Test Video with the ContourHD 1080p Camera

Recently, my friend Ken Moore came to town and brought his new ContourHD 1080p camera with him. In this video over Kiwanis Park in Tempe, Arizona, we tried out the ContourHD 1080p video camera on my Hawkeye camera plane. The first half of this video was shot in 1080p @ 30 fps mode. The second half was shot in 720p @ 60 fps mode. The video was then edited in Adobe Premiere Elements and rendered in 720p at 30 fps.

Aerial PhotoSynth of my neighborhood

I shot this series of photos on December 18th, 2009, of my neighborhood (Trailside Point) in Laveen, Arizona. These photos were taken using my Hawkeye RC place and a Canon SD960 IS digital camera.

My First True 720p HD Aerial Video

This is my first aerial video shot in true 720p high definition. Up until now, my videos were all shot at 640x480, then upscaled and cropped in Adobe Premiere Elements.

My wonderful wife recently gave me a new camera as an early father's day gift. It is the Canon PowerShot SD960IS, which shoots H.264 encoded video at 1280 x 720 @ 30 fps.

The purpose of this video is simply to display the HD shooting ability of the new camera.

Hawkeye: My New RC Plane for Aerial Photography

I bought a new RC plane recently that is specifically designed for aerial photography. It's called the Hawkeye, and it was designed and manufactured by Joel Scholz of ElectricFlights.com. In addition to being well suited for aerial photography, it also breaks down to fit inside a carry-on suitcase so that it can travel easily.

Below are some of the videos that I shot recently with the Hawkeye (in order from newest to oldest). As you can see from the earlier video, I had a heck of a time getting the video to be free of vibrations. In the end, I learned that the Hawkeye is very sensitive to out-of-balance propellers. Once I bought a prop balancer and balanced my props, most of the vibrations went away.

Photosynth - It's not just for inaugurations...

You may have seen the "Photosynth" panorama of President Obama's inauguration on CNN.com. If not, Photosynth is a tool developed by Microsoft which allows you to upload a series of photos of a particular scene, and the Photosynth software stitches them together into one big, navigable, 3D panorama.

Here's a couple that I made from aerial photos taken with my RC plane. I made these just to experiment with the software, but now that it's gaining popularity after the inauguration, I'm going to have to make some more.

Beautiful Sedona, Arizona:


South Mountain in Phoenix, Arizona: