Anyone tried elevated pole photography?

sduk

sduk

Messages
1,005
Name
Sammy
Edit My Images
Yes
I am now doing house shoots for "real estate" on a regular basis and am looking into doing some exterior shots with an elevated pole.

I already have a 6m carbon fibre pole, wide angle lens, wireless remote and camera bracket that I use on my car rig so hoping that's all I need.

Has anyone had a go at this? Any tips?

Did some google searching and the results seem to be pretty awesome at only 4m high. Hoping my 6m pole will produce even better shots.

I did a search on this forum but couldn't see any threads about this type of photography.

Sammy
 
Do it all the time, just using a monopod held overhead. That gets the camera up to about 4m, which is high enough to get over a lot of street furniture, parked cars, hedges, etc., and to give a better perspective on the layout of gardens etc.. I use a wireless remote for the shutter, get the basic composition and aim right from ground level, then keep the aim correct by flipping the LCD out & upside down so I can look up at it when it's up on the pole. Since I usually have the camera on the 'pod with the remote on it anyway it's little extra bother to hoist it up for a high shot.

I do have a bigger adapted painter's pole for when I really need to get a few metres higher, but the extra bother of carrying it plus the set up and take down time for the high shots means that I very rarely use it.
 
just had a quick go at it there and it is much harder than you think. I am going to have to make some sort of counter weight as it was very top heavy and didn't want to risk it on my own at full length.

I think some sort of mounting base for it would help. Going to have a go at fabricating something :)

I have an infrared remote but i couldn't get it to fire when i was holding the pole. I guess with an assistant i could move further away and hopefully trigger it.
 
Ok, here's a selection of monopod-held-over-head shots. Thery're 500 pixel wide image with a click thru to the Flickr image from which you can select the original very large size if you want to peep at the pixels. This first one was taken in terrible light, ISO 3200 plus a lot of shadow pull up.

Antiques Fair at Ingliston, Edinburgh, with TV Bargain Hunt gang by Chris_Malcolm, on Flickr

This next pair are a 5ft shot, my normal eye height, plus a 10ft high shot for comparison.

The advantage of extra height 1: 5 feet off ground by Chris_Malcolm, on Flickr


The advantage of extra height 2: 10 feet off ground by Chris_Malcolm, on Flickr

This next one shows the building of a yurt, the cheap end of Real Estate :)


Yurt roof circle raised with three poles by Chris_Malcolm, on Flickr

This next one was an experiment in using an overhead camera in the middle of the ceiling to shoot the smallest room in the house, in this case a very small room indeed. For steadiness I used a small painter's pole with a tripod head on the end of it which by good luck could be substituted for the central column in a tripod. You can see me and a tripod leg standing in the doorway.


How do you photograph the smallest room? by Chris_Malcolm, on Flickr

Here's a very tricky exterior shot. The building has steps up to a very high courtyard leading to the front door. The courtyard is built over the semi-basement ground floor. It's surrounded by walls too high to see over. In this case I used a 12 foot painter's pole standing on the ground, the highest I had at the time. To get the downward looking view I wanted I ended up too close to the building. This shot really called for a bigger pole. After that experience I got myself a 16 foot pole with which I can see over the top of a double decker bus.


Panmure House Courtyard by Chris_Malcolm, on Flickr

Here's a shot taken with the 16 foot pole. It's very good for getting a view of large building sites, in this case the entire 1 mile length of Princes Street, Edinburgh, when they'd dug it all up to lay the tram tracks.


Princes Street tram works: Mound to East End view by Chris_Malcolm, on Flickr
 
sduk said:
thanks for sharing, do you use a remote trigger and focus each shot individually? or do you pre set the focus and lock it?
Click to expand...

I mostly use a radio remote shutter trigger. Not only is it faster and more adaptable than a timer, letting me wait for a good moment, it also makes it very easy to take a few more with slightly different angles while I've got the camera up there.

I set focus either by autofocus or manually from eye level, leaving it preset while up on the pole. I use manual focus for wide angle shots partly out of habit. None of my earlier cameras could reliably and accurately focus wide angle shots. My current camera (Sony A77) is much better at accurate and reliable wide angle autofocus, but I haven't bothered to discover how much further I can trust its autofocus. It's so quick and easy to do precise manual focus with it anyway.
 
It's the A77 I use also. I have been using the infrared remote for the camera for all my other shots but found when the camera was up I couldn't get it to fire the shutter. Think it must have been due to the angle.

So today got a new battery for my remote shutter release and gave it a go. Set the camera to F8 with a wide autofocus and then used the remote to fire off a few shots.

Extended my carbon fibre pole to about 6m and after slight adjustment on the angles managed to get a few shots I was happy with.

Just need to fabricate some sort of base/anchor for it to make it more stable (and safe) when using.
 
Have you considered a camera with wifi control from a tablet or smartphone like a Olympus OMD
 
Last edited:
My experiments with an adapted painters pole a few years ago did not really go high enough for what I wanted (10m +) and even at the lower heights, the top heaviness became a problem especially in windy conditions. Currently exploring drones, although these will suffer in high winds too.
 
It's amazing how much better that house shot looks from higher up - you get less dull foreground and a nice view of the situation the house is sitting in i.e. the surroundings, distant hills etc.

Personally I do like getting an elevated angle. Here's me doing a monopod shot at a football match. Could have done with 6m height actually!

I0000m2zBdF.GwG4.jpg


And the resulting picture is here.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top