Dive site aerial photos

Mixing two hobbies, UW photography and Kite Aerial photography, results in aerial photos of dive sites.

On a recent dive to Popes Eye in Jan's boat I decided to sling in the KAP bag just incase the wind was nice. I was a little concerned about disturbing the gannets and kite line tangles. Shouldn't have worried as we were the only boat at the site and the gannets are such good flyers and they tended to come in just skimming the water surface.

I used the Pilot 2m2 parafoil which stuffs into a small bag and the GoPro in its waterproof housing. Wind was just right, light and steady. Next time I'll aim to capture the whole rock circle.

Underwater the blue-throat wrasse were up for some posing and the water was clear enough for some decent shots.

Now my dive site requirements are calm clear water with just enough wind to lift a KAP rig. Unfortunately all subsequent dives have been in perfect diving weather with no wind at all.

KAP or Kite Aerial Photography

This what you get when you add kites, cameras, radio controls, simple electronics and lots of shed tinkering time.

Capturing images from a kite produces a rarely seen perspective. These low level aerial images are on a more intimate or human scale than traditional aerials from aircraft.

There is a very active world wide online community of KAPers and some seriously clever inventors producing electronics, rig control scripts and mechanical bits for KAP rigs.

Kites
Big stable kites are needed to lift the camera and rig. KAPers usually have a range of kites to cover different wind speeds and camera rig weights. More about that later.

Cameras
The lighter the better obviously. GoPro, Canon compacts and even SLRs are popular and mirrorless large sensor cameras are starting to feature too.

Canon compacts can also be enhanced via CHDK (Canon hackers development kit) and SDM (Stereo Data Makers) firmware changes. I'll write more about these later but basically some very clever programmers have written firmware enhancements which add functions such as intervalometers, RAW, HDR and bracketing.




KAP rigs
There are many different styles of KAP rigs but these are the main divisions.
RC KAP - using full radio controlled rigs with shutter, pan and tilt control.
autoKAP - using modules like AuRiCo (automatic rig control - preprogrammed electronics replacing the radio control receiver)
Manual KAP - where you set the camera orientation before launching

My KAP shots

KAP flickr group

KAP shop - Oh yes, there is one




UPDATE:
This is such a big topic I have started a new blog just for KAP.
Kite Aerial Photography by Andrew Newton