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 p.657 #9 · Mustang Air to Air: The Sequel | |
I had a series of helicopter aerials to shoot yesterday, over two dozen locations and multiple angles. Winter aerials are always a bit disappointing due to the dormant landscape, but we do what we have to do. This was the first helicopter shoot since my buddy went down in his so it was a bit of a gut check but mind over matter you know, get back on that horse. The winds were light, the sky was perfect, first time in quite a while that those conditions existed.
I have transitioned over to the R5 for the majority of my work, it is a remarkable piece of equipment. The R5 is well suited to assignments like I had yesterday where I shot 3,600 perspectives in the span of a couple of hours. The light weight, precise AF, and fast buffer make it a wonderful tool. I had not flown with this pilot before but he was excellent, it seems like he anticipated my every need on each location so we were able to do the shoot very efficiently. Tim normally flies me but he is not going to be back in the cockpit for 8 months to a year. Tom and I launched off in an R22 and I could tell immediately that he was an excellent helicopter pilot. The requirements involved in air to ground real estate assignments are very different from other helicopter work. I've had guys that flew the helicopter well, but required continuous coaching to get me in the correct orbits, altitudes and perspectives. Helicopters aren't inexpensive to charter and a great pilot like Tim or Tom can save me a considerable amount of money, as well as keep me from being an unflattering shade of green on the homeward leg.
The crisp frame rate of the R5, I was shooting with it set on "Continous" not even continuous +, saves me multiple orbits. The 5DSR, my previous choice for aerials, would always fill the buffer causing me to have to do several additional orbits and at $10 a minute that adds up. Efficient planning, a great pilot and the R5 probably saved me $600 on yesterday's flight alone.
Last night, as I began to dig into all the images, I once again was reminded why I love shooting big MP sensor equipment. There is always back and forth on social media about why one would ever need anything larger than a 24MP sensor, some people really get snippy about it. As we have said many times, each camera is just a different sized hammer and each job is different. Last night I whipped through about 75% of the images before my eyelids gave up the ghost, as I was churning through them I found myself doing multiple crops of different sections of the images. Some of the crops were half of the frame, some as tight as a third, but the big sensor on the R5 allowed me the freedom to do all of it without any thought about how small the final image was going to be. Another thing that struck me about the R5, and it has gotten successively better with each camera generation,
there was not one single frame that wasn't tack sharp. Pretty remarkable, 3600+ shots bouncing around the sky in a helicopter and not one soft frame. I don't even bother attaching a gyro to the camera since I began using the R5. Looking into the future, there will be many situations where I won't shoot the R1 if it's 85MP, and the R5's will still earn their keep. I am glad that I didn't go with the R3 (still get a twinge), for me and my work I feel like the sensor threshold bottoms out at 50MP.
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!Looks like all heck will snow on us this weekend!!!
