I want to stick a cheap digicam on the end of a tall pole and get aerial photographs, but it would be much easier if I could use a cabled or wireless remote. There seem to be digicams that use remotes but after an hour of web research the cheapest I could find was almost $300 for a camera plus an optional wireless remote.
People that do baloon photography or RC plane photography say it’s easiest with a remote but most wind up modifying a digicam to accept one. Sheesh, I don’t want to be cracking open a plastic case for this…
So what are some digicams that can do this, especially ones less than $100 or so?
I’m not trying to be mean here, but I would say most digital cameras under $100 are going to be pieces of crap. By perusing Best Buy and Circuit City’s websites, the only sub $100 cameras are either Hello Kitty! or are from some company called Oregon Scientific, Kodak (the ultimate beginner’s camera), and HP and they all lack optical zoom (digital zoom is useless unless you have sufficient megapixels to back it up).
I don’t know how one would modify a camera to accept a remote, I am not a techie person, I just sell cameras and have learned some stuff along the way. The more you pay, the more options you get, usually. You’d be better off trying to find a friend with one that can take a remote, or coughing up some bucks and investing in one that is decent, if you want to ever use a digicam for anything else, that is.
The Olympus Camedia line has a remote control and you can get used versions of the 2 or 3 megapixel versions on EBay for not very much money. You don’t say what resolution you’re looking for (or why you want to do this), but that’s one way to go. I think the Nikon Coolpix also allows a remote, but the remote came with the Olympus, so a lot of people will probably include it in their EBay auction.
Note that most cameras of the point and shoot variety will automatically power down aftera few minutes to conserve batteries, at which point the remote won’t function.
X10 style cameras are set up for remote operation and are reasonably cheap and reliable although the image quality is poor. I know most canon cameras come with remote capture which lets you hook the camera up to a computer via USB and snap pictures remotely. There are some special camera mounts that will manually depress the shutter button when given a wireless signal but the downside is you cant see what you’re taking a picture of until you get the camera down. Most camcorders come with wireless remotes and they can also take decent still pictures.
I have a nice digicam, in fact it IS an Olympus Camedia, a C-720. I bought it a few years ago and don’t remember if it came with a remote, but I did pull out the manual and in a minute’s searching didn’t find any reference to remotes. Moreover the online descriptions of it I found did not mention that. How can I find out more about Camedia remotes?
The reason I want to do this project is an amateur surveying project. I use “real” aerial photos, from airplanes, that I can get off the web. But there are details they miss and things that change and so forth and if I could trace shapes off my own tiny-altitude aerials it would help. For example, the boulders in a creek - these, I can’t get a useful angle from the creek bank. We’re talking outdoor daytime photos with little need for fine resolution, and my image processing software can remove distortions like barrel/pincushion, so I think the demands on the camera are minor.
I saw a $99 security camera in Home Depot yesterday; it’s wireless and can run off a single 9V battery. Its resolution is the same as a television. This is probably adequate, though I’m not sure if I might try to carry a small TV and take pix of its screen, or look for a framegrabber or video recorder, or what. This therefore remains an interesting idea but little more.
Since you’re using a pole, I’d think it would be easy enough to make a string-and-lever rig to push the shutter manually. That would work with any camera.
Modifying a camera to accept a remote shouldn’t involve cracking the case. The way I’ve heard it done is to get a cable release (the kind that screwed into the button of older film SLR cameras, you push a button on one end and the button physically get’s pushed at the other, does that make sense?). Anyways, you screw it into a film canister or soda cap and then glue that over the button. It’s not quite the same, but it should work…in theory.