aerial photography at night

[jason]

Hi,

was recently reading the night aerial photography thread. You might be
inetersted in viewing my night aerial views of London taken last week :

http://news.jasonhawkes.com/archives/2005/09/index.html

jason

[Larry Dighera]

On 14 Oct 2005 04:08:01 -0700, "jason" > wrote
in . com>::

>You might be inetersted in viewing my night aerial views of
>London taken last week :
>
>http://news.jasonhawkes.com/archives/2005/09/index.html

Bravo! Those are quite remarkable photographs.

Surely they must have been taken at twilight, not the dead of night,
as timed aerial exposures must be nearly impossible. Why do you favor
film over digital photography?

Very nice work indeed. Thanks for sharing.

[Jay Honeck]

> was recently reading the night aerial photography thread. You might be
> inetersted in viewing my night aerial views of London taken last week :
>
> http://news.jasonhawkes.com/archives/2005/09/index.html

Beautiful photos, Jason.

What altitude were you at when you took them?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

[Ross Richardson]

Incredible. I've been to London several times and these are beautiful.
How do you get the shots without vibration and still the clarity. Do you
use high speed film? I do a little for pleasure only and find that the
digital has nicer results even shooting through the plastic windows.


-------------
Regards, Ross
C-172F 180HP
KSWI


jason wrote:
> Hi,
>
> was recently reading the night aerial photography thread. You might be
> inetersted in viewing my night aerial views of London taken last week :
>
> http://news.jasonhawkes.com/archives/2005/09/index.html
>
> jason
>

[john smith]

Jason, I noted in the text you are using a camera stabilizer.
How about sharing camera/lense/shutter/aperature/film speed-ASO?

[George Patterson]

jason wrote:

> http://news.jasonhawkes.com/archives/2005/09/index.html

Lovely work!

George Patterson
Drink is the curse of the land. It makes you quarrel with your neighbor.
It makes you shoot at your landlord. And it makes you miss him.

[Ben Hallert]

Anyone can get pictures like that at night from a plane, the only trick
is picking the right flash.

</dry>

Ben Hallet
PP-ASEL

[Jay Beckman]

"jason" > wrote in message
oups.com...
> Hi,
>
> was recently reading the night aerial photography thread. You might be
> inetersted in viewing my night aerial views of London taken last week :
>
> http://news.jasonhawkes.com/archives/2005/09/index.html
>
> jason
>

Excellent photos Jason

[jason]

Gald you liked the images.

They were taken from a twin A Star from around 800-1200ft around an
hour after dusk.

I still shoot on film at the moment and used Provia 400 120.

Jason

[Greg Farris]

In article om>,
says...
>
>
>Gald you liked the images.
>
>They were taken from a twin A Star from around 800-1200ft around an
>hour after dusk.
>
>I still shoot on film at the moment and used Provia 400 120.
>

Spectacular shots!
Film is still a great acquisition medium - you'd need some fantastic
resolution digital camera to get the same mileage as one of your 6X6 or
6X7 frames. Are you using large format (Linhof) as well? The reason I
ask is not just curiosity, but to know if you're able to get roll-film
for the 5X5 format.

Cheers,
G Faris

[Ice blonde]

Beautiful pictures :-)

I have used Provia 400 too, but not for anything quite so spectacular.

I would agree with Greg too about film over digital, it would take a
very very good digital to match film quality, and when your talking
slide film, I'm not sure even the best digitals are there yet, but
correct me if I'm wrong.

Regards

[George Patterson]

Ice blonde wrote:

> I would agree with Greg too about film over digital, it would take a
> very very good digital to match film quality, and when your talking
> slide film, I'm not sure even the best digitals are there yet, but
> correct me if I'm wrong.

According to tests run by Popular Photography magazine, both the latest Canon
and Nikon digital 35mm SLRs beat out film, but we're talking better than $5,000
for the body. I've not seen anything to indicate that the mid-size format camera
manufacturers can beat film with digital yet, but I could easily have missed an
article.

George Patterson
Drink is the curse of the land. It makes you quarrel with your neighbor.
It makes you shoot at your landlord. And it makes you miss him.

[Greg Farris]

Aerial photography differs from other types of photography in significant
ways.

