We had a similar problem at CSX in that we needed altitude for an overhead shot at The Greenbrier in the middle of the tennis courts, but could not use a helicopter, cherry picker or construction crane in deference to our well-heeled guests who expected and deserved a little more genteel atmosphere at the posh resort.
So, we bought a 30-foot tripod! For about $3,000 this baby became part of our family, and was used several times when nothing else would work. We could not see through the camera to make our photos, but for staged tennis photos or trains rolling down the track, it worked just fine. The other photographer in our office got it and cared for it, working out an elevation/angle of declination table for use with lenses of varying focal lengths to get proper coverage of the subject. Since we could not have hands-on use of the camera, we had to pre-focus the lens, and zooming was out of the question for 35mm still work. The legs of this 30-foot tripod did not extend across the entire tennis court, but rather were about five feet in length, with a telescoping center pole that attained the desired height. The bad part was the fact that the instructions said that three, 75-pound bags of lead shot had to be placed on the three legs for stability when the tripod was reaching up into the clouds. We quickly remedied that situation by placing the shot into nine bags--each weighing 25 pounds--for easier handling, but that still was a very large pain in the butt. No, we did not attempt to take all of this on airplanes as either checked baggage or carry-ons! We were looking into a lipstick-cam that could be mounted on top of the extended tripod head along with our still camera so that we could watch a video monitor on the ground to see exactly what we were getting through the still camera's viewfinder. Also, we located an inexpensive motorized tripod head adaptor that would permit vertical and horizontal movement via remote control operation, but our department was closed before we could act on any of these new ideas and modifications. My coworker bought the 30-foot tripod from CSX, but I could get any info about it from him if you need it, including his table of angles of declination, etc., which was very useful. Maybe this tripod or something similar could be attached to your truck with a bracket for removal when not needed, and also to have a solid base for the tripod without the use of the bags of lead shot. Our tripod's elevation was manually controlled, and the center column got pretty heavy as we pushed it up and up, but maybe there are motorized columns that you could find, such as those used by television camera crews for their truck-mounted microwave antennas. I agree totally that a little elevation is a wonderful thing for railroad photography, as we see so few photos made from slightly above ground level. Good luck, Jim, and maybe these thoughts will help you or other SPORRS members to come up with some other ideas as to how to get you high! John B. Corns --> SPORRS: Serious Photographers of Railroad Related Subjects X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 5969
