underwater video machine

[sRagnar]

well now DF can add one more thing to their resume.
Underwater videography.
while on location the df lost power and fell in to a river. it went all the way to the bottom about 4 feet and went down stream. it was under for a few good second probably about 30 seconds.
salvaged the x6 undid the battery, took the X6 battery out of the sd9 and went home with the whole rig soaked. it was a heartbreaking moment to pull it out of the water and see all the water pour out of the main housing and the motors. when it came out of the river the led light were on and the motor started turning again as soon as it got air. well a long story short after hanging by the tail in my garage where it is dry and hot i decided to hook up a battery and see what would happen. figured I would not be able to fry anything that was not fried already. I took the blades off just to make sure that it would not take off like a bat out of hell when it got juice. well all readings looked good it locked on gps and I fired it up. sounded right and no smoke anywhere. put the blades on and flew away just like nothing had ever happened to it. Gps lock, downlink, servos and still camera controls work like a charm! dammmmmn was that good!!!!!

;D so DF another thing on the resume, water resistant, I would not recommend this kind of heart wrenching experiment but looking back I figure I'm about as lucky as they get.

still not sure if the sd9 will make it.
so on the good side this might have me on the marked for a new video camera ;D

[pulsey]

So....let's see some pictures, then. Even if the camera didn't make it, I'm sure the card survived.

You could have not told us, but asked "How do you think I got these shots?" and left us suitably impressed.


Any idea what caused the power loss?

[sRagnar]

hey,

I think that since I was flying short bursts of flight and powering down between the read on the battery was inconsistent and did not allow for low power alarm, that is my only guess. I am sending the logs to Cory for analysis. The video from the shoot was good but it did not write the last few seconds to the card.
As I was afraid of the sd9 did not make it. this might turn out well as far as a new replacement camera opportunity. I am almost ready to give up on video all together and focus on that this thing does best, stills.
I was looking at the new Lumix again www.dpreview.com/reviews/PanasonicGF1/ that is a drooler with 1080p hd video and 12m stills. just need to wire it for shutter control. don't need the zoom! any suggestions ??

[airphoto]

Observation if you use the lumix Lx3 whit video full HD 1080p, you can`t have real time video, the screen a the googles goes black, ask for that.