A week or so ago I found out that the Half Moon Bay International Marathon was going to take place in my town, and the route was even coming right past my house. I contacted the Executive Director and asked him if he would consider allowing me to fly my Cinestar above the race route, and possibly even the starting line. His response was really funny: Well of all the emails I get, and this time of year, I receive many, yours is the most interesting and amazing. I think this sounds like a fantastic thing to do. And provided that you can assure us that the athletes or volunteers will never feel threatened by something flying close to them etc., and you would grant us unlimited, royalty-free usage of the footage you provide, yes, you have our permission.So I got to the starting area before dawn and staked out a safe zone. I did a test flight to measure up the distances, and waited for the start. There were actually several starts with different groups of runners (full and half marathons, 5K, etc.) and I was able to capture a few of them. Obviously I had to time my flights carefully so as to not spend too much time in the air. I was at an average altitude of 50-60m over the start/finish line, which provided enough sound isolation for the announcements to be clearly heard. I also avoided flying directly over the mass of runners, preferring to stay slightly off to one side or the other. My takeoff/landing zone was clearly marked with CAUTION tape. I was flying with the Iftron downlink split between my SmallHD display and my Zeiss glasses, and was able to very accurately control my camera framing. And I even let my son's girlfriend watch the SmallHD display, and she loved it! I've included a couple photos of my takeoff/landing zone, as well as a nice little video I put together. Of note is that I did not do any post stabilization. The GH3 and my Radians seem to be pretty happy together these days.
Come now, Steve. You know the rules. No away from home take-offs and landings without a Haynes Approved Blue Tarp™. But here's you using a battleship-sized chunk of concrete. How on earth did you get that to the site? Nice footage though. What are you using for the video splitter? Just a Y-cable? Andy.
Great video Steve! It always feels good when you finish an event and you haven't crashed, and you haven't hurt anyone. This is good resume video too. Was that the GH3 capturing the video?
It was actually a large slab of granite. The field where I was had a few of them. Really nice. And really heavy. Yup, just an old-fashioned RCA to 2xRCAs. Works great.
LOL. Yes, I prefer to keep my casualty count low. This was the GH3 in its 24P mode. Basically straight out of the camera. Running manual exposure (tricky as the light was changing rapidly with the sun rising), and focus locked at almost infinity (Google "hyperfocal distance").
Got a nice shout out from the local Patch site today. Fortunately, the writer chose to regurgitate what I wrote about my work, although she couldn't resist using the word "drone". Oh well. I hope I did you all proud! http://halfmoonbay.patch.com/groups...w-of-the-half-moon-bay-international-marathon
Not quite: Hyperfocal distance is the distance at which, for a given aperture, you focus the lens to have everything from that distance to infinity in "acceptable" focus. I was always taught to bear in mind there is no such thing as "in focus" -- there's just "not apparently out of focus" -- keeping the circle of confusion smaller than the pixel sensor (or the grain of silver for them's what remembers....) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperfocal_distance Andy.
Pretty cool Steve! I know in Pittsburgh they have home land security here and everything is taken extremely seriously so no changes to do it.
The Marathon start was literally a few hundred yards from the end of the runway at the local airport. Our airport is a tiny field, though, and there's not much traffic. I contacted them, and there was a fellow from the airport who was monitoring the unicom (?) frequency to alert any airplanes in the area to my presence. I never went over 200-250 feet, and there were no airplanes in the area at any time. They actually didn't want airplanes landing at that time, anyway, because of the potential of disrupting the announcements, etc. And I also conferred with the Sheriffs who were on site and made sure they knew what I was doing. They were all super supportive, polite and curious. All advantages of living in what, for all intents and purposes, is a small town. And just yesterday, the organizers of the local Pumpkin Festival and Parade contacted me and asked if I could reprise what I did for them. Sadly, I am not going to be in town for that event, as I would have LOVED to have done that. And I would have taken a shot at landing on the winning giant pumpkin, too. Those beasts tip the scales at over 1,000 pounds!