Slashdot Mirror
Kite Aerial Photography
j cherney writes "A great combination of digital photography, kite flying, and wireless remote control. Absolutely incredible pictures. Enjoy!" We've mentioned this expensive pursuit a few times before, including a bit on how to build one of your own.
What I think would be alot cooler is if someone stuck a small wireless camera (you can pick them up for like $30 on ebay) on a kite. It would be alot lighter as those things are tiny (the heavyest part would likely be the 9v battery), and you still make stills later if you really wanted to.
Just my 2c.
Inflate some pool rafts and kiddy pools with helium and start crafting some aerodynamics using the principals observed.
type 'pool raft' in google and hit that 'image' tab if you want to start visualizing it.
might be more like helium-raft-parachute photography but hey.
Stop invalid scientific research. Ask your local scientists to feed their lab rats with a phytoestrogen-free chow.
I've been interested in photography for as long as I can remember, and kite aerial photography (KAP) seemed like a natural progression. At least it did after my friend, Thomas Dewez, convinced me that it isn't completely ridiculous to suspend an $800 camera from a kite. After seeing the potential in online galleries, I knew that I had to do this! I spent a few months researching equipment, technique, etc. before diving in. I had not flown a kite since I was a kid, so I'm learning as I go...
These web pages will serve as a photo gallery of select images, as well as a general information source on equipment, technique, and other related info. Be sure to see my 360 virtual reality (VR) panoramas taken from a kite's eye view. They might take a while to load (depending on your connection speed), but it should be worth the wait.
Bored? Visit my exciting counter page!
Easier way to do this is to use a camera that just takes a pic every so many minutes and just tie it to a stable kite. It will dangle around randomly but it works and you get a decent picture sometimes. As to putting a wireless camera on a kite, just put a wireless camera on a really high performance stunt kite and then wear a head mounted display while you fly it around at 100mph. That would make an exciting vomit machine.
reminds of the linux powered weather balloon
fifteen jugglers, five believers
My kite kept getting tangled in its string and went spiraling into buildings. Lose more cameras that way :-)
Table-ized A.I.
There's also Photoplane which consists of putting a camera on a radio-guided plane.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Well, since the mentioned site is slashdotted try this one instead for some aerial kite photography.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
Speak of the devil, I did this the other weekend using a $15 stunt kite and my digital camera, a Sony P32 (got it for only $90 at Target, so I felt it was worth the risk)
The video on this little cam is great, 640x480 at 24fps (though it actually seems more like 15fps, some frames are doubled). With a 128M memory stick, I can get 5 minutes of video and audio. Viewing the results on TV is great, it's almost DVCam quality.
I'd love to post the videos here (some flyovers at the beach), but my department's sysadmin would be pissed if I uploaded the 20+M mpgs. There's audio too, but it's basically wind noise, and not very interesting.
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
It's a trick. 360 degrees panoramic pictures with 180 degrees vertical angle are usually stitched together from two fish-eye shots with 180+ degrees field of view. The site is slashdotted and I didn't get to see it, but I guess the camera is hanging from the kite looking straight down with said fish-eye lense, taking pictures of the ground to the horizon in all directions. Then the photographer makes a shot of the sky with a similar camera, but from the ground. Since the sky is far away and doesn't have locating details anyway, the height difference doesn't matter.
How long has the Estes Astrocam been around? I remember playing with one in the 70's. It was an Estes rocket that you actually built (!!!) and it had a nose-cone with a 110 film cartridge type camera. It was a pretty cheap shutter mechanism and even cheaper lens. Getting good results was rare, but when you're 9 years old, it was the epitome of high-tech.
I think most of the roll ended up being pictures of my hand as I checked out the shutter function, maybe 1 arial shot, and some that misfired when the rocket got back to earth (nothing more frustrating than getting the film developed only to find some sideways pictures of tall grass).
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?