Ken Warner
Posts: 821
Location: Mammoth Lakes, United States
Registered: 14 Aug 2004
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Re: How do you handle poles above 10 meter high?
Posted: 28 Apr 2010 at 17:45 GMT
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Make the spike sharper. Make it a real spike from hardened steel that you can actually dimple concrete with. It just takes a little dimple to give a lot of point stability for the bottom of the pole.
The little tripod looks useful for table top and other applications but not for a tall pole. The lever arm is so great that if the pole gets a little off balance, the tripod will skid and then what are you going to do?
As for the rotator. I don't think you need to be that precise with such a long pole. You can just draw 4 or 6 or 8 marks on the ground with chalk and line the pole up with those as you rotate it. A little pointer sticking out perpendicular to the base of the pole would help to visually set the pole to the next point in the rotation sequence.
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iam360Texas
Posts: 312
Location: Fort Worth, Texas, United States
Registered: 12 Jul 2006
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Re: How do you handle poles above 10 meter high?
Posted: 28 Apr 2010 at 20:54 GMT
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Depending on the pole material - metal, fiberglass etc you will find that it will bend sway as much as 30cm or 12" off center making the no parallax point a moot issue. Typically there are no near by objects. Stitching 4 full sensor circular images is rather easy. If you use a small sensor where the images are cropped left and right edge.. sufficient overlap can be an issue because you have to make sure the 4 images ARE at 90 degrees.
Raising and lowering the pole can be a hassel specially it the wind is blowing.
Special attention IS required if you are using a pole near power line poles. Figure the length of the pole x 2 for distance from power lines.
We find 4 - 5 meter [12 - 15 feet] high pole imaging gives the look and elevated feel for our panoramas.
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Juergen Schrader
Posts: 229
Location: Germany
Registered: 14 Jul 2006
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Re: How do you handle poles above 10 meter high?
Posted: 28 Apr 2010 at 21:27 GMT
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No, Bill, I am using a different built.
Carlos has the Agnos pole and mine is even lighter.
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Nick Fan
[NodalNinja]
Posts: 739
Location: Hong Kong
Registered: 26 May 2006
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Re: How do you handle poles above 10 meter high?
Posted: 29 Apr 2010 at 1:55 GMT
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Ken Warner said: The top two sections look bent to me. A better pole would be sections that unscrewed from each other and all the same diameter rather than a pole that telescopes. The top sections in a telescoping pole then have to be smaller in diameter which obviously makes them bendy which makes the pole hard to handle. A stiff pole is easier to work with -- she said.
As Bill pointed out, the production unit will be more rigid. I am also considering to replace the smallest tube by one more large tube to increase its rigidity further. The current design can support a light weight DSLR with fisheye and lens ring mount. The strengthened one can support an extra motorized rotator on top.
A pole with same diameter is a bad design. Consider a 6 -section pole, the lowest section will have a bending torque ~6 times of the top section. What does this mean? Either the lower section is too weak or the upper section too strong. That is material is wasted and unnecessary weight is put to the top of pole which in turn weakens the pole and puts more loading on the user.
Nick
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Nick Fan
[NodalNinja]
Posts: 739
Location: Hong Kong
Registered: 26 May 2006
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Re: How do you handle poles above 10 meter high?
Posted: 29 Apr 2010 at 2:03 GMT
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iam360Texas said: Raising and lowering the pole can be a hassel specially it the wind is blowing.
Special attention IS required if you are using a pole near power line poles. Figure the length of the pole x 2 for distance from power lines.
Easy raising and lowering is the major reason for a telescopic design. Raising a pole horizontally needs much more effort and clearance than raising vertically.
Thanks for your safety tip.
Nick
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Ken Warner
Posts: 821
Location: Mammoth Lakes, United States
Registered: 14 Aug 2004
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Re: How do you handle poles above 10 meter high?
Posted: 29 Apr 2010 at 3:16 GMT
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Nick Fan said: Easy raising and lowering is the major reason for a telescopic design. Raising a pole horizontally needs much more effort and clearance than raising vertically.
Nick
I think the ease of raising the pole depends on your technique. Think of how a pole vaulter uses a socket to jam the pole into at the moment of lift off. A fixed socket that the end of the pole is placed in makes the job a lot easier. You could use any fixed object on the ground to help you raise your photo pole. Then once it's vertical, moving it to the place you want to shoot from might not be so hard to do. Depends on how high it is.
Also, if you want an even better distribution of weight, a tapered pole would be the best.
I've done some sailing and I'm interpolating my experience with stepping masts to raising your photo pole.
