africanDRONE, Unequal Scenes, and Hasselblad
Last night (Thursday, 12 April) africanDRONE and Hasselblad SA hosted a meetup for members of the Cape Town photographic and drone community. The topic was the use of the new Hasselblad A6D aerial camera, the world’s highest resolution camera specifically made for mounting onto a drone.
The Hasselblad A6D is a unique aerial camera in that it takes the medium format sensor from the Hasselblad H6D camera but strips away everything superfluous to flying — no battery, no viewfinder, and no shutter release. Instead, it is meant to be mounted onto a DJI Ronin MX, which in turn is meant to be mounted onto the DJI M600 Pro drone (Hasselblad is majority owned by Chinese drone manufacturer DJI). The sensor is one of the largest on the market, capable of shooting 100mp still images and shooting RAW 4k video.
africanDRONE founding member Johnny Miller received one of these units (as well as a DJI Ronin MX) from DJI/Hasselblad to shoot images for his acclaimed Unequal Scenes photo project. Local drone pilot Warren Witte graciously agreed to come along and fly his M600 Pro drone, and over the last month they have traveled all over South Africa shooting aerials and even portraits.
The camera is sleek and stripped down, as one would expect from an aerial unit, which makes mounting and balancing on the M600 Pro fairly easy. The camera connects via Live View to DJI’s Lightbridge 3 system, which provides the operator an image through the DJI Go 4 app. Control of the drone is the same as any other DJI drone, with the ability to separate controls for the DOP. Miller and Witte separated the controls at first, but quickly found that it was easier to work together on one controller.
“The signal pass-through from drone to controller to controller wasn’t very good” Miller explains. “The signal kept breaking up on us when the drone was only 200–300m away. So we decided to abandon using the second controller. I basically set all the exposure before the camera left the ground, and when the drone took off, Warren controlled all the flying. I would direct him to shoot what I wanted to shoot, and then he would depress the shutter release. Oftentimes we would even have a third or fourth person on the ground managing the landing site or for additional safety”.
Miller and Witte traveled extensively with the drone throughout South Africa, visiting 7 locations in Cape Town, 6 in Johannesburg, 1 in Pietermaritzburg, and 3 in Durban. Miller then decided it was important to show that the camera could be used as a stills camera on the ground, as well.
“I knew that the A6D wasn’t designed for use on the ground” Miller says. “The unit has no battery, no viewfinder, and no shutter release. It is 100% made to connect to the DJI Ronin MX for all of its operations. However, I thought it would be an interesting experiment to prove that it could be used for stills on the ground, as a truly versatile medium format digital camera.”
Miller’s friend Rob Weidner, the owner of Cape Town-based company Film Gear SA, was eager to help out. Weidner spliced together a Mamiya RZ67 handle/shutter release onto the control port of the A6D, providing an easy way of holding the camera and releasing the shutter. He also screwed the Ronin MX battery pack onto the side (there are multiple 3/8" and 1/4" screw mounts on the body of the A6D), creating an external power supply. Lastly, Miller clamped a Small HD monitor onto the top of the A6D with an HDMI connection, making the handheld version of the camera truly an epic Frankenstein. All together, the camera system weighed about 5kg…not exactly a backpacker’s delight.
“One of the big problems with using the Frankenstein version of the A6D was the Live View/shutter release” Miller says. “The firmware on the camera prevents you from releasing the shutter when Live View is enabled. What this means is that you have to get your exposure correct (everything is on manual exposure, of course), get your framing correct, and then try and get your focus perfect before you then switch out of live view. The live view button is awkwardly positioned on the back LCD screen, so inevitably you will miss focus and framing by the time you take the photo. What this means is a lot of trial and error, but the worst part is not being able to make use of the depth of field that the medium format sensor can give to you, as focus is always so hit or miss. I found myself shooting with a wider DOF than i wanted to. Besides that, the camera is a beast and was tiresome to carry and shoot with. In a studio, or on a tripod, it would have been fine — but lugging it around on location for documentary-style work was a real chore.”
Miller says that the experience, however, was worth it. “I wanted to show that you can do a top-to-tail documentary project with the A6D, from the macro to the micro. Also, the ability to then print and exhibit 100mp images is going to be a game changer for what I want to do with the project. I think it’s going to be a powerful next step for Unequal Scenes.”
africanDRONE is incubated by Code For Africa.
