I love this sort of innovation and technique
Its in the tradition of a very famous Aussie photographer - Frank Hurley. Hurley lived in a time when innovation was the order of the day, there was no store on the high street to pop down to to grab some kit, you made stuff up as you went along. He rigged a full plate to the top of the mast to take some aerial views of the ship, there wasn't even a hardware store to pop out to.
The man went to the Antarctica with Mawson, got shipwrecked with Shakleton for nearly 2 years, walked in the door said hello to the misses found out WW 1 was on and promptly left for the front. He was seen by academic historians as not playing ball, underlined by the fact that all the media people from WW1 got knighted, except Hurley. Sir Keith Murdoch was one of them, yes Ruperts Dad.
In all those early years he used a full plate and half plate cameras. All plates were made up from base chemicals. Think about how much fresh water there is to be had on a sailing ship and how much assing around it would be to develop plates in the Antarctica.
A famous story from WW2 - In the early days of the war the Aussie government was struggling to forge a solid line of positive narrative to use to keep the populations morale up, it was decided to put Sir Keith Murdoch in charge, he was a no nonsense autocratic type leader. It is said he walked in to the news room and stood there and started taking charge. He pretty much said "who are you?" "Senior writer" "You're fired, get out of here" "What do you do?" "Lead the copy team?" "Well your now copy boy", "What do you do?" "I write articles for woman to read?" "Well your now my secretary, go get me a tea" "ALL of you listen up, we need better material, we need harder workers, I need you to lift your efforts, I need you to lift the public morale, but most of all right now I need someone to go find me HURLEY!"
This anecdote underlines that one of the more successful media types of the time did not judge Hurley on how he got things done or what he thought, only judged him on the final outcomes he presented.
Hurley was as adept at cinecamera as he was with stills.