Kite Aerial Photography

This is a straightforward rig built using the BEAK kit of parts from www.brooxes.com, also available from www.kapshop.com. Shutter release and pan with a 360° modified servo using gent360-RICOH from www.gentles.ltd.uk, 

The Ricoh GX100, 24mm lens, 10Mpixel, and at around 200grams was the incentive for this simple rig with weight of 168g, plus camera, 408g, plus wide angle 529g. The idea was two fold:

1. A simple, light, take anywhere, easy to use autoKAP rig,
2. The possibility of taking very high resolution aerial panoramas

The second point was especially interesting. Although "single shot" fisheye rigs like RIG06 and RIG07 have a high success rate the images are lower resolution. If the wind was smooth enough, and the camera stable, this camera with it's 19mm equivalent lens adaptor could yield much higher resolution results.

With the camera set up with the DW-6 wide angle as shown below the "vertical" field of view is 87° . With the camera tilted 5 to 7° above the horizon then there is a margin for error, should the platform move, to make sure that all the area below the horizon  is covered, with the exception of a small "hole" directly below the camera. The hope was that at least one shot would reveal this part of the view.

Rotationally the camera was set up to move about 25° per shot. With a 60° FoV this means that ideally every second shot would be used, again leaving redundancy should the platform "miss" a shot. Each full rotation captures around 14 images in just over 60 seconds.

First flown in June 2008.

James Gentles May 2008 HOME PAGE KAP HOME PAGE