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mrc
Posts: 47
Location: Calgary, Canada
Registered: 21 Oct 2007
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HalfPint
Posts: 79
Location:
Registered: 19 Nov 2007
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Re: How do you handle poles above 10 meter high?
Posted: 29 Apr 2010 at 5:59 GMT
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Nick, Bill,
what I see on your previous how-to-shot is that you support camera/lens in the NPP like this:
What you should try is to support camera/lens in or nearer to the center of gravity:
This way of mounting camera/lens to the pole will give you less pole bending at the top sections and will make handling much more comfortable. And yes, it seems you´re off the NPP, but with less or no more bending of the pole your overall deviation from the NPP will be less. You must try it to believe the difference in handling and stitching. This is a result with no further processing, as you can see it´s quite easy to estimate the 90 degs between shots (4 around, fe lens 8mm, crop 1,5):
tinyurl.com/335r9uj
So I don´t think you really need a rotator. I tried it with a rotator once but from my point of view it´s not helpfull at all.
Another thing - from my expierience putting a motorized head on a handheld pole is not the way to go.
Regards Martin
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Marcus
Posts: 70
Location: Somerset, United Kingdom
Registered: 6 Mar 2005
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Re: How do you handle poles above 10 meter high?
Posted: 29 Apr 2010 at 7:57 GMT
updated: 29 Apr 2010 at 7:58 GMT
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Telescoping poles that raise straight up are much, much, easier and safer to use than one which has to be raised from the horizontal as Ken suggests.
I do like the spike base suggestion, though you'd need a foot plate for use on soft ground. Actually the footplate could have 90 and 60 degree markings too.
If you are going to use carbon fiber remember that it's a good conductor, making the bottom section out of fiberglass [a good insulator] would make the pole a lot safer.
I know that one should not use a mast/pole in the vicinity of powerlines, but sometimes the only way to get the shot is to narrow your safety margin. With my clark mast I'm pretty comfortable using it quite close to domestc [240v] powerlines in benign weather conditions, the mast is stable and predictable. But hand held poles are more of a risky propostion and certainly demand a higher safety margin.
Stiffness is a major concern when using a dslr. I would certainly be happy to trade off some weight to have a more rigid mast. I would suggest that if you are developing a hand held mast that reaches to 10m then you should consider going with the fattest tube sections and thickest wall sections that the cost/performance/weight equation will allow.
There are a numer of poles [hotsticks, cleaning poles, painters poles etc] that have been adapted for use as a camera support. But if you are designing one specifically for that use, then you might as well make it the best performer.
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erik leeman
Posts: 144
Location: Netherlands
Registered: 24 Aug 2007
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Re: How do you handle poles above 10 meter high?
Posted: 29 Apr 2010 at 9:12 GMT
updated: 29 Apr 2010 at 9:13 GMT
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As a base for my hand-held clark mast I use a small wheel with a (bulging) rubber tire that I bought in a hardware store. The 'grippy' rubber is good for slippery as well as uneven surfaces, but it also prevents damage to expensive floors. It is small and light enough to be practical, but large enough to place one foot on it when necessary. Also, because of its diameter it doesn't 'sink' away in loose sand and moss.
Since I'm looking down at the spirit level anyway, I've put marks on the rim to help direct the camera for each shot.
Tip: with a hand-held pole don't look up at your camera when clouds are moving overhead! : )
Erik
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enbilaman
Posts: 143
Location:
Registered: 3 Mar 2006
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Re: How do you handle poles above 10 meter high?
Posted: 29 Apr 2010 at 9:50 GMT
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EmEss said:
This way of mounting camera/lens to the pole will give you less pole bending at the top sections and will make handling much more comfortable. And yes, it seems you´re off the NPP, but with less or no more bending of the pole your overall deviation from the NPP will be less. You must try it to believe the difference in handling and stitching.
This is true.
Whatever the mast dimensioning margin, there is no way to avoid bending if the CoG of the load on its top is not centered on the pole axis. This bending usually defeats any effort applied to attempt centering the NNP on the actual vertical pivot axis and it additionally and proportionally induces large disturbance and sway while swiftly rotating the pole.
BTW: A safe workaround in order to shoot aerial panorama at very close range to a foreground object:
michel.thoby.free.fr/Chevalet/Easel.html
For higher elevation, I am happily using a hybrid system:
-- The main part is a (modified) Manfrotto 269 HDBU to shoot from about a 7.7 m altitude max.
-- A (modified) 3-meter Manfrotto 099B extension can be used to bear the load: it is first deployed and then sleeve-mounted on the top of the 269 HDBU mast before raising it.
I wouldn't recommend using this hybrid extended version under windy conditions though.
Some more related info:
michel.thoby.free.fr/Poleposition/Poleposition.ht...
Regards,
Michel
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