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Kite Aerial Photography 170

Posted by michael from the fish-eye dept.
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.
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Kite Aerial Photography More

Kite Aerial Photography

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  • I've heard of upskirt pictures... (Score:5, Funny)

    by TheOtherAgentM ( 700696 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @01:24AM (#10186409)
    Is the new trend down blouse pictures? I like it already.

  • Build your own webserver (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @01:26AM (#10186418)
    and put a camera on it so you can see when it dies. :p

    I managed to see one picture before the site died. :/

  • Hmm (Score:5, Funny)

    by g-to-the-o-to-the-g ( 705721 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @01:29AM (#10186430) Homepage Journal
    Hmm...I forsee great business opportunities for camera repair shops.

  • Why not video? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by The Green Skeleton ( 724532 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @01:36AM (#10186465)
    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.

    • Re:Why not video? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JanneM ( 7445 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @01:55AM (#10186552) Homepage
      The resolution is not good enough, I think. Since you are taking panoramic pictures with a lot of small detail, you really want high resolution or any particular ground feature will just devolve into a few fuzzy pixels. To take really good arial pictures, I would expect black and white film photography probably is by far the best (though perhaps least convenient) choice.

      • If you have seen some of the ariel photos taking by which was taken with a spotter plane they aren't much better

        Rus

        • A-E-R-I-A-L (Score:1, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          FYI,
          it's not "arial " (a font, or a town in South Carolina),
          or "ariel " (a character in _The Tempest_, or, more recently, one in Disney's _The Little Mermaid_),
          or even "areal " (the adjective form of "area"),
          but rather "aerial" when you're talking about things of, in, or related to the air.
    • then you and your friends could start shooting at it with a BB guns and bottle rockets until the lens cracked or it spirals to doom from structural damage or fire. it's a good idea where i'm from anyway.

    • Stuntkite + Sony P32 (Score:4, Interesting)

      by boomgopher ( 627124 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @04:06AM (#10187026) Journal
      Speak of the devil, I did this the other weekend using a $15 stunt kite and my digital camera, a Sony P32 [dpreview.com] (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.

      • Re:Stuntkite + Sony P32 (Score:4, Funny)

        by Anonymous Writer ( 746272 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @04:31AM (#10187099)

        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.

        It is not a good idea to post videos on Slashdot. From the Wikipedia entry on the Slashdot effect [wikipedia.org]...

        Major news sites or corporate websites are typically unaffected by the Slashdot effect because they have been engineered to serve large numbers of requests. Websites that usually fall victim are smaller sites hosted on home servers or those with many large images or movie files.

        Your sysadmin would be very pissed, as well as the rest of your department.

        • What's the current legal status of link-to policies? Would it be enforceable for me to put a link-to policy prominently on my site that says something like:

          Please ask for permission before you link to me. If you link to me and referrals from your site cause over (volume of traffic), you can be held liable for the cost of bandwidth, etc...

          Not that I'll ever have anything personally slashdotted (although a client did withstand a slashdotfarking). But maybe link-to policies could go hand-in-hand with Priva
          • There was a lawsuit [wired.com] a while back that was settled out of court that may have some relevance to linking. However, in that case, it involved a website called TotalNEWS [totalnews.com] making stories from other websites appear like parts of its own pages using frames [publaw.com]. News organisations like The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and CNN sued the site and forced them to stop linking to their own sites in a frames fashion. Since it was settled out of court, I presume it hasn't really set legal pecedence, but it did bring

    • Re:Why not video? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Writer ( 746272 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @04:53AM (#10187157)

      What I think would be alot cooler is if someone stuck a small wireless camera

      What about using a balloon instead of a kite with a wireless camera? It could stay up much longer with less supervision and probably provide a more stable image.

      • Re:Why not video? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by KitFox ( 712780 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @06:00AM (#10187369)
        Hmmm... Weather Balloon [scientificsales.com], tank of helium, good tie line, a good rig, and a clear day (Or a stormy one if you're feeling like Ben). Seems much less dangerous for the camera than a kite, honestly (Unless some neighborhood twerp has a pellet rifle).

