First shoot pictures...

It's been a year since my girls shot of off rockets. They were excited to build again. My youngest daughter built a Yankee. My 4yo had help building shattered. Hers went high on an A8-3. And was completely lost on the second launch of a B6-4. It was fast! There was lots of excitement from the kids.
His didn't go nearly as high, but was much more fun to watch land. And far far easier to watch on the sky.

Any suggestions on taking good pictures?

Hmm. That didn't load a picture. Maybe this?

athomeontheprairie said:

Hmm. That didn't load a picture. Maybe this?

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Yeah, loading pictures here is something of an art. I rotate mine in Paint; a couple to the left, a couple to the right, straighten it up and save.



Nice one, keep 'em comin' !

athomeontheprairie said:

Any suggestions on taking good pictures?

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There's a couple methods I use. First, if you have a camera with a high burst speed, that is your best bet. There's really no substitute for that. Also, if you're using a camera that has manual focus capability, use it. That will keep the camera from trying to adjust when the rocket moves. Secondly, if you don't mind smaller pictures, you can pull stills from video. An iPhone in 4k should produce some decent stills.

I have an SLR with an auto-winder (okay, I know that's an archaic term), but I can get about three frames a second outdoors with a high F stop.

Bat-mite said:

I have an SLR with an auto-winder (okay, I know that's an archaic term), but I can get about three frames a second outdoors with a high F stop.

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I don't get much better with my DSLR. I get 4 per second with my SL1 and 3 with my backup XTi.

Tonimus said:

I don't get much better with my DSLR. I get 4 per second with my SL1 and 3 with my backup XTi.

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Sorry, mine is digital also. I just couldn't remember the name of the "auto-winder" feature. "Continuous shooting" maybe?

Continuous shooting, burst mode, etc. Each manufacturer calls it something different.

Our R/C flying club recently started trying to rekindle rocketry here in El Paso.

Mike

My method of getting launch pictures is to use my cel phone to take a camera video of the launch. I later upload the video into my PC, play it, and hit the pause button at the time the video shows the model lifting off. Sometimes it takes many attempts to get it to pause on a frame that shows the rocket, so it's good to have a good clear launch countdown in the audio that you can key off of. I find that a typical video will yield at least 3 good shots of a model: The first at the moment of ignition, or just slighty up the rod, the second at mid-rod to just clearing the rod, and the third with the model several feet above the pad. Once I land on a good video frame, I do a screen shot of it which I can then transport into another program like Paint to do the necessary editing.

Here is an example of the results of this technique on a recent flight of my Estes Lynx...



The still pictures aren't as clear as ones you might take with a quality camera on burst mode, but for my own flight documentation purposes, this technique proves more than adequate.

milehigh said:

My method of getting launch pictures is to use my cel phone to take a camera video of the launch. I later upload the video into my PC, play it, and hit the pause button at the time the video shows the model lifting off. Sometimes it takes many attempts to get it to pause on a frame that shows the rocket, so it's good to have a good clear launch countdown in the audio that you can key off of.

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If you have an iPhone try an app like Video 2 Photo or Crop & Zoom. These apps take your cell phone or iPad video and allow you to see individual frames. Once you find the perfect frame you can then crop and save as a photo.

SuperSlo is also a neat app. You can take segments of a video and slow down to 1/8 speed. I have all three of these apps and use them for all my launch photos and reviewing flights.

I suspect there are similar apps for android

only suggestion i have for taking pictures is don't let me take em!

something you can do to help locate the rocket when the ejection charge goes off is get some red chalkline chalk and put some in th ebody tube on top of the chute- basically last thing before nose cone goes on. it makes a nice little cloud upon ejection and easier for me to spot them high flying small rockets

Welcome (back) to the hobby! Nice photo too.

Some nice photo techniques mentioned above. If you have/plan to get a DSLR or other camera, look for high frame rate options (older, faster models can cost similar amounts used/refurbished as newer lower-end ones).

I used to use a Panasonic FZ200, which runs at 12 fps-but only for one second so make sure to time the burst well!

I now use a Canon 7D, 8 fps with nearly unlimited buffer helps immensely for shots like this (both of these were large heavy rockets and flew fairly slowly):




One key trick: Fast shutter speed (1/3200 or faster, 1/2000 at slowest) really helps-you can do this on most phones with add-on apps and pretty much every camera. Shutter Priority (S or Tv on the dial) works well.

MikeT said:

Our R/C flying club recently started trying to rekindle rocketry here in El Paso.

Mike

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Just thought I'd say that Big Daddy has a great paint scheme, I really like it