Camera Labs

Has anyone ever done any rc helicopter photography? Radio controlled helicopters are amazing to watch, and photographing them seems like a natural thing to do. Making those rotor blades stop in mid flight is a very cool thing to see.
Just wondered if anyone has ever done any. If not, I may have to submit some to see what reaction it generates in these forums.

I have never done RC photography.

But in order to get the blades frozen in the air whithout them looking like a spiral is to set the shutter at synq speed I think. Which is normally 1/200 or 1/250 depending on your camera.


Personally I'd prefer a bit of motion blur on the blades to give it a sense of motion, allowing me to also blur the background for some real speed effect.

But that's just me.

Sync speed is most likely not fast enough for freezing the blades, I'd go for 1/4000th is light is sufficient.

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I take pictures so quickly, my highschool was "Continuous High".

This is the problem I'm referring to:







Reading about it I realized i was wrong with setting the cam to synq speed.

Citruspers is right. 1/4000th of a second is best. The faster the shutter the less distortion of the blade.

Agun, yes, I see your point. Exactly what I want to avoid. So, setting the shutter speed at about 1/4000 is probably the way to go then. I'll just have to give that a try and see what "develops".
Thank you both for your speedy responses.

setting 1/4000 wont help. look at that last picture that agun posted. the blades are absolutely crisp because a very high shutter speed was used. but they are heavily distorted nonetheless.

the problem is called rolling shutter effect. since the opening and closing of the mechanical shutter takes much longer than 1/4000 of a second, different slices of time are exposed to different areas of the sensor.

what happens is, when you click the shutter release button, the first curtain starts dropping down, exposing the top part of the sensor, 1/4000 second after this, the second curtain already starts closing from the top, while the first curtain is still on its way. so only a small slit is actually exposed at a time. this slit travels from top all the way to the bottom until every part of the sensor was exposed to the light during 1/4000 second. but not every part of the sensor saw the same moment.


what i would do is choose a much longer exposure time (1/60 for example), so the blades form a blurry disc. that way you wont get the distortion and i actually prefer the more dynamic look it gives. but thats personal preference of course.

How about aerial photography with a rc heli, would be great fun once you learn how to fly one. (btw there notoriously difficult to fly)

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Canon 1D Classic
Canon 60d
Canon 17-55mm F2.8 IS, 430ex, 50mm F1.8

I would try 1/125th, that way you could get the picture of the disc made by the blades spining. It looks better seeing the disc made, adds a great sense of speed to the blades rather than them frozen, and you shouldnt have the rolling shutter problem. Good luck shooting them!

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Canon 1D Classic
Canon 60d
Canon 17-55mm F2.8 IS, 430ex, 50mm F1.8

This is my smalest one

for my other ckeck this outhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMDhQa1Ve6A

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Nikkor Dx18-200mm VR
Tamron 70-300mm
nissin 622

Focal Length: 73.0mm (35mm equivalent: 109m...
Exposure Time: 0.0020 s (1/500)
Aperture: f/4.5
ISO Equiv.: 100
Exposure Bias: 1.50



A higher ISO probably would have frozen the blades.
Alot darker day and longer focal length...



Focal Length: 500.0mm (35mm equivalent: 750...
Exposure Time: 0.0008 s (1/1250)
Aperture: f/9.0
ISO Equiv.: 200
Exposure Bias: -0.30

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Pentax K-5
Pentax 18-55mm,Pentax 50-200mm,Sigma 17-70mm,Sigma 70-300mm, Sigma 50-500mm