Blade RunnerPilot Shawn Adams shoots video on his DLSR with the Tamron 28-300mm VC lens — all while harnessed to a helicopter. |
Article By Jennifer Gidman Images & videos by Shawn Adams |
It’s no small feat to take an in-focus handheld image, even with your feet firmly planted on terra firma, but pilot Shawn Adams likes to up the imaging ante. Adams, owner of aviation videography/photography company Rotor-Head, Inc., and videographer/photographer for Brim Aviation, uses his Tamron 28-300mm VC lens to shoot video with his DSLR while dangling from an aircraft — usually a helicopter. “In addition to flying and filming for work, they’ve both always been hobbies of mine,” Adams says. “I’m one of those fortunate people who get to combine two things they love doing.” |
The 28-300mm VC lens provided the sharpness and versatility Adams required to shoot two recent videos using his DSLR: a demo shoot for San Diego Gas and Electric and a training exercise for YOSAR, Yosemite National Park’s emergency response team. He also used the lens to shoot an ad for Massif, a manufacturer of fire-resistant garments for the military and law enforcement. |
“San Diego Gas and Electric purchased the S-64 skycrane you see in the video from Erickson Air-Crane,” says Adams. “Erickson Air-Crane put on a two-day demo of the skycrane for the executives at San Diego Gas and Electric, and we were hired to provide footage for them. We didn’t interrupt them — we simply shot the footage as they did their demo.”
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Adams was invited to the training exercise with Yosemite Search and Rescue’s Helicopter 551 team as part of his work for Air Rescue Systems, a division of Brim Aviation. “Air Rescue Systems provides the actual rescue equipment — the harnesses and the ropes, for instance, to hook rescuers up to the helicopters,” he explains. “The team invited us out to Yosemite to be a part of their training exercise so we could introduce the equipment to their people.”
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The advantage of shooting video with a DSLR instead of a more traditional video camera is the image quality and smaller size of the DSLR, according to Adams — you just have to ensure you have enough batteries and memory cards for your videos, which eat up more power and storage space than still photos. “I carry about ten 16GB cards and five batteries for my camera, which usually gets me through a couple of days for the kind of shooting I do,” he says. “I typically shoot in the 1080p/24fps format; the limit for a video clip on my camera is between 12 and 14 minutes long, but the videos I shoot usually aren’t more than a minute or two.” |
When Adams is in “extreme imaging” mode, you’re just as likely to see him perched on a helicopter skid as in the passenger seat to get the shots he wants. “We can take the seats out of the backs of the helicopters we fly, so we basically have a flat, open area,” he explains. “On my harness, there’s an overall safety where you can fall out of the helicopter and just hang there; there’s another safety that limits how far I can hang out. If I want to hang out a little more, I can loosen that one strap up and step out onto the skid of the helicopter and shoot from there.” |
Out on the skid, in fact, is where Adams is often able to get the best perspectives. He prefers to shoot on the wider end of the 28-300’s focal length range in these situations. “The lens actually changes dimensions as you zoom in,” he explains. “When you’re leaning out of a helicopter, that extension is affected by the airstream, which creates excessive vibration. I could stay back in the helicopter, but that limits my angle of view — I’ve got walls all around me. I shoot with the wider focal lengths so I’m not making that lens any bigger than it needs to be and so I can get the perspective I need.” |
Adams secures his camera in the air with minigyros, camera-stabilizing mounts often used in videography. “These units are designed specifically for shooting out of cars, aircraft, boats, or any other moving vehicle,” he explains. “You have two gyros angled at 90 degrees from each other, 45 degrees from the camera, and they cover your pans, tilts, and rolls — they’re able to smooth everything out. You keep your hands very lightly on the camera, and when the helicopter spins or moves, the camera pretty much stays where you last left it, like a compass.” |
The more realistic Adams can get the helicopter to look, the better. “I don’t care for using a high shutter speed, because I don’t like the blades to have that ‘strobey’ look,” he says. “I typically shoot at 1/30th or 1/60th of a second. The ISO varies, but usually I run between 320 and 500. If I’m outside and I can’t get the shutter down to 1/60th or 1/30th because it’s too bright, I’ll just change the ISO to give myself more latitude on the shutter. You can’t just change your ISOs and shutter speeds on the fly while shooting video without the brightness physically jumping up instantly to the next level, so I’ll just let it go over or under in a shot, stop the camera, adjust it, and start recording again.” |
Adams relies on autofocus to set many of his shots up. “I’ll let the camera autofocus on a spot point — another helicopter, for instance,” he says. “If we’re slow-flying, it’s easier for me to put my face up to the camera and focus it while I’m shooting. However, I don’t do a lot of live focusing — much of what we do is really fast-paced and I don’t have time to do that. Plus, when the camera’s on a tighter mount, you can’t really put your eye on the viewfinder. You’re just looking at a 3-inch LCD screen.” |
When he’s shooting from the ground, Adams uses the 28-300’s versatility to his advantage, nabbing close-up clips of the crew setting up preflight, as well as copters in the air from an earthbound vantage point. He’s also able to tap into the 28-300’s Vibration Compensation (VC) feature. “I would say 95 percent of my work with helicopters is handheld, especially with the search-and-rescue work like the Yosemite National Park team does,” he says. “It’s not the type of environment I can control — you can’t tell the rescue team to wait while you’re setting up. If I’m on the ground and shooting what’s going on around me at, say, 200mm, I have the VC turned on so I don’t get shaky images.” |
Although clients in certain industries may still be skeptical that a compact DSLR can do the job of heftier videography equipment, Adams’s DSLR video work has taken flight. “Some clients might not yet understand that you can show up with this little camera on a lightweight tripod and get better images than when you’re shooting in another format — there’s definitely a psychological element to it,” he explains. “But a lot of my clients see the video work I’ve done using a DSLR and say, ‘I don’t care how you get it — I just want it to look like that.’” |
For more of Adams’s aerial videography and still images, check out Rotor-Head’s Facebook page and the Brim Aviation website. |