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#20
by
Lee Jay
on 22 Jun, 2014 01:04
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But if that's all you got... Imagine the feed cuts off or there's a first stage return.
Of course you want a DSLR if you can get it.
But I wonder if any of these apps can do digital zoom? Might make sense for a web stream.
Forget digital zoom. Think afocal photography. Do a search for "iPhone telephoto lens" on Google.
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#21
by
Bob Shaw
on 22 Jun, 2014 01:10
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Afocal is fun. Nothing beats glass.
Processing tricks are fine and dandy, but glass wins.
Two sets of kit; one West Coast, one East. £5k! We could do it.
And that nice antenna... ...until they start encrypting the feed!
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#22
by
Robotbeat
on 22 Jun, 2014 01:16
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Re:digital zoom: I'm just thinking that because you probably won't be able to upload a full D stream without downsampling anyway, you may as well crop the stream (ie digital zoom) so you don't down-sample all the interesting bits into oblivion. There's probably an NSF member with a smartphone at every orbital US launch, and perhaps several. I'm not dismissing a good lens, just suggest we go to war with the army we have, then do what we can to improve the situation by using better optics, etc...
What would be REALLY nifty would be a stabilized tracking camera... Like a modified amateur telescope with quick slew servos/steppers or the like.... Perhaps a Dobsonian with a steady hand?
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#23
by
Orbiter
on 22 Jun, 2014 01:18
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I could figure out a way to prop my iPhone against something and stream the launch, as I'll be there tomorrow scrub or not. Don't count on anything though.
With an iPhone, you're not going to see much with that wide-angle fixed-focal-length lens from the many miles you'll be from the launch site.
Like I said, "don't count on anything." I'll be posting photos with my 500mm lens after the fact, however.
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#24
by
ChrisWilson68
on 22 Jun, 2014 01:20
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For the first F9v1.1 flight out of Vandenberg, I was able to see it for a while after stage separation even through a small pair of handheld binoculars. If the weather is good like that, it may be hard to decide which thing to follow on the video feed:
1. Left booster
2. Right booster
3. Center Core
4. Upper stage
I'd probably choose one of the side boosters and hope to follow it back nearly to landing (there's a hill that blocks the view below a few hundred feet at the launch site and the landing site will be blocked by that same hill).
Edit: Note I'm talking about a future possible Falcon Heavy flight out of Vandenberg here.
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#25
by
Bob Shaw
on 22 Jun, 2014 01:21
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No reason not to download HD in this day and age - Digital Zoom is just cropping and rapidly becomes really, really low quality. You need a proper video source (DSLR or, I would suggest, any one of a zillion DV cams). The output is always better!
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#26
by
Robotbeat
on 22 Jun, 2014 01:24
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No reason not to download HD in this day and age - Digital Zoom is just cropping and rapidly becomes really, really low quality. You need a proper video source (DSLR or, I would suggest, any one of a zillion DV cams). The output is always better!
HD upload needs better bandwidth than what most mobile phone companies will give you for upload rates for realtime upload for several minutes at a time. Otherwise I'd agree with you. Try it out on 3G or 4G if you don't believe me. I mean, we're essentially Skyping, and that is NOTHING near HD most the time on a typical 4G connection. It /will/ down-sample you, throwing away all the details.
YouTube Live wants about 4000kb/s for a HD stream upload. Most people just aren't going to get that on a typical 4G connection, so a little digital zoom will be way better for us. For those who can invest in a better (WiFi) connection, then by all means!
Also, remember that most of us are capped at 1-5GB of monthly data transfer, so HD could eat that up in about 15 minutes, and even for the good plans, it's about $10/GB.
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#27
by
edkyle99
on 22 Jun, 2014 01:31
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By contrast, this is the same launch from the same place with an SLR with 400mm lens, cropped to 910mm-equivalent.
Right. It is important to understand that observers are miles away from the launch pads at the Cape - in some places more than 10 miles away. Even a good 400 mm zoom lens is insufficient for anything but a long view. Tracking cameras are really telescopes with much more magnification. Imagine the difficulty of hand-tracking a telescope on a moving object 10 miles distant! The optics alone present a technical challenge, though not an impossible challenge. They're been some nice super-zoom amateur videos of Falcon 9 launches posted on YouTube during the past few months - I'm thinking of the one's that tracked the first stage post-separation maneuvers. Maybe we should talk to those "cameramen".
- Ed Kyle
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#28
by
Robotbeat
on 22 Jun, 2014 01:34
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By contrast, this is the same launch from the same place with an SLR with 400mm lens, cropped to 910mm-equivalent.
Right. It is important to understand that observers are miles away from the launch pads at the Cape - in some places more than 10 miles away. Even a good 400 mm zoom lens is insufficient for anything but a long view. Tracking cameras are really telescopes with much more magnification. Imagine the difficulty of hand-tracking a telescope on a moving object 10 miles distant! The optics alone present a technical challenge, though not an impossible challenge.
- Ed Kyle
I've tracked aircraft with my amateur telescope. This is certainly an option, though it requires skill to get a good view!
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#29
by
Orbiter
on 22 Jun, 2014 01:39
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Here's my idea, now that it's been announced that the window will be four hours long (5pm through 9pm) on the launch update thread, if it ends up pushing to 9pm I'll consider streaming it. A night launch would show up much better than a day launch on an iPhone.
By contrast, this is the same launch from the same place with an SLR with 400mm lens, cropped to 910mm-equivalent.
Right. It is important to understand that observers are miles away from the launch pads at the Cape - in some places more than 10 miles away. Even a good 400 mm zoom lens is insufficient for anything but a long view. Tracking cameras are really telescopes with much more magnification. Imagine the difficulty of hand-tracking a telescope on a moving object 10 miles distant! The optics alone present a technical challenge, though not an impossible challenge.
