After seeing a quadcopter online during last year’s National Day holiday, I suddenly wanted to try aerial photography. I followed aerial-photography forums quietly, but the cost of aircraft priced over a thousand yuan put me off. During winter vacation I saw someone flying a kite and wondered whether a kite could carry a camera into the sky. This journal records my KAP journey.
I looked up a lot of information online. A Briton took the first KAP photograph as early as 1888, so its history is older than drone photography. KAP costs very little: a kite and a camera or phone can produce spectacular images.
Today I bought a kite beside the square. Tomorrow Dad and I plan to make a “gimbal,” a device for securing the camera, and see whether we can send it into the sky.
On February 25, 2015, Dad and I tested it. First we made a simple gimbal from a cardboard box (it was too ugly for detailed photos) and tried flying it. The wind was not very strong.The gimbal would not fly high when attached the first time; after experimenting, I found that the longer the distance between the gimbal and the kite, the more easily it rose.We did not take the camera up on the test flight, so we could not take photos.
On March 4, 2015, we flew it again. This time I secured a phone to the simple gimbal, so the video screenshots were clearer than compact-camera photos. Here are the images:
