In Flight Video

I am, sadly, not an RV Flyer. I do, however, recognize that the RV Community seems to know a thing or two about what I want to do. I spend my summers soaring around the midwest in my single seat glider. My prefered mode of soaring is to do cross country flights, ranging in distance (so far) from 10 to 105 miles. As can be guessed, most of these end up in off airport landings. While cross country soaring is common in many parts of the world, I am one of 2 or 3 that regularly go places in my glider in Iowa. Also, good video of off field landing site selection and landings is hard to come by. So with that in mind I am exploring my options of putting some sort of 'bullet' camera on my glider so I can collect in flight and off field landing video of this upcoming season. I have noticed a lot of good videos featuring RV's that use a similar camera setup? What do you all use? Finding something that would be cheap is definitely high on my priority list. Thanks!

alex,

thanks! glad that you enjoy the stories on RAS. Ill be sure to keep them coming starting in March or April

which camera?

Does anyone know which digital video camera has a slow enough shutter speed so that propellers look proper (blurred discs not sticks going slow or backwards) and has a anologue input for remote lipstick camera?

Bevan
Rv7A wiring

Video

Bevan:

I have a Cannon HV10 DV Video camera that accepts analog video but it will "strobe" the propeller unless the light level is low enough to force it into a longer "shutter speed".

I have a lipstick camera mounted in the fiberglass tip of the vertical stabilizer with power and video signal into the cockpit of my RV-8.

I think the propeller strobing is a "given" with consumer video equipment. I could be wrong. Professional gear may be different.

The quality with this camcorder is only as good as the lipstick camera. Mine is 380 tv lines with the camera I have which is much better by the way than than the old VHS video camcorders of years ago.

The Camcorder is capable of HDTV 1080I wide screen (US NTSC standards) but the lipstick camera is not.

Bevan said:

Does anyone know which digital video camera has a slow enough shutter speed so that propellers look proper (blurred discs not sticks going slow or backwards) and has a anologue input for remote lipstick camera?

Bevan
Rv7A wiring

Click to expand...

I don't know about video cameras as I don't own one. Following Paul Dye's lead, I did a couple of videos using a Canon pocket still camera in the last few weeks. In video, everything is automatic. In each, around the 2/3 point I shoot through the propeller.

In the first one the propeller's disk is pretty blurry but can be seen to be moving in the proper direction. In the second there is a semi-strobe effect (sticks, I guess), with the propeller showing up heavier at particular places, but again it is shown turning in the proper direction.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc5DKEmTQ7A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D38oEP2ILzg

I have no idea what is happening with these pocket cameras, but maybe you can get something from it. The original video is much higher quality than the youtube version.

Propeller strobing

You can often solve the shutter-speed issue on consumer camcorders by adding a ND (Neutral Density) filter to the lens. They come in various darknesses -- you'll just have to try various shades to find one that works on a sunny day with your particular camcorder and/or bullet camera. The ND filter will trick the camera into thinking it's darker outside than it really is, slowing down the shutter speed and therefore blurring the propeller. The big gotcha is that you must do your filming on a really bright day (full sun), otherwise you get a nice blurry prop but an overall dim, muddy image.

This tip will not work as well on some of the under-$200 camcorders (or the cheap all-in-one lipstick cameras) whose shutters are not very adjustable in the first place.

Many recent high-end comsumer camcorders have a 24P setting (24 frames per second, Progressive scan) that will almost totally eliminate the weird "prop effect" from your inflight videos.