Without even getting into the question of atmospheric conditions, and the uses
of infrared imaging materials, we can say that, generally speaking, aerial
photography has a very high information-gathering value. If you're doing
pictorial photography on the ground, you may not need or even want very high
pixel counts, as this only produces gigantic files, that you then have to
reduce to publish on the web, or send as e-mail. In aerial photography though,
even if you're doing oblique, pictorial work, you very often want to crop your
subject to get to the essential matter. Sometimes, in a plane or helicopter,
you cannot get as close as you'd like to your subject, so you end up cropping,
sometimes drastically, which of course digital photos cannot support.

Now, look at technical applications, such as wildlife, geological and
environmental surveys, and it becomes obvious that almost no amount of
information could be "too much". For such uses, film is a great medium,
because it is fast, and very high resolution. The digital vs film "shootouts"
being published today generally concern high-end 6-10MP cameras, compared to
24x36mm film. But most aerial photographers don't use 24x36mm much. The 6x7cm
frames that the ultra-famous Arthus-Bertrand (and, I suspect, the contributor
of these fantastic London shots) uses have 5X the resolution of "standard"
35mm shots. So, something like 30-50MP equivalent. The 5"x5" format of the K20
camera (the Linhof 45EL being the most recent, and most beautiful iteration of
this format) have 17X standard 35mm resolution (100-170MP) and the 9"x9"
format still standard for vertical photogrammetry (used by geological survey
for map-making) is 60X 35mm resolution, which is getting into the GigaPixel
order of magnitude!

As an example of file size, when I take 4X5-inch transparencies or negatives
to the drum scanner, a 20MB file is considered a low-resolution, "dirty" scan,
just to get an idea of what the thing looks like, and is not even scratching
the surface of the information available in the 4X5.

G Faris

[Neil Gould]

Recently, George Patterson > posted:

> Ice blonde wrote:
>
>> I would agree with Greg too about film over digital, it would take a
>> very very good digital to match film quality, and when your talking
>> slide film, I'm not sure even the best digitals are there yet, but
>> correct me if I'm wrong.
>
> According to tests run by Popular Photography magazine, both the
> latest Canon and Nikon digital 35mm SLRs beat out film, but we're
> talking better than $5,000 for the body. I've not seen anything to
> indicate that the mid-size format camera manufacturers can beat film
> with digital yet, but I could easily have missed an article.
>
While many agree that, for the same physical area, digital sensors can
compete well against film -- e.g. a full-frame 35mm digital camera can
produce images competive with 35mm film as in a Popular Photography type
of comparison -- there are other factors to consider. For one, as yet
there are no full-frame (56x56mm) medium format digital sensors, so a
typical medium format camera will still outperform the best 35mm format
digital cameras.

For the kind of images that Jason presented in this thread (very nice
shots, btw!), the higher ISO range (1600-3200) of a pro digital camera
could allow higher shutter speeds and/or smaller apertures than one could
use with ISO 400 film, but at the cost of less image area than with 120
film, and consequently less subtle gradations and detail. IMO, the bottom
line is that film and digital are just two imaging media, each with their
own 'look', advantages and limitations.

Regards,

Neil

[Greg Farris]

In article >,
says...

For one, as yet
>there are no full-frame (56x56mm) medium format digital sensors, so a
>typical medium format camera will still outperform the best 35mm format
>digital cameras.
>
>For the kind of images that Jason presented in this thread (very nice
>shots, btw!), the higher ISO range (1600-3200) of a pro digital camera
>could allow higher shutter speeds and/or smaller apertures than one could
>use with ISO 400 film,


As a matter of fact, there are 6X6cm chips (Dicomed BigShot, others) and
even 4X5" backs (Dicomed, Leaf, others). These have been around for some
years now, but as yet have not captured their intended markets, partly, of
course, because of their exorbitant cost, but also, in contrast to what
you state, because of their SLOWNESS. Some of the large format digital
backs require three separate exposures to do color, others do it in one,
slow go. Add to this the fact that you need to transport a huge computer
to store the image output, and suddenly film is starting to look like it
has more future than was once postulated!

