flyable Camera

Always wanted to take pictures from a great hight, but there aren't any mountains in the neighborhood, choppers are to expensive, and you just realized humans have no wings...
Then this is a quick, simple and very easy build to make pictures from the clouds.

I must apologize for not having any pictures of the rig in action. There have been severe thunderstorms passing through Belgium and I don't want to fly kites in that. Between two storms there is almost no wind at all.
I'll be out there taking flying pictures as soon as I can
Thank you for your understanding

Step 1: What you'll need

*a drill
*a camera
*a piece of wood plastic might do fine as well
*some rope, I used shoe lace and I don't regret it. (on this picture you see other rope which broke)
*a few large, and one or two small cable ties
*a kite, if you don't want to buy one, I'm sure there will be instructables about making kites.

Comments

[ZoDo]

Can we see some pictures that you've made?

[jbussé]

really I would love to post some, and I will when we have a windy day without lightning... but there isn't wind enough or the wind brought his friend, the thunder storm :-(
I'm not making up any excuses you can research on the weather in Belgium, it killed 5 people on a festival :-(

[im3733]

it actually wouldn't be that hard to make a trigger for the camera (for those who don't have an intervalometer. Simply build a small "arm" that gets pulled down by an electromagnet when activated, pushing the button. the power source could be a battery with a momentary switch to complete the circuit, then run some insulated wire down the length of the string, and maybe even make a small case for the battery and switch, then it could fit in your hand while you control the kite, and all you have to do is push the button for a second and let go for each picture.

[jbussé]

that's an awesome idea =D

[Kiteman]

So, your camera can be set to take a series of shots?

What kind of camera is it?

(And what kind of kite do you use to lift it?)

[jbussé]

I have a medium size parachute-like kite. About 2x1 meters, that's about 9x3 feet I think.
I'm using my small canon which you can see in the blurry web cam pictures (it's a power shot SX120 IS from canon) and it can be set to take 10 pictures with 30 seconds delay, my old camera, you can see on the first picture, had a similar function.

I hope I answered the most of your questions. :-)

[The Ideanator]

:O no fair! I have the T3i and it doesn't have a built in intervalometer. For an expensive dSLR such as that, you'd think it would be loaded with features, but I find it quite lacking in some places, it's too bad there's no CHDK distro for it. But I digress.


This looks to be a very neat project, however I would love to see your resulting shots.

[jbussé]

there there it will be all right. ;-)
I woke up this morning, hearing the leaves rustling (and hoping for some wind today). I looked outside and all I saw was dark clouds, not long after that: thunderstorm. :-(
really I'm not making this up as excuse, I'd love to test it too.

[The Ideanator]

It will be soon enough.
I'm working on an intervalometer to remedy this, it will be amazing.

[Kiteman]

Thanks.

[Ranie-K]

Here's a simple rig I made for my camera and one line kite: