It’s really strange that there’s been so much development in all other aspects of UAV Mapping, except one – the camera!
Currently most of us are using the Canon S100-120 or Sony Nex7 etc, running custom firmware or tricky wiring and triggers to fire the shutter in flight.
So over the years I’ve been working on a wish list of what my perfect UAV mapping camera would be like and decided to post it here, maybe someone knows of such a beast somewhere or can add to the wishlist and perhaps a manufacturer can build one for us!
For NDVI I’m using Tertracam’s great cameras, which are perfect for UAVs, so most of these points already exist for NDVI cameras.
- A light case, perhaps plastic
- A fixed 9mm lens, no zoom
- No flash
- No LCD
- Mounting holes
- Optional battery (less wires) or external power (lower weight)
- A built in intervalometer
- An external GPS unit
- A very large optical sensor – 1” or more for 20-30M pixels
- A way to trigger the shutter externally (from APM) for those that prefer this method
- 1/2000 sec shutter at a low F stop
- Permanent infinity focus
- Replacement parts – i.e. lens, board, case in case of “intendents”
- Sync on-board clock with GPS
Is there such a thing? Do you have any more to add to the wish list? Can somebody build this for us please?
Comments
Yes, the nx mini is 269g, although only 21mp, however actual detail resolving is similar to nx500.
Yea under the wing, using a simple roll gimbal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGHCgbki8qI
What is heavy ? NX500 ?
About heavy how do you fix you camera under the wing ? I asked myself a couple of day about how to fix it under skywalker wing and afraid about that ... May be there is a trick ?
If the price is very high, camlight should not be good but it's a good concept : 300g for 24x36 global shutter camera !
Thanks for the NX500 link. It's a bit heavy. Looking forward to the Camlight!
There are some enhancement possible with NX500 : watch here => https://github.com/ottokiksmaler/nx500_nx1_modding
I found the perfect camera but it's still a work in progress by french geographic institute : "Camlight IGN". May be soon ...
Mashall, we skim the surface :) Seriously, I'd love a Samsung NX500 with a 16mm pancake that can do intervalometry.
Huges, great point. That's part of the reason why I suggested no LCD. Maybe small OLED just to show the basics.
I wish all of that plus:
a cubic form factor to fit most frames (thinking of wings or Airplanes). The current shape of a Sony NEX is too wide in most air frames to be setup in a landscape mode.
If we get rid of the LCD screen, no more reasons to keep the rectangular wide shape.
I am curious how you are all getting high accuracy mapping to generate topographic maps using anything other than a 20+ MP DSLR with GPS geotagging? I would switch to the Sony A7 series is a second if it didn't require post processing of the photos and flight logs to achieve geotagging.
Feedback to the flight controller via pwm or whatever of when the actual image was taken
Good one.
Interchangeable different sizes lens in mm and with interchangeable filters capability
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