Notes on Kite Aerial Photography: Background
Deciding that we must have cloudy
day pictures of the upper Campanile surfaces essentially
guaranteed that March would be cloudless and cloudless it was. We
were getting a bit concerned about time when a fine cloudy Sunday
presented itself. we didn't have access to the rooftop balcony
that day so we staged images from the ground.
The
Campanile photographed with the Canon 15-mm lens at 1/60 second,
F4.0. The camera is quite close to the lantern (between 5 and 10
feet) with a bit of motion blur as a result. (April 1997, 41K
jpg)
Our principal difficulty was a lack of wind. There was a breeze
but it was light -- wouldn't begin to lift KAP Rig #2 with the
Canon Rebel X. In a little bit of desperation I sent up the 7.5'
Rokkaku, newly framed in light carbon fiber sticks. I was
reluctant to hang the heavier rig from it because I'd accrued
little experience flying it with this frame. And there was also
the matter of two previous crashes (luckily no cameras aloft.)
After 20 minutes of stable flying up went KAP Rig #2. It flew
without incident for over three hours.
These three images are quick samples from the three rolls we
took. I concentrated on flying the kite and positioning the
camera while Paul operated the radio. This arrangement worked
well as did the use of fixed exposures. It was the first time
I've used manual settings in flight.
Additional
cloudy-day views of Sather Tower with the Canon 24-mm lens
at 1/250 second, F 4.0 (April 1997, 41K
jpg left and 32K jpg right)
The flight was a success and provided ample images for
establishing the tower's surface textures. Its interesting that
the technically useful images generally turned out well
compositionally. There are 20 others from this batch that I am
eager to show. I promise some restraint.
Next step - photographing context textures.
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Comments to author: cris@ced.berkeley.edu
All contents copyright (C) 1997 by Charles C. Benton.
All rights reserved. Revised: Saturday, November 24, 2001
URL:
http://www.ced.berkeley.edu/~cris/kap/backgrnd/sather3.html