Kite Aerial Photography
 

I recently picked up a second-hand Canon P&S to play around with CHDK ("hacking" software that can allow all kinds of interesting control of the Canon cameras). This quickly opened up the world of KAP (Kite Aerial Photography) to me :D :D

I can put the photos of the kite and the camera rig here, because they were taken with my fz40:

#1 - The kite is a Delta Conyne, a bit over 9 feet across, made from an old tent we bought off eBay. My wife did the sewing:

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-W.../s800/Kite.JPG

#2 - The KAP rig, which involves a Picavet Suspension (the cross and string, which is self-leveling), a small geared motor, and some electronics which rotate the camera and fire the shutter every 5 seconds:

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-X...rge%252529.JPG

A couple of photos from the first aerial shoot are on the Canon forum:
Kite Aerial Photography thread.

Nice paraphernalia you have there. Congrats :).

I made something similar using water rockets. They go up to 350 meters and the camera was capturing movies, but the thing is so shaky that only something like 10 frames were usable :). I was using a cheap and lite camera though, maybe using a better one that can capture a burst of high-speed shots (at least 1/500) i could get better results.

Anyways... the parachute failed and it smashed on a rock :) hehehe. It wasn't funny at the time because that were my only camera and both the parachute and the shock absorber failed to keep it safe. The rocket only flew 20 times before the crash.

EDIT: The image quality of your apparatus is very good. Not so sharp but the contrast, noise and saturation are pretty impressive.

Interesting stuff Mick.

jj

Excellent stuff and good engineering, Mick! Love the shots you posted, and I think it would be amazing at the beach!

Electrolyte, that rocket sounds interesting - shame you didn't get many useful frames given your camera was sacrificed in the process. I'm fairly happy with the quality of the shots from the little Canon - shame I can't fly my Panasonic up there though!

Saly, yeah, we'll get it to the beach again soon :)

Great and brilliant job BackyardPermaculture!! Congrats

Some really good ideas there backyard, who would have thought of using a tent for a kite.... pretty good aerial shots as well.

Good luck with future flights

Amazing, you are a talented bloke (and your wife is clever too) :D

My wife definitely knows her way around a sewing machine :D

Wow!! Great [email protected]!

Congratzz! very first of all. Must say, aerial photography is becoming one of the most popular forms of photography today due to its daring capabilities and cause for sudden excitement as well as having the ability to create great affects in photos. What most people didn't know however is that aerial photography has been around for quite some time now. It started back in world war 2 where photographers would hitch a ride in a war planes, hoping to capture that one great shot of a plane going down, or an enemy fighter aiming his guns at the camera. It seems today that aerial photography has changed a lot.

Aerial photography will always be a form of photography that most people aspire to doing one day in their careers as the photos photographers are able to create can be magnificent when done correctly. There is a myriad of settings all over the world that would look great from the air and many photographers are beginning to take advantage of these opportunities.

Cheers!