Onboard Rocket Video Taken from off to the Side

[Bruce]

Can anyone point me towards pictures or videos taken from a rocket in flight where the camera is mounted off to the side, rather than closer to the centerline of the rocket? It seems like you might get a better view of the smoke and flames from the motor.

What did the camera setup that took this picture look like? Was the camera on an arm that stuck out to the side or perhaps on a big fin, just outside of the camera's view?

 

[PBic]

I think those pictures may have been taken by someone trying to protect their head with a camera from an errant near horizontal flight.

 

[alexzogh]

Wow, that rocket looks like a land shark!

I've done a few video's where I've located the camera on the edge of a fin like a winglet pointed down. I wasn't impressed with the video. The Smoke and Flames were well off to the outer edge.

 

[Bruce]

Might it be possible to re-aim the camera so that the smoke and flames were in the middle of the picture?

I'd love to see the pictures even if they were off to the edge!

 

[alexzogh]

Here is one -

Unfortunately, I had the camera's pointed out and up, but you get the idea.

 

[jadebox]

I can't find the posts, but Dr. Zooch (Wes) attached a boom to the top of the rocket that held the camera above and to the side. It has a dummy capsule on the opposite side to offset the camera.

Edit: Wes wrote an article on his camera boom rocket for the April 2010 issue of Rockets magazine.

 

[jadebox]

 

[JimJarvis50]

I've always enjoyed this pic. A "P" motor, under thrust, at Mach 1.5, at +/- 15,000 feet. Some people thought it was taken by space aliens.

I have noticed that cameras (mine anyway) on the side of the rocket don't seem to get very colorful flame pictures. I'm not sure why. The boom idea is interesting.

Jim

 

[Bruce]

I've always enjoyed this pic. A "P" motor, under thrust, at Mach 1.5, at +/- 15,000 feet. Some people thought it was taken by space aliens.

I have noticed that cameras (mine anyway) on the side of the rocket don't seem to get very colorful flame pictures. I'm not sure why. The boom idea is interesting.

Jim
View attachment 431280

Nice picture of the P motor in action! Whose rocket was it?

And how did they get that picture? Was the camera mounted on a boom? Is there a picture of the rocket showing how the camera was mounted?

 

[Bruce]

Thanks for finding the excerpt of the Dr Zooch article Roger! It looks very interesting...

Does anyone have the full PDF of that April 2010 issue of Rockets Magazine that they might be willing to share?

 

[Ronz Rocketz]

You could always try launching two rockets next to each other.

 

[BABAR]

Hard to beat this one. Cool....yes!......uh oh....oh no!.....oh noooooooooooooooo!



From this thread

https://www.rocketryforum.com/threads/new-improved-behind-the-rocket-camera-mount.47874/
Thread has some thoughts
https://www.rocketryforum.com/threads/808-cam-on-a-boom-to-film-thrust.69262/#post-754772

 

[JimJarvis50]

Nice picture of the P motor in action! Whose rocket was it?

And how did they get that picture? Was the camera mounted on a boom? Is there a picture of the rocket showing how the camera was mounted?

The rocket was a joint project between me and Stu Barrett. The rocket in the picture is the booster of a two stage, and the camera is on the sustainer. How the picture came to be is one of the most unusual flights in rocketry that I'm aware of. One feature of it was two collisions between the stages. When I first saw the video, I told Stu "you're not going to believe this". It's one way to get a picture of the flame, but I wouldn't recommend it! Here's a vid.

Jim

 

[JimJarvis50]

There's another story associated with this flight that is kind of interesting. In this flight, I used my stabilization module. It is located under the sustainer, and you can see the canards at the start of the video. It was supposed to align the sustainer to vertical during the coast period. However, the first collision knocked the stabilization module off of the bottom of the sustainer. You can see the change in the appearance of the bottom of the sustainer at 0:59 and 1:02. The collision caused the chute on the stabilization module to deploy and then shread (at Mach 1.5) and it crashed. We searched for it for several hours, and just as we were about to give up, my wife spotted it. It was undamaged (built like a tank), and it went on to generate some interesting videos of its own.

Jim