Airplane Photography

=General Considerations.=—The design and selection of lenses for aerial photography present on the whole no problems not already encountered in photography of the more familiar...

One of the most striking and valuable developments in aerial photography has been the use of stereoscopic views. Pairs of pictures, taken with a considerable separation in their...

As long as circumstances permit, hand operation still remains the most reliable and satisfactory method of driving a camera. It is always available, can be applied to just the a...

Aerial photographic mapping in war-time has been almost entirely confined to inserting new details in old maps. For such work some distortion or a lack of complete information o...

=Permissible Exposure in Airplane Photography.=—A definite limitation to the length of exposure in airplane cameras is set by the motion of the plane. If we represent the speed...

=General Theory.=—In addition to the limitation of exposure set by the ground speed of the plane another limitation is set by the _vibration_ of the camera. This may be caused e...

=Technique of Negative Making.=—Stated in its simplest terms, the whole problem of making a photographic map from the air consists in taking a large number of slightly overlappi...

The purely photographic problem in aerial photography, as distinct from the instrumental one, is the selection of photo sensitive materials which will yield useful results under...

The weight of the glass and the sheaths in the plate camera forms its most serious drawback. This weight must be reckoned at least three quarters of a pound for each 18 × 24 cen...

=Field Requirements.=—Developing, fixing, drying and printing in the field demand simple and convenient apparatus that may be carried about and installed with the least amount o...

=Distance Controls and Indicators.=—All operations connected with the exposing and changing of plates (except the changing of whole magazines) should be arranged for accomplishm...

An essential part of the equipment of either the aerial photographer or the designer of aerial photographic apparatus is a working knowledge of the principles and construction o...

=Conditions to Be Met.=—The characteristic difficulty in installing the airplane camera is that there is no place for it. After the gasoline supply, the armament, the wireless,...

=General Considerations.=—Camera mountings as used during the war were far from being developed on the basis of scientific study or test. At first the need for special supportin...

=The Function of Filters in Aerial Photography.=—The use of color screens or filters has been very common in ordinary landscape photography, for the purpose of securing approxim...

=Contact Printing.=—Single prints are made most simply in a printing frame held at a short distance from a light source. When any quantity must be made, as in turning out prints...

=General Considerations.=—Developing, fixing and other chemicals for aerial work differ in no essential respect from those used in ordinary photography. Full discussions of thes...

The ideal of every military photographic service has been an automatic or at least a semi-automatic camera, in order to reduce the observer's work to a minimum. Yet as a matter...

In the hand-operated camera the limit to progress is set when the number of operations is reduced to a minimum. In cameras using the larger sizes of plates a reduction in the nu...

Oblique aerial photographs if on a large enough scale are even easier to interpret than are ordinary photographs taken from the ground, since they practically preserve the usual...

=Field of Use.=—The first cameras to be used for aerial photography were hand-held ones of ordinary commercial types. Indeed the idea is still prevalent that to obtain aerial ph...

In the earlier days of airplane photography the ordinary plate-holder or double dark slide was used to some extent, but it is ill-suited to the purpose because of the considerab...

Oblique views from the airplane are of very great value. While vertical views are more searching in many respects, they do nevertheless present an aspect of the earth with which...

=Aerial Photography from Balloons and Kites.=—Photography from the air had been developed and used to a limited extent before the Great War, but with very few exceptions the wor...

The general appearance of the earth as viewed from above has already been described and illustrated (Figs. 10 and 11). It remains to deal with the earth's appearance in a more a...

=Chief Uses of an Airplane Camera.=—The kinds of camera suitable for airplane use and the manner in which they must differ from cameras for use on the ground are determined by c...

=General Characteristics.=—The ideal in the automatic plate camera is to provide a mechanism which will not only change the plates and set the shutter, as does the semi-automati...

The problems of naval aerial photography are quite different from those of military aerial work, and on the whole they are more simple. At the same time, photography has played...

“_Spotting_,” as distinct from mapping or from the photography of continuous strips, is the photography of a definite individual objective. In military work spotting or “pin poi...

Prophecy is an undertaking that always involves risk. The prophet's guess of what the future will bring forth is based only on the tendencies of the past, the most urgent needs...

The principal factors governing the length of exposure in the airplane camera have already been discussed under various headings. These are briefly, the nature of the aerial lan...

Aside from their element of novelty, aerial photographs have undoubted qualities of beauty and utility. The “bird's-eye view” has always been a favorite for revealing to the bes...

Skilled photographers can examine a negative and can interpret its renderings with practically as much satisfaction as they get from a print, whereby a considerable amount of ti...