Super Awesome Balloon Photography Project

The Super Awesome Balloon Photography Project is a chronicling of my efforts to hang a camera from a balloon several hundred or thousand feet in the air to get some pseudo aerial photos. Which would be, SUPER AWESOME!

2007-09-05 CREDIT FRAUD!

I just got a phone call from my cc company saying someone tried to buy a pair of $4000 designer purses in Paris with my card. The same cc I used to buy the helium and rent the tank! I haven't used it anywhere else in a while, so naturaly I suspect the balloon husslers, those guys seemed shifty to me. No worries though, my cc company stoped them before they did any damage.

2007-09-01 SUCCESS!

Today I completed my initial tests with the help of my trusty assistant, whome I shall refer to as Luigi.

In this test we used 12 large, very large, balloons.

We had some treppidation early into the inflatting phase when we weighed the difference between our test balist and calculated we would need 50 balloons to achieve the lift required. But undetured I filled the next balloon with about twice as much helium, and all the subsequent balloons get fatter, and liftier! In the end we were able to achieve a neutral weight with 11 balloons, and lift with 12.

Notice the plane, that shows how high we intend to go!, ignore the grass that shows how low we still are. :(

Since this was intended as a test, I don't feel too bad thatg we didn't get any show stopper photos from the rig. We learned a lot. And that's what we were going for.
Here's the key points we walked away with.

12 36in balloons works, but a single small tank of helium can fill 15-16, so next time a couple more balloons will give us more lift!
1 80 pound test fishing line holds, but makes me nervous as hell, next time 2 lines. It'll cut down on that nagging feeling that your going to watch your camera leave the state.
Check the wind ahead of time. The wind keep the ballons near the ground since they were blowing sideways more than they were lifting up.
Higher iso, so the camera can shoot at higher shutter speeds. The already mentioned wind keep the camera bouncing around and ruined shots.
Fill the balloons at the field! I filled these ones at home thinking I could drive to the field with them hanging out of my window. The drag was so strong I feared they would break loose.

And just so you can enjoy our efforts a little more, here are some randome pics from the test.