Good, light camera for still pictures - with wifi

[NorthernDelight]

I have dabbled in landscape photography as a hobby for many years, and would like to get some new awesome pictures using my new Phantom 1.

I have an FC40, but the still pictures are nowhere near good enough quality to do anything serious with it.

I am looking for a camera and mount, that will let me take my Phantom up to a position I want, let me see through the camera (wifi) on my phone - and let me take pictures from the phone. The pictures should be at least 10-15MPix and in some sort of RAW format. If it has GPS to geotag the pictures as well, that would be great, as would image stabilization.

I hope to spend no more than 500EUR/700USD, including some sort of simple mount (just manual adjustment).

Has anybody else dabbled in this, have any recommendations etc?

 

[4wd]

Not that easy TBH, running a camera wifi is not recommended because as soon as you get a few metres away from the controller there is the risk of it interfering with the link and this has been implicated in flyaway incidents.

The vibration is a real issue, I thought I might get good results with my Canon S100 using intervalometer, a shot every 5 seconds - in reality even using 1/2000 only 4 or 5 from a hundred were usable.
Your best option would be a gopro or similar e.g. SJ4000 - then you have numerous possible gimbal and vibration damping solutions when the results still disappoint.
Even the S100 - which is very small as regular good compact cameras go - is heavy enough to make the P1 labour somewhat and this increases the vibration risk.

 

[NorthernDelight]

Good feedback, thanks for sharing.

With regards to the wifi frequency, the Phantom runs at 5.8ghz, where wifi is typically 2.4, so that should not be an issue?

 

[ElGuano]

Moved to FC40 forum.

You're right, your 5.8ghz control frequency should play nice with most 2.4ghz wifi-enabled cameras.

The main problem is probably going to be that many cameras aren't designed with long-range wifi support in mind, so it will be pretty frustrating flying out a hundred feet or less and losing signal to your camera.

 

[lostkiwi]

There are a number of threads around on the net regarding the use of a Sony RX100 camera which seems to give good results. The only issue with Sony gear can be the WiFi range can be a bit on the low side. The Sony QX10/QX100 looked promising too but again the WiFi range is a bit on the low side to be practical.

Other options could include a Panasonic GM1 if you fancy something a bit more capable though it is heavier. I'm in the process of trying to work out how to get my GF6 airborne (sort of lost impetus following some other distractions getting in the way - fine weather, open top car, you figure it out!).

Other than that the only tried and true option would be a GoPro. At least the WiFi range is acceptable even if it does miss out on a whole lot of still photography features like image stabilisers, adjustable aperture etc. Seems decent enough image quality for most things (I got the Black 3+).

 

[NorthernDelight]

For WIFI range between camera and my phone-screen, I would need at least 600ft/200m - but with line of sight/nothing in between.

I see some posts about people using various boosters/range extenders. I guess I will have to look more into that. Also I looked more at GoPro still images, and the quality is not bad at all.

I often visit Iceland, and I really want to shoot some unusual landscape photos of the unique nature there.

More research to do, I guess.