so that you do not need to haul the heavy battery pack with you (it slowly dies after several hours). The gyro takes ten minutes to get up to 20,000 rpm operating speed, and will continue to spin rapidly for a half-hour after the battery is dead or the power has been shut off. You can rent these from several places in NYC. Ten years ago the going rate was $50 per day, or $200 per week, but you had to use Fed Ex to ship it back and forth--expensive cause the gyro and battery are heavy. They advertise the gyros as "tripods without legs", and I use mine for slow shutter speeds such as when panning or pacing trains from vehicles. I used it to make a perfectly sharp, hand-held photo at one second exposure! It is difficult to get the gyro to move once it is in its position--it will resist your efforts to move it through the air. Large passenger ships used huge gyros to stabilize them in rough seas. Be careful with wide angle lenses in helicopters, as the lens will get the spinning rotor blades into the top of the photo. Rarely do I ever use any lens other than the normal focal length for any camera--I just move the chopper up or down accordingly. Someone loading film for you in the chopper or plane is a blessing. Leaning down to get film out of you bag while the chopper is pulling a G or two in a tight turn will pull your head off your shoulders and mess up your ears. Always shoot with the door(s) removed for best access. Figure out which is more comfortable for you--shooting out of the right or left sides of the chopper--as it DOES make a difference (i.e., are you right-eyed or left-eyed?) Where does the pilot sit, right or left side? Get your signals straight with the pilot before taking off. Tell him (OK, or her) how you want to shoot, what your ideas are for the photos, before leaving. Give him good detailed maps, as you can get "lost" if it is unfamiliar territory (i.e., wrong railroad track). Strap your camera bag into the spare seat belt. Get rid of all loose paper--2-1/4 film is a problem here because of its waste paper. Wear a safety harness if you sit with feet dangling out or of you stand on the landing skid while shooting (THE best place...if you do not have to reload your camera!). Use headset microphones that are voice-activated (no finger switches to activate in speaking mode) as you will need both hands for the camera and cannot be fumbling for the damn switch when the pilot calls to you. Try not to breath into the voice-activated microphone as that willl activate it, and the pilot will have to listen to you struggling to breath with G forces, wind blowing, etc. Do not eat or drink before your flight, and take some sort of motion sickness medication before you leave. I use Bonine--orange flavored chewable pills which are available at the local drug store or super market. Wonderful stuff. After one particularly bad aerial assignment in Virginia in spite of having taken Bonine, when we landed for fuel I jumped out of the chopper and laid down on the runway and immediately fell asleep from the severe air sickness. The man in the fuel truck pulled up, rushed over and started giving me CPR--he thought I was having a heart attack and had tumbled out of the chopper. I finished the shoot, cancelled my plane ticket home, rented a car and drove back--I wanted to die. Once on a very bumpy airplane aerial shoot, I opened the side window and puked down the length of the airplane. I had nothing to eat all day, but had not heard of Bonine. Little planes bump around a lot more than big commercial jets--it is those damn negative G-forces that kill me, like when the plane drops. Use the longest roll of film you can to avoid reloading in mid-flight. Better to use, say, one 36-exposure roll than to reload three 12-exposure rolls. When shooting on sunny days, you can use slower speed films. I have never used anything faster than ISO 64 for slides or ISO 160 for color negatives in choppers. Polarizing filters are needed about 3/4 of the time--at that aerial angle, you get a lot of leaf reflection from the blue sky which reduces color saturation. Cloudy/bright days are OK, especially if the sun angle is going to be bad at a particular time of day, but be prepared for dull, lifeless- looking photos. Sunshine ALWAYS looks better for aerials. Always use filters to reduce haze (Skylight for color and UV-Haze for B&W films). Polarizers reduce haze a lot, but require an additional 1-1/3 f-stop of exposure. Try not to fly on hazy days as the results will be terrible. Films record more haze than you will see, so your photos will turn out worse than you expected. Since Kodachrome is a B&W film until the color is added during processing, it has the greatest resistence to atmospheric haze and gives the best haze-less results. Kodachrome also gives really crappy green, which you tend to see a lot of from a chopper. Choppers can hover, but that takes a lot of power and NO WIND. Most times it is better to move slowly than to hover. Also check that wind direction before you take the door off, as the wind entering the open door can make manueverability more difficult, so it might be better to remove, say, the right door than the left door. Turbine-powered helicopters are safer than piston-powered choppers because in an engine failure, the turbine-powerd rotors will continue to rotate and provide lift for a softer crash landing. In piston-powered choppers, the rotors stop turning when the engine stops turning and you fall like a stone back to Mother Earth. Chopper models such as Bell 47 (from the television show M*A*S*H), Hughes 300 and Enstrom Sharks are piston-powered; choppers such as Hughes 500 (that teardrop-shaped affair) and Bell Jet Rangers or Long Rangers are turbine-powered. Turbine-powered choppers are a lot more expensive to rent than piston-powered choppers--probably 4 or 5 times more per hour. If you do a lot of aerial shooting, join the helicopter association (airborne version of the AAA) to get their publications and lists of helicopter owners all around the world. Great way to find these guys, who do not always advertise in the yellow pages. Be sure that they are FAA certified to carry passengers and do this kind of work (Form 31, I believe) as not all helicopters are licensed to carry passengers for hire. Ask about the pilot's experience and where he learned to fly. For fancy moves on movie film or tape you will need an experienved guy who is not afraid to do some tricky stuff. Guys who flew in Viet Nam battles or medivac are good, but are becoming older and harder to find. Guys who learned at helicopter school are timid. The rear seats on the Hughes 500 are extremely cramped with no foot room, and this highly manueverable (but highly unstable) chopper is not well suited to still aerial photos; movies and action videos, yes--still photography, no. The Hughes 300 is a two-seater, so you sit up with the pilot and there is limited floor room for your camera bag because of the dual foot-pedal controls and no room between the pilot seat and the passenger seat. Jet or Long Rangers are probably the best all around choppers for aerial photography. Watch for the tail rotor and main rotor over your head while you are on the ground. Check with the pilot or chopper owner in advance regarding payment--most take MasterCard or Visa, a few take American Express. Some will accept purchase orders from large companies. Some (laugh, laugh) ask for a pre-printed company check before it is known how long the flight will be! I have never figured that one out! They bill in 6-minute increments (tenth of an hour). Have fun and be safe. John B. Corns --> SPORRS: Serious Photographers of Railroad Related Subjects X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 1287
