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day 3649: finally flying the kite aerial photography rig!

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day 3649: finally flying the kite aerial photography rig! I.

a little over a year ago i thought about getting into kite aerial photography with odin and almost exactly a year ago we beta tested the rig and took frida goes for her first ride in the galaxie 500 in search of the wind. and then we waited. and waited. and waited for a non-stormy windy day when we had the time to fly a kite. turns out that combination of conditions is a rarity! and i started to believe that waiting for the wind was the wrong strategy and we needed to start thinking about heading to windy places.

so we planned ahead and brought the gear on vacation in the upper peninsula of michigan where odds are good we’d find a good breeze coming off lake michigan.

sure enough, just a few hundred feet from where odin and his cousin flew kites for the very first time almost exactly 8 years to the day, we launched the rig into the air.

but first, we tested without the camera attached to see if the breeze seemed strong enough. sure seemed so!

the kite was up for about 10 minutes and took 40 shots and i we got 1 that was perfectly aligned when shooting every 15 seconds. i’m sure there’s probably some sort of optimum to be found between decreasing the time between shots ( and reducing the battery life ) and just leaving the kite up longer.

day 3649: finally flying the kite aerial photography rig! II.

we mounted the canon sd450 running the canon hack development kit onto the kit and using the super simple intervalometer that comes with the stock kit set the camera to take a picture every 15 seconds. i was hoping we’d get into the frame on take off. odin’s feet did 🙂

day 3649: finally flying the kite aerial photography rig! III.

the results turned out awesome! it doesn’t have any fancy stabilization sytem and it was really windy so odds are low that at any given moment the camera is going to be perfectly aligned with the horizon. i think in the future i’ll set the time between shots to a shorter duration to increase the chances if getting aligned with the horizon.

day 3649: finally flying the kite aerial photography rig! IV.

at this point the kite was maybe a 150 feet up with the camera swaying around around 20 feet below. odin and i started thinking how cool it would be to get a much longer line and a reel to make it easier to get the kite higher up and down faster ( yes, that’s foreshadowing ).

day 3649: finally flying the kite aerial photography rig! V.

the kite was up for about 10 minutes and took 40 shots and i we got 1 that was perfectly aligned when shooting every 15 seconds. i’m sure there’s probably some sort of optimum to be found between decreasing the time between shots ( and reducing the battery life ) and just leaving the kite up longer.

day 3649: finally flying the kite aerial photography rig! VI.

it took a lot of effort in the stiff breeze to bring the kite down with the awkward “reel” that came with the kite. we though surely grandpa must have a old fishing reel! we raced back to the house and of course he did. so we hooked up the kite to the fishing line and went back to the beach.

day 3649: finally flying the kite aerial photography rig! VII.

we tried to let the kite out slowly with the reel but the winds were soooooo strong it just went zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz all out at once – the entire 300 feet or so of line. i thought the reel was going to catch on fire!

day 3649: finally flying the kite aerial photography rig! VIII.

and much to our surprise we couldn’t reel it back in as there was too much drag on the line.

what to do?! i thought i could run the line under a picnic table and keep walking backwards until i pulled the kite down. i got about 10 feet before the line snapped and the kite went sailing away out of sight. at that point we were both very happy we decided to test it without the camera attached.

it took about 30 minutes of wandering through people’s back yards before we found the kite. it had floated about 4 blocks away and thankfully landed in in some trees without the fishing line getting tangled in powerlines.

a very nice lady helped us get it out of the tree by giving us a length of gutter that was just long enough to knock it down. i think she really enjoyed hearing about our adventure as we pulled down the kite and yanked the hundreds of feet of line that draped over her house and across the street into the next block.

odin commented that the kite aerial photography rig was a 110% success but maybe we needed to do a little more work on building a better reel. i couldn’t agree more! i thinnk there might be a outdoor kite line reel winder with lock in our future, but what to do until then? surely we must be able to build something from stuff lying around.

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day 3255: beta testing the kite aerial photography rig!

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day 3255: beta testing the kite aerial photography rig! I.

i mentioned i was interested in getting into kite aerial photography with odin so first things first, we needed to build a rig and test it out. as i mentioned in previous post “kite aerial photography 101” rig seemed about my speed – not too complicated and not too expensive and looks like it takes great pictures.

so we built a simple rig out of an 18″ bookshelf bracket, some large clips, a few key rings and string and decided to beta test the setup to see if the kite could generate enough lift with a test camera that didn’t actually work so we wouldn’t feel too bad if we crashed the kite.

but first, we wanted to test the kite with the bracket attached to the kite via about 50 feet of string but without a camera attached.

much to my surprise even with out little 4 foot delta kite – it worked !

