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LOL :D 350 hours @ approx. £1200 per hour = £420,000 (~US$658,000) - ouch!

I always have a King Air turboprop stationed at 20,000ft above my shoot area for downlink. Don't you? ;)

No - to get better pictures you need to be a better photographer ;) Think of it in the same way as any other photography - regular, old-fashioned, on-the-ground photography. What would you be happy with? What would your customers be happy with? Make that choice, then build/buy the machine to...

Ooh! A can of worms, this question! Video or stills or both? You need to be clear what your professional intentions and standards are. Many people will be happy with the video and stills from a NEX5, many will not.

IMO the greatest risk of all is FPV - and judging by YouTube, a very high percentage of FPVers are criminally irresponsible ;) Licencing for paid work will help, of course, but the too-casual hobbyist will always be a danger to himself and others. Mind you, we have guns, crossbows, slingshots...

Damn silly image attachment system! Bart!? As close as I could get with the numbers you gave.

There are some distinct advantages - blade protection, foldability, indoor use and so on. I think both platforms have their place. Now - buggy FC firmware... that's a different problem.

http://skysapience.com/products/the-hovermast http://www.iai.co.il/35759-41817-en/BusinessAreas_UnmannedAirSystems_ETOP.aspx :)

eCalc seems to work well for me - but you have to be aware of its few quirks. Certainly it is better to use "Without Drive" in the top line and enter the weight of your craft minus ESCs, motors and batteries. Long flight times come from large diameter low-pitch props, low KV pancake motors and...

The Freefly Radian is shaping up well - but guaranteed it will be expensive! Search on Vimeo for: Radian FreeFly Stabilisation Stabilization ...and every combination thereof

4096 of them :) - are we talking about the same thing?

Yes - the 7990's were "brutal" and refused to be calmed, even when you dialled down their speed. And they were limit cycling like crazy because their angular backlash is greater than one "position" of the magnetic encoder. This is the other side of the RC servo problem - their response...

Good intro to some anti-backlash solutions: https://e-reports-ext.llnl.gov/pdf/222804.pdf (including antagonistic drive).

Yes, sure, I've had it working on a test rig - and Denny has successfully used the technique too. It works, of that there's no doubt. I found that certain servos are not as happy doing it as others. The Hitec 7990, for example, really didn't like it. Google up US Patents 5,729,100 and 3,803,935

And that, unfortunately, is going to be the limiting factor. We've seen attempts to mask that backlash with rotary dampers, linear dampers, springs and even felt washers (Photohigher). Let's hope the thoroughness of the rest of your engineering limits its effects on the end result. Nice work...

Great images! Is that the panorama sweep mode of the HX9? Or manually stitched? Either way, I'm impressed!

Yep - very stodgy stuff, that paper. Certainly not comprehensible to me, all those equations! When does "damping" become "friction"? Artificially introduced friction/damping may well help so long as the amount is carefully controlled in relation to the rotational torque available/needed. So...

As Denny pointed out a few pages back - one tends to forget that behaviour on the bench is very different to what happens in the air. On the bench, the airframe stays still and the gimbal moves. In the air the gimbal is effectively stationary and the airframe moves relative to it. Thus the...

Looking good! So... the $64K question: is there any play at the camera plate, in any direction?

Higher update rate means the movement of the servo can be "more up to date" with what the controller is telling it to do. I wouldn't say that always means "smoother" - there are so many variables. But if you can increase the rate then it is better to do so.