        I also noticed that one poster was pointing out that high altitude photography sucks, and everything looks boring from a plane. Well, yeah, it does. That's because of the extreme elevation. But get something up there without being at the altitude that a plane is at, and you can get some pretty cool shots.
        • Weather Balloon + Tank of Helium + 2 x 3G Video phones.

          Stick the video phone on the balloon.
          Call the other video phone from the balloon phone.
          Let the balloon go.
          Watch the video.

          The 3G network will give great coverage, in Europe you could see the video as the balloon passes between different counries.

    • i remember seeing a video made with such a small wireless camera.

      the guy put it facing the ground on a model rocket.

      the video goes like:
      1) static grass.
      2) ignition.
      3) quickly rotating ground.
      4) quickly rotating cloudy sky.
      5) static.

  • The kite just took some new pictures... (Score:5, Funny)

    by generationxyu ( 630468 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @01:37AM (#10186468) Homepage
    Apparently there's a fire at the hosting company... Slashdot to the rescue! (batman theme song)

  • Coral P2P Cache (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @01:39AM (#10186479)
    I see a use for... http://www.thehaefners.com.nyud.net:8090/gallery/ [nyud.net]

    • Re:Coral P2P Cache (Score:3, Insightful)

      by drawfour ( 791912 )
      I think that the Slashdot editors should take it upon themselves to modify all links in the submitted article to be Coral'd. Now that a method exists by which to help eliminate (or greatly reduce) the /. effect, Slashdot owes it to the websites to which it links to prevent whatever /. effect it can.

    • Re:Coral P2P Cache (Score:2, Informative)

      by pdamoc ( 771461 )
      Coralisation after slashdoting is useless.
      Google cache is shot on images.
      Well I guess people could try the internet archive [archive.org]... at least they have a chance to see something (not too much tho) :)

  • Uh oh... (Score:5, Funny)

    by r00k123 ( 588214 ) <borenste AT student DOT umass DOT edu> on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @01:40AM (#10186484)

    Webmaster - please contact support as soon as possible. Sooomebodyss innn troouubllleee....

  • No need to break your camera (Score:4, Interesting)

    by icecow ( 764255 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @01:42AM (#10186491)
    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.
    • The "principals" observed? You're doing this as a school project? ;-)
    • i've generally found that helium isn't light enough for doing this, most rafts can't hold enough, blow more than a few up myself trying though. oh and don't try to fill a basket ball up with helium unless your wearing gloves those things HURT when they exploded. (this was after my moms birthday when me my dad and brother were trying to come up with something to do with the rented helium since we had to use it up). we were able to get about 30psi into the basket ball before it exploded.

  • Ouch! (Score:4, Informative)

    by Bill_Royle ( 639563 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @01:43AM (#10186495)
    Another example of why you shouldn't host from a dynamic connection...

    NS1.DYNAMICNAME.COM
    NS2.DYNAMICNAME.COM

    • Re:Ouch! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Soko ( 17987 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @02:00AM (#10186577) Homepage
      I think thier ISP just pissed them off.

      "Cut off my bitorrent, will you? Fine. I'll just get this ULTRA high bandwidth, pictures galore site that's hosted on my home connection posted on Slashdot's front fucking page, Mr. No-Copyright-Infrigement-For-You-Techy-Type. Just you wait, michael won't even check where it's hosted, asshole."

      Soko

  • Info from page (Score:2, Interesting)

    by z3021017 ( 806883 )
    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 page
  • The pic page has crashed and burned.

    Either that or the kite did hence no pictures.

  • Slashdotted already (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Now wouldn't it be great if everyone used a Coraled URL [nyud.net] to access the site? It's no help right now since the site is already down, but if it does come up, this would help preserve its bandwidth.

