Aerial View of Trailside Point (Laveen, Arizona)

Looks great, some highlights of the different streets and buildings would be very cool. Love the way the overhead view looks with in point cloud mode.

Thanks, Bert. I'll be sure to add some highlights. This is my first in almost a year. I became re-interested in it after seeing it featured on GeekBrief.tv. There have been quite a few new features added to PhotoSynth since I last used it. I especially like the overhead view.

Glad you came back to try it again, let us know what you think of the new features :)

So was the camera simply set to continuous shooting, or did you have more control than that?

Also, is it mounted to the plane in a fixed way, or does it swivel independently of the plane'e heading?

Nathanael... I just used a simple Canon PowerShot SD960 digital camera for this PhotoSynth, which has very little manual control. With continuous mode, it uses the exposure and shutter settings that are used on the first shot throughout the entire sequence. So the trick is in getting those set right with the first shot. When doing this, I point the camera 90 degrees from the sun, so I get an "average" exposure, and I move the camera a bit when partially pressing the button down so that it locks in a fast shutter speed. Then I just mount it to the plane and go. In my Sedona PhotoSynth, I had the camera pointed forward, but in this PhotoSynth, I pointed the camera out the right side of the plane. I could configure the camera to pan-and-tilt in flight, but I just go with a fixed mount for simplicity. I also have the capability to view live video from the camera using a wireless downlink, but that requires a spotter, and I was flying solo both days. - Matt

By the way, you can kind of get a glimpse of how the plane and camera are set up in this video: http://vimeo.com/7751801

Clipper - can you send a link to what you're using for the downlink? I've been thinking about a project where something like this would come in handy. Thanks

Tony... I bought my downlink equipment from RangeVideo (http://rangevideo.com/), but there are many other vendors that sell this type of equipment. If you plan to use a radio-control system for any other part of the project, make sure your video transmitter equipment is in a different frequency range.