- Ron I've seen some of your aerial panoramics.
They're quite breathtaking.
And you've actually shot a lot of panoramas
from a real helicopter.
What are some of the challenges associated with this,
as well as the benefits?
- [Ron] Well, I think the benefit's pretty clear.
You're up in a 600 feet, 800 feet high,
and it's just these beautiful 360s that,
for instance, I was hired to do a.
The view from a high rise that hadn't been built yet.
And the marketing department wanted that.
So that's a good example of the times we
have done aerials to begin a virtual tour from the air.
Where then, they're able to click down into
the streets and the businesses
and whatever the needs are.
- [Rich] Like maybe seeing an entire college campus,
or an aerial of a town, right?
- [Ron] Exactly.
We did a college campus where they could click into
places like the fields and the locker rooms
and things for recruiting of the athletes, yeah.
- [Rich] So, that's pretty cool.
And when you do this, do you have to have
specialized equipment?
Are you attaching the camera outside of the helicopter?
Or are you shooting out the window
and the helicopter turns around in a circle?
- You would think, right? (laugh)
I've basically solved it by just
sticking the camera out there and shooting it,
pretty similar to other 360s.
I try to use a pretty wide angle lens,
so I don't need too many images.
Parallax can be in issue because it's
a lot of movement.
We're 800 feet above Miami, and the pilot
did a great job but we were still moving around quite a bit.
But luckily that distance, it wasn't a real big problem.
But, some of the other challenge, you know,
there's cost, and there's weather.
And there's a lot of planning to do.
There's a lot of things that can go wrong.
Hopefully nothing too epic, like dropping things,
or having, you know. (laugh)
But there's a lot of factors to consider.
- Yeah, and there are safety issues
with shooting out of a helicopter.
Make sure of course that you get a pilot for this
who's well experienced.
We have done some helicopter aerials before
for video productions, and in this case,
they do make specialized camera mounts
that are on some helicopters.
Of course, that adds to the cost.
Not that helicopters are common place,
but helicopters with dedicated camera mounts
are even less common.
But one thing that keeps popping up is what we have here.
Which are quad-copters.
Or some people refer to them as drones.
Now, of course, there are legislation and legal issues,
depending upon the country that you are shooting in,
so make sure you check your local laws,
if this is allowed.
But, in many cases, these types of cameras
are actually getting quite good.
These cameras can both actually shoot raw photos.
So we can capture DNG files that allow for
a lot of flexibility.
And why is shooting raw so important
when you shoot an aerial photo?
There's no bracketing off of a helicopter.
- Right, well there is.
You can bracket, but I use that for the old reason of,
just making, covering my you know what,
to make sure that I've exposed properly.
Because the bracketing helps that.
I think that's where bracketing originated anyway.
- Sure, but you're not gonna merge
those into HDR any time soon.
- No, no, exactly.
But shooting raw does give us enough flexibility.
We're usually shooting aerials, let's face it,
in the middle of the day, so there's not a lot
of differences in light.
And you can really grab a lot of
details still from those raw files.
- Well it's kind of cool too with these
newer versions of quad-copters
is that they have the ability that
you can actually program the flight path.
So, using something like an iPad or a tablet,
you can take a look at a map of your location,
and actually set point to point shooting.
This makes it easy to really lay out a flight path,
if you want to do something like a virtual tour,
and show some different locations.
Or be very specific.
Now, this is the entry level model here.
And while it does have a raw camera,
and it works very well, there are some limitations,
in that it's not quite as good at
actually hovering in place.
On the other hand, the Inspire here
has some downward facing cameras,
and some more GPS sensors.
It's actually quite good at a hover,
and can even work in an indoor shooting situation,
where maybe you're shooting inside of a stadium.
This particular unit doesn't have to have GPS
in order to maintain its stability.
And what you'll find there is that it can use
some built in sensors to better detect collisions,
so that it can hover in place
and maintain its position.
Now, with a copter like this, we take it up,
what are we gonna do?
- I've been noticing that
a lot of the video footage we see from the drones is
maybe too well stabilized.
I think it almost doesn't seem natural anymore.
But we can take advantage of that for 360s.
Because it's so well stabilized
it's only going to help with the movement
and avoiding parallax.
- [Rich] Yeah, so this will allow you
to take the drone or quad-copter up,
set it in position and then with the control stick,
or the software, you can actually have it rotate in place.
So essentially, when the unit goes up,
and it rises, and you've framed up the shot,
it's just going to essentially turn on axis
and capture the full 360.
Now, of course, the stability of this,
there might be some up and down.
But, we are shooting from a pretty big distance here.
Now, I can't emphasize enough,
there are different legislations in place
in different parts of the world.
You will have flight ceiling heights
so that while you can fly with these in many areas,
there will of course be restrictions near airports.
And there usually is a height so that this
doesn't interfere with commercial airlines.
So, make sure you balance that out.
Check the local legislation.
And you'll find some additional training here,
on the online library to really help you through
some of the ideas of using these.
But this is one more way to capture a 360
from a place that you really can't
lug a tripod to, can you?
- [Ron] It's amazing.
We're seeing some really great 360s
from those that are creating them.
I know where I am, and I think where we are,
we can't even fly them.
And we're not allowed to use them for commercial use.
So I haven't really investigated them too much myself,
beyond talking to those that do it.
And I see some great results from
some other panoramic photographers.
- But the ability to get a permit,
and actually get that license is an option.
So, make sure you check that with
your local legislation, depending upon
your country of origin.
There is a process to actually use this
for commercial use.
Again, be compliant with the legislation in your country.
But, this is one more way to get the shot.