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Re: Kite aerial photography

Postby montagdude » Sun Nov 01, 2020 4:29 pm

I have one of those from when I was a kid, but it's pretty small and needs a steady ocean breeze to fly it, so I don't ever get to. I remember it being a lot of fun when it flew, though.
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Re: Kite aerial photography

Postby montagdude » Sun Nov 22, 2020 11:50 pm

Point Lookout State Park, Maryland

This is the first time I've flown one of my kites with a sea breeze. Man, it is a whole lot easier than flying inland. My dopero took off right from my hand and was rock steady the whole flight. I should do that more often.

There is a lighthouse at the very end of the peninsula, which I was hoping to shoot, but the whole area was closed for construction. I could have pointed the camera that way, but it would have been looking right into the sun. Maybe next time.

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Re: Kite aerial photography

Postby wlbragg » Mon Nov 23, 2020 12:00 pm

Really nice!
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Re: Kite aerial photography

Postby montagdude » Mon Nov 23, 2020 4:58 pm

Thanks wlbragg. One thing I like about it is that I don't know what I'm going to get until I bring the kite back down. For example, the third image of the boat was basically a fluke, where the camera swung downward probably due to a gust of wind and just happened to capture the boat sharply and with good composition. Some people make fancy rigs where the angles and shutter can be controlled remotely, even with video downlink to preview the composition. That totally makes sense for someone doing it professionally, but I like the simplicity and light weight of a fixed rig. Although I do think I will buy a little better camera in the future, which will increase the weight by a couple ounces, but it should be worth it.
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Re: Kite aerial photography

Postby montagdude » Sun Dec 27, 2020 4:27 am

It's been awhile since I got a chance to do any KAP. It was cold and gusty this morning, but I wanted to try out my new camera and rig as well as a new location. Due to the wind I was a little hesitant to fly it as high as I normally would have, but I still managed to get some good shots. I'm sure I'll return to this location to try again another time. I'm pretty pleased with the image quality. To me it is noticeably better than the old camera.

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Re: Kite aerial photography

Postby Hooray » Sun Dec 27, 2020 12:28 pm

Some day, it might be interesting to see if we can work out a scheme to reuse such imagery with the new photo scenery patches, i.e. to correct for perspective and then procedurally create orthographic images from these shots
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Re: Kite aerial photography

Postby montagdude » Tue Dec 29, 2020 1:44 pm

Hooray wrote in Sun Dec 27, 2020 12:28 pm:Some day, it might be interesting to see if we can work out a scheme to reuse such imagery with the new photo scenery patches, i.e. to correct for perspective and then procedurally create orthographic images from these shots

The difficult part seems to be that the detail decreases pretty quickly with distance. A few miles in the distance you're down to just a few pixels to resolve features. I wonder if pictures like this could somehow be used in an inverse process, maybe as truth data to train AI to create 3D features from orthophotos. I don't know if that makes sense; just thinking out loud here.

Here are a few pictures of the Chesapeake Bay that I took yesterday.
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Re: Kite aerial photography

Postby Johan G » Tue Dec 29, 2020 6:39 pm

Hooray wrote in Sun Dec 27, 2020 12:28 pm:Some day, it might be interesting to see if we can work out a scheme to reuse such imagery with the new photo scenery patches, i.e. to correct for perspective and then procedurally create orthographic images from these shots

montagdude wrote in Tue Dec 29, 2020 1:44 pm:The difficult part seems to be that the detail decreases pretty quickly with distance. A few miles in the distance you're down to just a few pixels to resolve features.

Typically orthophoto mosaics are made from relatively wide angle vertical photographs. Before you could fit a GPS receiver in an aircraft or drone you also needed to have several ground reference points with known elevation and coordinates to be able to georeference the orthomosaic, and about 60-80% overlap between photo pairs. Before the computers was as powerful as they are these days you in addition needed at least five clearly visible reference points per photo pair to be able to tie them together.

One could of course experiment with vertical wide angle shots and for example OpenDroneMap. Wide angel vertical photos and lots of overlap are essential. Though even with a relatively large drone one would only be able to cover relatively small areas.
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Re: Kite aerial photography

Postby montagdude » Tue Jan 05, 2021 10:50 pm

Tell me if you're tired of these... :)

These were taken from my big yellow and blue kite. There was just enough wind for an easy, comfortable flight that day. Actually I got lucky with the timing, because by the time I was done, there was basically no wind below treetop level even though there was still a 5-7 mph breeze a couple hundred feet up. The big kite got a lot of comments from hikers going by, especially kids.

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Re: Kite aerial photography

Postby montagdude » Sun Jan 10, 2021 6:22 pm

I took some of my neighborhood the other day. I flew from an open area behind one of the streets. It's tough to fly a kite from here because it is a low point and surrounded by tall trees, so not a lot of wind gets through. In the winter it's a little easier because there are no leaves. The wind also has to be in the right direction, but even so the kite spent most of the flight over trees. A little nerve-wracking, but there weren't really any points during the flight where the kite was in danger of crashing. It handled gusts over 20 mph with a new drogue chute I made last week.

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Re: Kite aerial photography

Postby montagdude » Thu Jan 28, 2021 4:10 pm

I decided to start a website chronicling my kite aerial photography adventures, photos, kites, etc. I'll probably just post there from now on. If you are interested, feel free to subscribe! I'm currently still in the process of writing the stories about my previous sessions.

https://somdkap.com
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Re: Kite aerial photography

Postby Johan G » Fri Jan 29, 2021 8:42 am

Nice website. :D

(Maybe add it to your signature too. ;) )
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Re: Kite aerial photography

Postby montagdude » Fri Jan 29, 2021 5:51 pm

Good idea!
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Re: Kite aerial photography

Postby wlbragg » Fri Jan 29, 2021 5:55 pm

The website is really nice and a great way to share your hobby. The information and experience you've accumulated and are sharing is so appreciated. Thank you!
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Re: Kite aerial photography

Postby montagdude » Fri Jan 29, 2021 8:24 pm

Thanks, wlbragg.
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