Kite Aerial Photography

After building RIG05 and RIG06 for Virtual Reality I was interested in better resolution for aerial VR.

At the expense of a heavier payload, I was keen to continue with Virtual Reality, but also explore wider angle lenses, whilst increasing resolution to 8Mpixel.. The Nikon 8400 was chosen as a top end compact camera that gives near-SLR performance, for a modest weight. Whilst still giving the full fisheye image required for aerial panography, the camera will also be used with it's built-in 24mm lens for RIG08.

The camera, adapter ring and lens (shown left and right) weigh in at over 1.2Kg, so it was decided to make the rig completely new, and keep RIG06 for emergency light wind use since it weighs in at just over 600g. 

A gentled AUTO was used for shutter release. It was conveniently "velcroed" to the extension tube and is set to take a picture every 5 seconds.
The bracket is simple and allows the camera to be held by it's tripod mount, and adjusts the vertical hanging mount to ensure the camera hangs vertically by it's center of gravity. This ensures that as many as possible of the images have their horizons fully in view.

The whole arrangement is hung from my existing picavet cross with pulleys.

Note the gentled AUTO attached to the extension tube, an elastic band is added for additional safety! 

Shots taken with this rig offer higher resolution that RIG06 however, I was also please to note that the lens suffers less vignetteing than the FC-E8 used on RIG06. This is more important for aerial panoramas as the edge of the image contains more interest and detail than when taking normal ground panoramas.

Strangely when configured to use this lens the 8400 forces the zoom to the wide-angle position. This gives results like A, where significant numbers of pixels are unlit, resulting in lower resolution that expected. The lens can be used without the special lens settings as long as the focus is set to MACRO. You can then zoom in to B, the ideal position for KAP panoramas. The camera warns you this is not a recommended setting but experimentation has shown that as long as the camera is set to f5.6 or greater the image will be of high quality with sharp focus at the edges. If using this combination for 4-shot, portrait type, ground-panoramas, zooming into C will also work as long as >=f5.6 is used.

Using f5.6 reduces the sensitivity of the camera significantly, but since this system is designed to be used outside, in bright conditions, then acceptably fast shutter speeds (<1/500) can still normally be obtained without resorting to the noisier high ASA settings.  

Images from the rig can be viewed on the 2006 &  2007 Panorama pages.

The rig has been flight tested.

James Gentles January 2008 HOME PAGE KAP HOME PAGE