- Ed Kyle
I've tracked aircraft with my amateur telescope. This is certainly an option, though it requires skill to get a good view!
I tracked the TDRS-K launch with my Dobsonian telescope all the way from Tampa. I was able to split the two combustion chambers at 10mm. Obviously, I don't plan to bring a 40lb telescope out across the coast but still, anyone in Florida with a similar setup could stream it from their backyard.
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#30
by
Lee Jay
on 22 Jun, 2014 01:39
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By contrast, this is the same launch from the same place with an SLR with 400mm lens, cropped to 910mm-equivalent.
Right. It is important to understand that observers are miles away from the launch pads at the Cape - in some places more than 10 miles away. Even a good 400 mm zoom lens is insufficient for anything but a long view. Tracking cameras are really telescopes with much more magnification. Imagine the difficulty of hand-tracking a telescope on a moving object 10 miles distant! The optics alone present a technical challenge, though not an impossible challenge.
- Ed Kyle
I've tracked aircraft with my amateur telescope. This is certainly an option, though it requires skill to get a good view!
So have I and there's a product called Optic Tracker for this purpose. But even a Canon SX50 would be an enormous improvement (like 40x improvement) over a phone.
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#31
by
Robotbeat
on 22 Jun, 2014 01:42
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Indeed. But my point is to not discourage anyone from contributing who may just have a phone (some smartphones even have a slight optical zoom these days...)
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#32
by
Robotbeat
on 22 Jun, 2014 01:48
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I have been putting off linking up my telescope to my DSLR. I may have to do that, perhaps for the Antares launch.
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#33
by
Bob Shaw
on 22 Jun, 2014 01:54
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A 500mm lens (in DSLR land - mileage varies elsewhere) is sort of the default; everything else just gives you a cropped dot. A prime focus 500mm catadioptric lens (a small Cassegrian reflector telescope for all practical purposes) on an 'inexpensive' video or DSLR body will do the job. With such a lens I easily followed STS-1 through SRB jettison, and had a fine view of the launch itself. Huge numbers of cameras offer live HD output these days, ranging from Canon DSLRs through to Micro 4/3rds and traditional video cameras - the sensor itself is almost entirely irrelevant, as is the camera - you just want output.
I dunno what US Internet providers offer, but if the mobile side of things won't play ball with data rates then I'm sure that a fixed ADSL line would (or cable, if available). I have a vision of a snowbird in his back yard, pulling the tarpaulin off the kit twice a month...
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#34
by
benjaminhigginbotham
on 22 Jun, 2014 01:59
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FloridaHighSpeedInternet.com has good microwave bandwidth with enough uplink speed to sustain HD from the causeway. If the community can get some good live cameras (not dlsr) with real optics and we can get power at someplace like the Causeway, TMRO/Spacevidcast has am ATEM video switcher, live encoder and channel we can broadcast on ad free. I can also lend some Canon HF-G20 cameras and fiber extenders to make it go, but I'm not sure those cameras have enough optical zoom to get a good picture. I assume that a 1000mm lens will get you a pretty good shot of the pad and a 2000mm zoom will get you an amazing shot.
A bit more advanced than just running iPhones, but it will also yield quality that we as a community are used to. However, I will be unavailable to run it. Will need help from the community.
The next step is tying in flight details. We use a Livestream Premier account so we can do text and photo updates, but we really should get that info on-screen. I can get a CasparCG system and even remote drive that, but we need to get the data from somewhere, somehow.
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#35
by
Robotbeat
on 22 Jun, 2014 01:59
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Hmmm...
But if that's all you got... Imagine the feed cuts off or there's a first stage return.
Of course you want a DSLR if you can get it.
But I wonder if any of these apps can do digital zoom? Might make sense for a web stream.
Forget digital zoom. Think afocal photography. Do a search for "iPhone telephoto lens" on Google.
You're right! Very cheap for an order of magnitude better optics (definitely not as good as DSLR can get, but a lot simpler to stream from, no laptop required). I might just order one from Amazon, since I also need to do some low-magnification microscopy anyway (some come with both capabilities).
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#36
by
Lee Jay
on 22 Jun, 2014 02:02
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I have been putting off linking up my telescope to my DSLR. I may have to do that, perhaps for the Antares launch.
It's harder than it sounds to get an image like this one, which was taken from 27 miles away. Besides the, say, 2/3 of a degree of total frame width, and the difficulty that gives in finding the target, there's the issue of focus and the fact that these scopes tend to be slow yielding slow shutter speeds. Slow shutter speed and thousands of millimeters of focal length means it's hard to get images that don't have a lot of motion blur.
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#37
by
Robotbeat
on 22 Jun, 2014 02:05
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I have been putting off linking up my telescope to my DSLR. I may have to do that, perhaps for the Antares launch.
It's harder than it sounds to get an image like this one, which was taken from 27 miles away. Besides the, say, 2/3 of a degree of total frame width, and the difficulty that gives in finding the target, there's the issue of focus and the fact that these scopes tend to be slow yielding slow shutter speeds. Slow shutter speed and thousands of millimeters of focal length means it's hard to get images that don't have a lot of motion blur.
Oh, believe me, I know! Horribly jittery when I tried it. But I intend to put my tube in a Dobsonian mount. And really, we're comparing this to no webcast, so just about anything is better. May just be forced to go to high ISO and fast shutter.
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#38
by
Orbiter
on 22 Jun, 2014 02:08
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Astrophotography is a whole different beast than your typical landscape photography.
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#39
by
Robotbeat
on 22 Jun, 2014 02:09
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We're talking about just getting another view of the launch, not necessarily trying to compete with tracking scopes costing as much as a house. An iPhone is better than sparse Twitter updates.