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Creating own aerial images from an air balloon

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I have an opportunity to go up in a hot air balloon to 300 ft over the area that I would like to map and to which I don't have access on the ground: this one. Is there a way I can use the photos I take during the ride in JOSM to map out the visible features? Are there any tips for producing best usable photos (as far as angling the camera, wide angle vs. telephoto, etc.)

asked 22 Apr '11, 18:23

ponzu's gravatar image

ponzu
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I Googled "cheap flying camera" and there are quite a few. but how safe and how legal it is to overfly somewhere is something you will have to consider.

(02 Aug '14, 08:01) andy mackey

2 Answers:

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there is a mapper in the wiki (he's in central europe if I remember correctly,but the post was in english) that I've read about that's been using kites or model planes to hoist his camera.he will have some experience, if I can find it again I'll post a link, found it https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Vertical_Aerial_Photographs

answered 23 Apr '11, 18:31

andy%20mackey's gravatar image

andy mackey
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edited 24 Apr '11, 12:08

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We did a similar project in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2009, using a light aircraft. From that project my tips would be:

  1. Don't worry about getting precise vertical photos, but anything less than 70° to the horizontal isn't useful enough
  2. The longer the focal length of the lens the better (i.e. use telephotos). From the height you are flying you won't get much ground cover on each photo though.
  3. You need a few ground control points on each photo, so you'll probably need some physical feature with corresponding GPX tracks (e.g. a road with a few corners) in each photo.

When you have the photos, you can use the processes described in the link above to warp them and get them geo-referenced, and then import them into JOSM for tracing.

answered 03 May '11, 09:37

Andy%20Allan's gravatar image

Andy Allan
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Source code available on GitHub .