i highlighted the bracket with a red rectangle to make it a little easier to see.

day 3255: beta testing the kite aerial photography rig! II.

here’s another view of the maiden flight sans camera. letting the bracket swing 50 feet from the kite ( highlighted in red ) i think helps dampen the vibration down the string which is how you’re able to get such good images without complicated set-up but it does make it a little more difficult to get the camera really high up the air when you only have 150 feet of kite string! clearly we need more kite string 🙂

day 3255: beta testing the kite aerial photography rig! III.

then we attached the non-functional camera and shortened the distance between the kite and the camera to around 30 feet to see if the camera/bracket swayed any more erratically than with 50 feet ( it didn’t ). i’m sure when we start taking photos we’ll need to do some experimentation to get the an optimal distance for clear images.

even with the added weight of the camera, the little delta kite generated enough lift to take the camera up in a relatively tame wind. i think the rig we have will be fine for similar sized point and shoot cameras but we’d definitely want a larger kite if we were going to send up a dslr.

day 3255: beta testing the kite aerial photography rig! IV.

we used a simple key ring to attach the rig to the kite. easy peasy to put on and take off!

day 3255: beta testing the kite aerial photography rig! V.

the other end of the string that is connected to the kite is attached to a simple hanger fashioned from metal wire with another key ring.

day 3255: beta testing the kite aerial photography rig! VI.

and here’s the business end of the rig which is attached to the hanger. it’s simply a bookshelf bracket with oversized clips attached with a some metal wire twisted through the bracket slots and a few key rings. very, very easy to put together and quite affordable for a test rig.

day 3255: beta testing the kite aerial photography rig! VII.

the camera is attached via the tripod mount on the bottom of most cameras with an appropriately sized screw. as you can see, the nice think about the book shelf bracket is that it already comes with slots or attached more cameras 🙂

as i mentioned the beta test was with a non-functional camera so we wouldn’t feel too badly if we crashed the kite and ruined the camera. next, i need to find a functioning camera that cheap enough that i still won’t feel too bad about wrecking if we have a crash but that has the ability to take interval shots ( e.g. take a shot every 30 seconds ) which is normally a feature reserved for higher end cameras.

it turns out the canon hack development kit lets you add that feature to just about any canon camera, even an aging point and shoot.

so who has and old canon point and shoot sitting around gathering dust that they’d like to donate to our kite aerial photography adventures?

some of you might be asking why on earth we’re doing this? here’s a great gallery of spectacular kite aerial photos that gives a good flavor of the types of images we’re hoping to capture.

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thinking about getting into kite aerial photography with odin.

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as if i didn’t have enough to do with building The World’s Most Awesome Treehouse(s), i’m thinking of starting Adventures in kite aerial photography (kap) with odin and trekking around wisconsin and beyond to take awesome photographs.

right now i’m looking for a relatively simple rig to get started. something like this “kite aerial photography 101” seems right up my speed. not too complicated and not too expensive and looks like it takes great pictures.

anyone have any experience with kap and have suggestions for rigs? even better, anyone have a spare rig sitting around?

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the eric update – day 1792: kite flying and gardening at organic valley.

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day 1792: kite flying and gardening at organic valley. I.

we headed out to organic valley headquarters to tend to our garden plot ( organic valley offers garden plots to all employees ).

and since it was a windy day, odin thought it would be a great idea to take a kite along. perfect idea!

i tried to convince him to try his extreme behind-the-back kite move, but he kept things pretty traditional.

day 1792: kite flying and gardening at organic valley. II.

i think odin might believe that everyone works for a company that encourages employees to tend a garden plot and get some dirt under your fingernails during the day.

we’ll let him entertain that delusion for as long as we can.

although we have a home garden, we’re using our organic valley plot for "overflow". even though we’re getting a late start, hopefully we’ll harvest lots of squash, watermelons, pumpkins and carrots from the plot.

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the eric update – day 1464: odin and evie fly kites for the very first time! outtake.

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day 1464: odin and evie fly kites for the very first time! outtake.

1/10 of a second before "disaster" strikes.

if you look closely you’ll see the kite strings have become entangled and evelyn’s kite is just about to crash to the ground.

her crashing kite startled odin – who couldn’t see what was going on because he was looking the other day – and he let go his kite.

the 20 m.p.h. wind gusts quickly propelled the kite out off the beach and across the parking lot; one of odin’s cousins took chase and tripped over evie’s kite suffering a very minor injury.

and, of course, both odin and evie were temporarily mortified at the prospect of kite flying being brought to such a sudden end.

poppi, mamma and an aunt were able to use their superhero powers to retrieve the kite, unravel the kite string and get things flying in very short order.