  • Cheap Way and Fun Way! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ttroutma ( 552162 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @01:57AM (#10186556) Homepage
    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.

  • This should teach us all... (Score:4, Funny)

    by perseguidor ( 777194 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @01:57AM (#10186558)
    (Reminds me of Ben Franklin!)
    This should teach us all not to expose cameras to lightning when still plugged to servers!

  • linux powered weather balloon (Score:3, Interesting)

    by phreakv6 ( 760152 ) <phreakv6@gma i l . com> on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @01:58AM (#10186568) Homepage
    reminds of the linux powered weather balloon [slashdot.org]

  • I had trouble (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 )
    My kite kept getting tangled in its string and went spiraling into buildings [freewebs.com]. Lose more cameras that way :-)
  • "Visitors
    We are sorry but this site is experiencing
    difficulties at this time.
    Please return shortly!
    Thank you for your patience.


    Webmaster - please contact support as soon as possible."

    Google cache [66.102.7.104]

  • While you're at it... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mirko ( 198274 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @02:01AM (#10186579) Journal
    There's also Photoplane [gnuart.net] which consists of putting a camera on a radio-guided plane.
  • This link was slashdotted with less than 30 posts, holy crap!

    Editors, shouldn't it be taken into consideration (the enormous ddos that is slashdot) when linking to sites? posting mirrors or something.. At least a good warning to the site owners is needed! Can you imagine if someone's bandwidth bill just went up from $50 to a couple hundred.... it would be terrible

    Please save the poor webservers!
    • Let's assume that the slashdot editors are really going to inform a webmaster about the traffic that will soon hit his site. What if the webmaster says "thanks but no thanks"? Should the entire story then be cancelled? How many times do you see a website being slashdotted? I agree it's a pity if you get a huge bandwidth-bill, but if you don't want people to see what you put online, don't put it online in the first place. And if you do expect alot of people, make sure you can afford the traffic (both financi
      • I'd like to think that if asked not to link, the editors wouldn't link.

        But if slashdot contacted me and said they were going to link to my web page, I'd probably make a mirror myself on a limited-bandwidth site and ask them to point to that. If they refused, I'd wait until the article posted and immediately move the page until it left the /. front page.

  • (Partial) mirror (Score:5, Informative)

    by D H NG ( 779318 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @02:11AM (#10186622)
    Here are 4 of the kite panoramas I managed to see before the site died. The names are different from the site's because I just took them from my cache.

    Panorama 1 [nyud.net]
    Panorama 2 [nyud.net]
    Panorama 3 [nyud.net]
    Panorama 4 [nyud.net]

    • Someone please mod parent up. These panoramas are amazing.
    • Is that first one Oban, in Scotland?

      cLive ;-)
    • Wow, those are amazing. What kind of rig do you need to take panoramic pictures like that? And why doesn't the kite show up in the pictures?

      P.S. nice use of the nyud.net caching system; if only the slashdot editors would catch on to it...

      • Re:(Partial) mirror (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        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 loc
        • Yes, exactly. I have done this same shot from a kite. The rig you use is the same as for any other shot, except that you lock it so the camera is pointed straight down (my rig's servo cannot pitch with the heavy fisheye lens on the camera, so I just have a locking pin to hold it in place)

          As far as equipment, there are very few small cameras that can take a 180 deg fisheye and not weigh a thousand pounds. Nikon makes a lens, the FC-E8 fisheye converter that can be used with most of the consumer line coolpix
    • Wow, those are good pictures! In the 3rd and 4th ones you can even see the curvature of the Earth!
      • Mod parent funny.

        Actually you can see the lens distortion of the earth!
    • So, since the original site is dead, what area the details ni building something like this? Many "normal" images stitched together? Fish-eye lenses as another poster suggested? Software to generate the quick-time VR files?
      • You use a fisheye lens with a 180 or greater FOV hanging from the kite pointing straight down, then you mesh it with a shot of the sky with the same lens pointed straight up. To make the pano, you need some software. I used a copy of Panotools (compiled without the FOV restriction; come sue me ipix) to do the stitching. PTPicker is a free java frontend for panotools or you can also use the excellent PTGui for windows or PTMac for mac which work a bit quicker than the java stuff.

