Kite Aerial Photography

[andygates]

What is it?  It's taking photos using a camera hung from a kite.  You get a unique vantage point and a low entry cost, but you have to get good weather and pray to the gods of gear not to smash your baby into the ground.



The kite's almost always a single-string job that you can put up and park in the sky.  I use a parafoil because it's easier to pack and go, but conyes and roks and the like are all popular.

The camera can be suspended from the kite, but is usually hung from the line.  The kite moves too much.  There are two schools of suspension: the pendulum (exactly what it says on the tin) and the picavet rig, which is a cats' cradle of lines that produce a relatively self-levelling platform.  I'll get a photo of my setup in action once the surfbums get home.  Here's the picavet rig detailed:



There are various approaches to taking the shot.  I use a two-axis cradle: pan and tilt, with a third servo to press the "take" button.  Schematically it's this:



...which looks like this in the flesh:



Stuff I want to shoot like this: Surf when it's working, over the surfers, in the lineout.  Wind farms from alongside.  Maiden Castle.   

[andygates]

One of the slackers who was heckling helping at the weekend got some shots of the rig in action:

[clarion]

Very very cool

[bikepacker]

I would imagine with the kite most of the shots are hit and miss. When I was doing aerial photography it did it from a Cessna and even positioning that could be difficult. At the time we had a competitor that used a radio controlled helicopter with still and video cameras strapped together for viewing the picture before taking. That was in those days when we used stuff called film.

[andygates]

Aye, very hit and miss - I took 100 shots, of which about 26 were interesting and only a handful were actually good.  And somehow managed to get nothing pointing out to sea!

Fancy cameras with a TV output can feed that directly into a wireless X10-type webcam transmitter; there's a pretty straightforward modification to give those a directional antenna, and on the ground, you can plug the receiver into a portable telly so that you can see what you're shooting.  Way above my budget! 

I'm loving digital.  The failure rate was too high to pursue this while film was the thing -- with digital there is awesomeness.

But kites are always going to be at the whim of the wind.  Nature of the beast - and why the few start-ups that have offered it as a commercial service have gone bust!

[Zipperhead]

Flexifoil have some 15m kites in the clearance section at the moment. With one of those you could send a camera operator aloft on a windy day. No more hit and miss!

[bomber]

I've just bought a 9m flexifoil

Where's Kitzy when you need her

[andygates]

She's in the spotter's basket!

[andygates]

Just a quick heads-up for World Wide KAP Week 2009, which is from 24 April to 4 May (yes, a long week!).  It's a loose and baggy internet kind of event and should be fun.  I've got a "to shoot" list as long as my 'tache already!