I was thinking if anyone knows a pilot that we could, at about 2pm, get a plane to fly over mt hamilton, and take overhead pictures of the parking lot?

-Gagan

 

My friend is a pilot, but I don't know about availability. I could give him a call and see.

 

fixed it for you. LOL

 

if u need pics of the parking lot, can't u just use google earth and zoom in?

 

that makes sense. unless they want a pic while everyone is out there.

 

the whole point is to have a photo of the parking lot full of Subarus

 

ohhh nm then

 

I think a good question to ask is does anyone have an rc plane or helicopter that can attach a camera to it?

 

that would be awesome.

 

yeah, me. What day are you looking at? I'm pretty busy but it's $120 per flight hour to rent beech sierra. You also better have a good camera rig because bare minimum is 500' above terrain and I personally don't like to cut it that close, especially over Mt. Hami because the winds are pretty vicious there. Your pictures won't come out that clear because of the plexiglass

Here are some pics.

This is a little over 1000' indicated with a tamron 28-200mm lens, it's a ***** to keep it steady because of the inherent vibration. So think of it that you might get 2x the resolution of you get down to 500' which I won't get down to. Yes there is more resolution, these were resized from 3072x2048, but it's not as close as most people imagine.


And here is about 750' out of the side from Mt. Hami, about 750' below as well, not zoomed much, maybe 65-70mm(for some reason with this lens my exif for focal length is always WAY off, so I have no idea what it actually was.)


You should have someone bring a big ladder and prop it on a tree and get a fixed nice wide lens, you'll get a great effect. Or if someone has an EOS 1Ds(17Mp) with a canon IS lens, you might be able to get enough resolution to be useable.

 

I work for an aerial survey firm, but unfortunately our services would be cost-prohibitive...

 

just skydive and on your way down take pics

 

lol! that could be sooo james bond.... u jump out a plane doing flips, then start snaping pics... then u land into a subaru via sunroof, do some "rally driving" and drive off while doing it with a hot bond chick then you come back to the parking lot (for some unknow reason) and shoot rockets at the BBQ pit to cook some chicken and what not

 

What firm do you work for?

We use a couple different aerial survey firms at my company. I looked into a little on previous work we have had done and costs charged and what not and it would probably cost around $1k - $2k to get it professionally flown. I could be way off though. But you do get some damn high quality photos out of it.

 

Delta Geomatics in Santa Rosa... we're a real small firm and subcontract with a company in Santa Clara for the flying. $1-2k sounds about right. The image quality would be way overkill for these purposes, really. Camera-wise we're talking a USGS calibrated Leica RC-30 with forward motion compensation.