Bending light...

I realize this is an optics-related question, but I figured someone in here would probably know the answer. I would like to mount a video camera in a high power rocket, but I need to have a minimal amount of drag outside the body. So I'd like to run some type of tube or type of optic setup that can bend the output going to the camera lens, without losing much video quality. It needs to make maybe a 30 degree bend. I thought about a mirror but that may be hard to get perfectly lined up. Thanks.

A mirror or prism is the only way I would know how to do that in a practical way. They do make fiber optic lenses but they can be quite expensive.

I would imagine you'd need a pretty sturdy mount to to minimize shaking and misalignment.

Is there any fiber optic lenses of a larger scale that aren't a lot of money?

?

The lightest thing would be a front surface mirror
of sufficient size for the angle of view of the camera.
Prisms and fiber optic bundles would work but will be
heavy.

Look at surplusshed.com for cheap optical stuff.

Greg

or much smaller camera parts, like a "lipstick" camera, or various spy and pinhole type cameras that are cheap.

a lipstick camera has a head and lens on the lipstick sized module, then the rest of the camera is in a box, the only ones i have seen the box is to big, and very inconvienient.

i think for cheapness and ease of interconnection and all, a mirror would still be the easiest.

Is there anything I could use for the camera which has at least a vga resolution(640x480), and is very small? Anything I find like a lipstick camera has a low resolution and slow frame rate I believe. Thanks guys.

cheap pinhole cameras are lower resolution indeed, or b/w.
frame rate is going to be more dependant on the recording unit.
go to B&H photo and video to see $1000 lipstick cameras, that are full res, and unfortunatly larger than would ever be usefull.

what recorder would you use, almost every recording unit would have such a big size to it, that a camera WITH a recorder would be the smallest payload.

trying to transmit back to ground, would be expencive and never is good enough. seems like some kinda of tiny DV or digital camera would be best, and talk about damage on impact , most of them wouldnt survive a fast chute landing.

consumer video tranmitters might make it 20 feet on a good day and the higher end ones, might make it 200, before the picture was worse than a digicams cheap video capacity.

that is all i can think of, would be a 300$ DV camcorder, and just aligning a mirror, everything else gets BIG somewhere in the total package, even if the viewed or camera head was tiny.

spy stores, would have stuff, but then cost, and resloution and frame rate again, would be big issues.

what about the DV head spin? on high G force takeoffs, a helical scan recorder could fail you. the head on a dv unit spins at 9000rpm, like a minature gyro, if there is a turn, the gyro would slow down, and you would get bad picture.
hmmm
i think for assurance i would have to go with a full digital flash memory type unit. and they have poor res, short time, and low frame rate. but being all digital they would guarentee a pic if the memory was still intact.

Check out Ramsey Electronics kits. They have a few units that are meant for applications such as model rocketry.