        I made one of these panorama
    • is the 4th one Tintagel, Cornwall (UK)?

  • alternate link (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dirvish ( 574948 ) <(dirvish) (at) (foundnews.com)> on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @02:37AM (#10186737) Homepage Journal
    Well, since the mentioned site is slashdotted try this one instead [berkeley.edu] for some aerial kite photography.
  • And there I was thinking that the link to http://www.thehaefners.com/gallery/ had something to do with somoene with a slightly different spelling of their surname, and a penchant for bunnies [google.com].

    Imagine the pictures you'd get from flying a kite around that Heffner's house.

  • Since the site is slashdotted and the google-cache miss the pictures.

    http://web.archive.org/web/20040211231540/http://t hehaefners.com/kap/ [archive.org]
  • the kite flies away? How do I get the pictures I've snapped then..? Oh wait a second....
  • Do a google image search on

    site:thehaefners.com kap

    or follow this [google Germany, oops] Link [google.de]

  • My father did that on Easter Island a few years ago. I wish I had copies of the photos he took.
  • attach yourself to the kite, and take pictures when YOU jump into the air.

    8 meg WMV which has some pretty hairy shots.
    http://www.kitefilm.com/video/completeteas er1_256. wmv

    lots of kite discussions here http://www.kiteforum.com
    including some nice pics in the gallery

    i for one welcome our new kiteboarding overlords.
  • How long does everyone think it will be before someone gets arrested taking pictures of a bridge using a kite? Or maybe they will simply arrest people for flying kites cameras be damned?

    I looked into doing this awhile back myself after having had a BLAST at the beach flying a kite of mine QUITE high. Suspendnig the camera is one issue but something I think could be solved. Figuring out how to remotely trigger it is the PITA. I found one site talking about using a remote control which it looks like this guy
    • Following the links in the Archive.org site I've found som interesting things...

      http://web.archive.org/web/20040309130531/www.kap s hop.com/switch.html [archive.org]

      and

      http://www.harbortronics.com/digisnap5000.asp [harbortronics.com]

      So it seems that some cameras can be done remotely without mechanical crap. Never found any of this in my previous research! Apparently, according to one site, some folsk run video cameras up with the kite so they can see what the camera will be taking pics of and even zoom using these dgital switches. I
    • Need to figure out how best to trigger the darned thnig - mechanical servos and whatnot seem silly, there needs to be a way to remotely trigger a switch without alot of extra crap going up with it...

      My last digital camera (Kodak DC200) could be triggered using a serial cable. I looked into making a PIC circuit to do a timed trigger (say, wait 2 mins, then take a picture every 10 seconds) -- but having no experience in such low-level programming, and none of the hardware, I soon shied away from the project

  • Don't forget the Estes Astrocam (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sdo1 ( 213835 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @08:34AM (#10187921) Journal
    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
  • the real pro [yannarthusbertrand.com] takes an helicopter around the world and takes nice pictures of what wonders are eroded, destroyed and disapearing because of man.

  • Pigeon Aerial Photography (Score:3, Funny)

    by amosl ( 548559 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @10:18AM (#10188614) Homepage
    I've been working on pigeon aerial photography [latteier.com]. It's like KAP only you strap a camera to a pigeon. No this is not a joke. In fact the technology is about 100 years old. If you try it at home you'll find out that it's harder than it appears, but not impossible.
  • We've been doing this with model airplanes for awhile now. Next Slashdot will be posting links on how to build your own UAV/RPV... It's easy to get some LIVE video using a camera BlackWidowAV.com sells. Combine that with a GPS Autopilot from u-nav.com and you have your own drone. Set waypoints to fly over your neighbors house and feed back live video of what their kids are doing...

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