P3D Hypers

["Lawrence A. Haines" <lhaines@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Many years ago Paul Wing taught me to take hyper stereos from an
airplane using an old German camera called a Robot. It had a wind up
spring drive that would fire off shots in fairly fast sequence.  The
idea was to shoot perpendicular to the motion of the plane.  Depending
on the altitude one could use very large interoculars (distance between
shots).  From jets at 30,000 feet two or three hundred feet was not
unusual.  With the plane at lower altitudes a very fast firing camera,
such as the Robot, is essential to make the distances reasonable.
Most of the hypers Paul did in those days were either from commercial
planes, or commuters, or in some cases I remember him telling me of
places he had hired small planes for special things he wanted to
photograph.

I guess it might be about fifteen years ago or more, I flew Paul in a
small plane at lower altitudes over Canyonlands National Park and Arches

National Monument in Utah and Canyon de Chey in Arizona.  He made a
number of outstanding shots.  On those particular flights I tried to
shoot some myself, but being at the controls that was not easy.  He was
always wanting me to fly lower than the permissible altitudes and lower
than I was comfortable with.

A number of years ago I happened to be going from San Paulo to Buenos
Aires and took the occasion to stop and rent a Biwing airplane and a
mustachioed pilot to take pictures of Iguasu Falls with my Robot.
Shortly
after take off the engine failed entirely and in some way I now cannot
understand, he was able to roll around and set it back on the grass
strip.
I lost my enthusiasm for hypers of the falls, even though he assured me
he
would have it fixed in a moment.

The depths, of course, come out exaggerated but that has been
the fun of it.  Many times Paul would fire off a number of repetitive
shots and then later pick the best.   As I did some of this kind of
photography I tried to establish the distance between shots by knowing
the altitude and speed of the airplane.  Paul's method relied more on
experience and he has been in my opinion remarkably accurate.  He has
been doing this for many years and it has been fun for me to see cities
from the air in hyper and taken a number of years apart.

I don't know how many might have seen any of his hypers, or how many
might be interested, but I wonder if someone like Ron Labbe or Jon
Golden who are both back in Massachusetts might ask Paul for a set to
show at NSA.  It might be a good idea to get some comments from the
master on the technique, if Paul is going to attend this year.

Someone commented that hypers tend to make things look unnaturally
small..  Since at most altitudes cars and buildings look toy-like to
most
people anyway, aerial hypers do not seem to suffer seriously from this
perceived problem.

Larry Haines...




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