The camera mounts I use for aerial photography and video are simple set ups. I developed them over a period of years and they work well. These mounts are made from plexiglass. Cut, marked and heat shaped they are made specifically for each camera and fit fairly tight. They allow a servo to be used to actuate the shutter button remotely via a radio channel on the airplane.

 

 

 

This is a typical aircraft mounting platform. This particular plane is the Mountain Models Magpie. I glued a ply sub base floor to the bottom of the fuse and used blind nuts. These hold the aluminum landing gear on and allow anything to be bolted to the fuse (CG or forward!) including camera mounts.

These are samples of the camera mounting plates I use for bolting to the Magpie. The bottom one has a 1/16 wheel collar inserted into a small block. A wire is inserted into this and then connected to the camera mount. It allows you to adjust the angle of the camera easily and quickly. The top mount requires a fixed camera angle.

 

On the camera mounts themselves I use pinned hinges as the connectors. This plate is the mounting plate for my Solution (Mike Powers design). It is very small but since the solution was designed to carry it's camera load in the front of the plane it needn't be too large.

 

Here is the Solution plate matched up to a camera mount. The way the hinges are laid out they match up very easily. All mounts are one way and all the plates are the opposite. So that any plate will easily mount to any camera mount.

 

Here is the Solution plate - again. And now you can see the real simplicity of this plate. Velcro. The weight of the camera is NOT on the plate per se but is on the nose of the plane so not much is needed to anchor the camera mount.

 

Here is another look at a camera mount. The velcro on the top of the mount across from the servo is for a keychain video camera! Works really well too!

 

Solution set up. Ready to be joined and attached to the plane. I have the keychain camera modified to accept power from a SBEC so it can stay on the entire flight and is not dependent upon a small single cell battery.

 

Here is the same set up only now set for the Magpie. Same mount just a different mounting plate.

 

And here is the little connector that keeps the hinges together while they are on the plane. This setup allows a easy but secure connection of the pinned hinges.

 

This would be what the A1100 mount ready for the Magpie would resemble. Note that the camera would actually be upside down when mounted to the plane so that photos would need to be flipped and reversed to be oriented correctly when displayed.

 

This type servo mount - a servo epoxied directly to the camera body only requires a single "L" shape mount as it is. This was the lightest way to go for a LONG time for me but I disliked not having the camera for anything else but aerial photography.


 

So that is where these mounts were thought out and designed. To make mounting my cameras as easy as I could make it and still make them controllable from the radio.