Moving to wards PAP

I'v ebeen thinking about it for some time now, and finally decided to take the plunge and set up for Pole Aerial Photography (PAP). My Canon G9 is ideally suited to PAP as it is CHDK compatible and so I can run an intervalometer script on it quite easily.

The first step is to acquire a suitable pole. Typically poles come in at 5, 6 and 7 metres in fibreglass, then start moving towards carbon for the longer poles. The two different types are the telecsopic style, and the fit over style, which doesn't have the tendency to collapse unexpectidely, so is a better choice for this application. Looking on Cris Benton's site shows that 11 metres seems to be the length of choice, and typically the top two sections need to be discarded as too flexible. Some research on the internet shows the cheapest poles to be available from Decathlon. But further research shows they don't seem to be stock items and have to be ordered in, which is inconvenient. A search on ebay shows that 11 metre poles are available at just under £100 including postage. So taking the plunge a Shakespear pole is ordered, which arrived a day or so later via courier.

The first surprise is just how long the pole is in its collapsed state. It is as tall as me at qbout 1.8 metres. Having errected the pole, I decided to try using all but the very top section. This is partly because I don't have drill bit large enough to fit the third section. So I set about making a simple mount for the camera. This is fabricated using left over aluminium from the cradle for my KAP rig. The mount only took a couple of hours to create - I did say it was simple - and the rig is mounted onto the pole. The test shows that there is a bit too much flexibility to be comfortable, so I will need to pop out and get some larger drill bits to open up the holes in the rig so I can mount it onto the pole slightly lower down. So tomorrow I'll go out and buy a slightly larger drill bit and modify the rig to how I want.