Using a phone to control a Sony a7 digital camera mounted on a 12' telescoping painter's pole
I've been interested in getting a view of the action from a viewpoint a little higher than eye level, and drones are cool, but they're too dangerous (and not legal) just above the heads of pedestrians and traffic in the dense urban settings I'm looking at. I've used my stepladder to good effect, but now I wanted to shoot from the middle of intersections and easily cover big parts of town looking for certain combinations of features. I also wanted to be up around the 12' level, too high for my lightweight ladder, and anything bigger would be a pain to lug around, not to mention be unusable and unsafe in crowded intersections.
So I spent a few days fooling around with my Sony a7 camera, eventually doing some amusing sidewalk "machining" of found bits gleaned from the dismembered & abandoned bikes that adorn so many sidewalks in the city. I needed an adapter for the mount that would enable me to look up at the camera high up on a pole and still see the LCD screen when it was tilted downwards. I used c-clamps to hold the part to a no-parking sign, and with a cordless drill and some files I finally got it perfected. After finding I could velcro the pole to my bike for rapid transport without descending into the sweltering subways, I was ready to test the rig. I rode down to a West Village intersection on 6th avenue I'd scouted, locked up the bike, attached the camera to the pole and stepped off the curb. I tried to trigger the remote while squinting up at the tiny image on the LCD but it wasn't working despite prior tests back at the apartment. I must have looked pretty weird even for the Village, doing my dance waving the remote around while holding the camera on a stick.
I packed it up and headed over to a nearby pro photo equipment store for a hot-shoe mounted remote receiver, where the guy at the counter said "Why aren't you controlling that wi-fi camera with your phone ?" In seconds, he had me install a free app that did the job. You get live action view over wi-fi, and shutter control from anywhere in range with the extra benefit of auto upload to a cloud back-up of every shot, in case something bad happens out there...So I went back out and it worked flawlessly, enabling all sorts of great views down into the subway entrances and the street at the same time, with complete portability, as long as you watch your turning radius with the bike mounted pole, Sir Lancelot.
The first image below is a test of what I was after in the first place, fodder for a new series of 24" x 36" oil paintings of these signals, with the displays varied from the norm, and the blurry marginalia hinting at specific locations. The other images are some of the scenes from that first night out on the town to see what I could see from up there...and yes, I shot the photo of myself using the pole mounted camera using a second setup.
Fifteen Seconds, a new series of paintings starts here
8th Ave. at W39th st.
Times Square, 11PM on a steamy June evening
Next to the NY Times building at 40th street & 8th ave, Manhattan
My wonderful gallery representation: LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM
And as always, you can also contact me directly by email: info@sethtane.com and follow my occasional photo posts on: Instagram