Starting to play around with some air-to-air video.

Objects in video may be closer than they appear.




Music: Moby, "God Moving Over the Face of the Waters"

Very cool!

simply stunning! what a watch. thankyou so much!

Timbo

Fantastic video and fine music to match!

I have viewed videos in the past that were great, but in my opinion, the hard rock music in the background took much away from the overall quality. Yes, you can turn the 'noise' off, but then you just have a silent film.

Thanks for posting this awesome work and please keep them coming.

Thanks guys. I appreciate the nice comments. You're really an airplane bum if you can stand to watch an uncut two and a half minute clip of straight and level flight!

I've always wanted to try and capture on video how flying makes me feel, mostly so I have something to use for "flight therapy" on those days when the Wx is too bad to fly. It'll never be as good as actual flying, but little videos like this help to tide me over until I can get back in the air!

RanchPilot wrote:Starting to play around with some air-to-air video.

Objects in video may be closer than they appear.

I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but I wonder how things would look if you picked a more narrow FOV. Wide angle is great for scenic shots, but maybe mixing it up with some "close ups" would add visual interest.

A couple weeks ago I mentioned a buddy who was thinking about getting a 195. Well, he did. But I won't be back in the US until around thanksgiving. He and I will do some flying then, but since you're doing some videos *now* I thought I'd pass along my idea on the subject. I'm very interested to see the results if you experiment some (especially if it doesn't work out!).

I agree. Unfortunately, believe it or not, most of this air-to-air stuff was shot at the highest "zoom" level I could get out of these cameras. I have an old Drift and a newer GoPro and, for both cameras, when I zoom them in as much as I can, I can still barely get objects in the distance to look like anything more than a speck. These fisheye lenses are great for POV stuff, but don't do very well for capturing anything but broad scenery much past 20 yards. As a result, that's about where I ended up at the end of this long approaching shot--something like 20-30 yards behind the plane ahead. I know it doesn't look like it from the video, but I was nervous about getting any closer for fear of trimming his tail.

If anyone else has tips on how to accomplish a better zoom with these POV cameras, I'd love to hear it. In the meantime, I'm going to keep playing with this air-to-air stuff. There is something mesmerizing to me about the free-floating image of a plane in flight like this.

RanchPilot wrote:I agree. Unfortunately, believe it or not, most of this air-to-air stuff was shot at the highest "zoom" level I could get out of these cameras. I have an old Drift and a newer GoPro and, for both cameras, when I zoom them in as much as I can, I can still barely get objects in the distance to look like anything more than a speck. These fisheye lenses are great for POV stuff, but don't do very well for capturing anything but broad scenery much past 20 yards. As a result, that's about where I ended up at the end of this long approaching shot--something like 20-30 yards behind the plane ahead. I know it doesn't look like it from the video, but I was nervous about getting any closer for fear of trimming his tail.

If anyone else has tips on how to accomplish a better zoom with these POV cameras, I'd love to hear it. In the meantime, I'm going to keep playing with this air-to-air stuff. There is something mesmerizing to me about the free-floating image of a plane in flight like this.

Ok, good info, thanks. I guess the action cams are the wrong tool for this job then. I'll probably still give it a try, but it sounds like I should also take the back door off and put someone in the back with a standard camera.

And 100% agreed on the appeal of air to air video!

Here's one of my absolute favorite air-to-air vids ever. Turns out they were using a standard GoPro 2 mounted on the tailwheel of a J-3. Based on my experience, at least, you'd have to be unbelievably close to get these kind of images from a POV (the video creator estimated they were 5-10 feel apart at times).

https://vimeo.com/49552527

(link only, because Vimeo won't let me embed this video for some reason)