G Faris

[Neil Gould]

Recently, Greg Farris > posted:

> In article >,
> says...
>
> For one, as yet
>> there are no full-frame (56x56mm) medium format digital sensors, so a
>> typical medium format camera will still outperform the best 35mm
>> format digital cameras.
>>
>> For the kind of images that Jason presented in this thread (very nice
>> shots, btw!), the higher ISO range (1600-3200) of a pro digital
>> camera could allow higher shutter speeds and/or smaller apertures
>> than one could use with ISO 400 film,
>
>
> As a matter of fact, there are 6X6cm chips (Dicomed BigShot, others)
>
Oh? I couldn't find any such information on Dicomed's site. I'd be
interested in a pointer to some info about this one or other 6x6cm sensor
products, since the largest that I've seen are in the neighborhood of 36mm
x 49mm (e.g. Imacon).

> and even 4X5" backs (Dicomed, Leaf, others).
>
These are _scanning_ backs, not single-shot sensors. They'd be fairly
useless for aerial photography. ;-)

Regards,

Neil

[George Patterson]

Greg Farris wrote:

> The digital vs film "shootouts"
> being published today generally concern high-end 6-10MP cameras, compared to
> 24x36mm film. But most aerial photographers don't use 24x36mm much.

The cameras to which I referred are upwards of 12 MP. And, yes, they're being
compared to 35mm film.

George Patterson
Drink is the curse of the land. It makes you quarrel with your neighbor.
It makes you shoot at your landlord. And it makes you miss him.

[Ice blonde]

Ok, ok, she runs head held under hands away from the weight of
photographic knowledge bearing down......

That is obviously no longer the case, I stand well and truly corrected.

Regards

[Greg Farris]

In article >,
says...

>Oh? I couldn't find any such information on Dicomed's site. I'd be
>interested in a pointer to some info about this one or other 6x6cm sensor
>products, since the largest that I've seen are in the neighborhood of 36mm
>x 49mm (e.g. Imacon).


Here's some older info :

http://www.epi-centre.com/reports/9604cs.html

and more recently, they introduced a single-shot color back :

http://www.epi-centre.com/reports/9610ecs.html

One has to look for historical articles on these items, as they did not
capture their intended markets at the time of their introduction. The $55K+
price tag certainly had something to do with that.


>These are _scanning_ backs, not single-shot sensors. They'd be fairly
>useless for aerial photography. ;-)

Agreed!!


G Faris

[Neil Gould]

Recently, Greg Farris > posted:

> In article >,
> says...
>
>> Oh? I couldn't find any such information on Dicomed's site. I'd be
>> interested in a pointer to some info about this one or other 6x6cm
>> sensor products, since the largest that I've seen are in the
>> neighborhood of 36mm x 49mm (e.g. Imacon).
>
> Here's some older info :
>
> http://www.epi-centre.com/reports/9604cs.html
>
> and more recently, they introduced a single-shot color back :
>
> http://www.epi-centre.com/reports/9610ecs.html
>
Interesting, and thanks for the links.

> One has to look for historical articles on these items, as they did
> not capture their intended markets at the time of their introduction.
> The $55K+ price tag certainly had something to do with that.
>
I wonder if this Dicomed product ever made it beyond the prototype stage?
Other MF digital backs are selling, and they are neither full frame nor
all that much cheaper, even today. If the technology was what it was
supposed to be, a full-frame 6x6cm sensor would be attractive, even at its
comparatively low 16 mp resolution.

Regards,

Neil

[Greg Farris]

In article >,
says...

>>
>I wonder if this Dicomed product ever made it beyond the prototype stage?
>Other MF digital backs are selling, and they are neither full frame nor
>all that much cheaper, even today. If the technology was what it was
>supposed to be, a full-frame 6x6cm sensor would be attractive, even at its
>comparatively low 16 mp resolution.
>


Oh, I think they sold quite a few at first - but you know, I have a friend
who is fond of saying, "If the printed book were introduced today as a new
invention, it would be considered revolutionary! It requires no batteries!
Contains vast quantities of information of every sort - It's light,
portable - you can take it in your vest pocket to the most remote
locations, share it with friends, even add annotations if you care to - put
it on the shelf and at the end of your life it's still there, exactly as
you remember it . . ."

I think these early large-cell CCD backs had people saying "Gee, film
really is a great medium after all . . ."


A roll of 5" wide film takes up about as much space as a rolled-up
newspaper - yet you would need to rebuild your airplane to accommodate a
vast computer (28V of course) to harbor as much information in digital
format.

G Faris

[Morgans]

"Greg Farris" > wrote
>
>
> A roll of 5" wide film takes up about as much space as a rolled-up
> newspaper - yet you would need to rebuild your airplane to accommodate a
> vast computer (28V of course) to harbor as much information in digital
> format.

I don't think your argument holds water. A fast notebook can process
pictures of that size comfortably. Storage is not a problem either.

There are external USB 2.0 disc drives of 250GB out there, reasonable
priced. When one gets full, swap another in, or have multiple drives
plugged in at the same time.

This is not to say that film does not still have its advantages, but there
are situations where the digital is desirable, mainly for the instant
availability.
--
Jim in NC

[George Patterson]

Morgans wrote:

> This is not to say that film does not still have its advantages, but there
> are situations where the digital is desirable, mainly for the instant
> availability.

I would also love it for the ability to change the ISO from shot to shot.

George Patterson
Drink is the curse of the land. It makes you quarrel with your neighbor.
It makes you shoot at your landlord. And it makes you miss him.

[Greg Farris]

In article >, says...

>
>I don't think your argument holds water. A fast notebook can process
>pictures of that size comfortably. Storage is not a problem either.
>
>There are external USB 2.0 disc drives of 250GB out there, reasonable
>priced. When one gets full, swap another in, or have multiple drives
>plugged in at the same time.
>


Agreed - but the devices in question were introduced between five and ten
years ago. At that time, the data transfer rates and storage capacity did
present a big problem. At the time, scanning backs were offered at very
high cost to advertising studios, with huge Macintosh computers and RAID
drive arrays, all for a result that took several minutes to produce and
paled in comparison to the 8X10 ektachromes the studios were using. You can
imagine how enthusiastically these were received!

Don't get me wrong - I am absolutely convinced that digital acquisition
will prevail (and should prevail) in all of the applications we are talking
about, and there is every good reason for this. In Europe, some
photogrammetric survey teams are already replacing their 9X9" vertical
cameras with digital systems. These are mastodons though, with three
separate cameras for RGB and huge storage banks - and even with this I'll
bet there is some compromise - they've probably decided they don't really
need "all" the information they get out of those 9X9" films. They are doing
this because they can output these files directly into their map-making
production process, without having to go through the whole scanning
routine. And they are probably already discovering some other advantages as
well. Digital acquisition will continue to make inroads into traditional
film processes, and this will happen very quickly. For right now though, we
should remember that film is a very compact, rapid and easy to use medium,
with a data storage capacity far in excess of any commercially available
digital format. This is of prodigious interest in aerial photography,
where, more than other types of photography, we are concerned with the
highest possible resolution and data acquisition.

G Faris

[Mike W.]

The firm I work for (Dayton OH) has two digital aerial cameras. You say they
are 'mastadons', they went in the same planes the RC-30's came out of. I am
positive they are color, but they may be single 'chip'.

"Greg Farris" > wrote in message
...
> In article >, says...
>
> In Europe, some
> photogrammetric survey teams are already replacing their 9X9" vertical
> cameras with digital systems. These are mastodons though, with three
> separate cameras for RGB and huge storage banks - and even with this I'll
> bet there is some compromise - they've probably decided they don't really
> need "all" the information they get out of those 9X9" films. They are
doing
> this because they can output these files directly into their map-making
> production process, without having to go through the whole scanning
> routine. And they are probably already discovering some other advantages
as
> well. Digital acquisition will continue to make inroads into traditional
> film processes, and this will happen very quickly. For right now though,
we
> should remember that film is a very compact, rapid and easy to use medium,
> with a data storage capacity far in excess of any commercially available
> digital format. This is of prodigious interest in aerial photography,
> where, more than other types of photography, we are concerned with the
> highest possible resolution and data acquisition.
>
> G Faris
>

[Greg Farris]

In article >,
says...
>
>
>The firm I work for (Dayton OH) has two digital aerial cameras. You say they
>are 'mastadons', they went in the same planes the RC-30's came out of. I am
>positive they are color, but they may be single 'chip'.
>

Maybe they're the Intergraph Z/I system, which has a footprint similar to an
RC-30 or RMK TOP. I don't think they're single-chip though (correct me if I'm
wrong) I recall seeing three or four lenses on the bottom of them. What does
trhe data capture/processing system look like? Are there new equipment racks
in the planes?

G Faris