Kite Photogrammetry

General experience is that Kite Photogrammetry is too unreliable. However, low-altitude aerial photography is currently being done with small remote-control aircraft. Most promising are the multiple-engine helicopters with Panasonic digital cameras with Lumix lenses. Prices for the turn-key functioning models generally are upwards of $11,000.

Thanks for the respose Professor.

I thought about remote control helicopters, but I got scared when I realized I could crash and burn a remote control craft and a camera. :]

The projetcs I mentioned are just volunteer projects. One is to study the geogrpahy of a local BLM "area of environmental concern" and the other is studies of salmon habitat along the California Coast.

I've got 1 meter resolution images for both, but thought it might be fun to try using kite photogrammetry to get some closer "almost vertical" and olblique images of the areas.

I know it won't be anything close to survey grade. If the photos couldn't be used for mapping because they were too inaccurate, they could be used to identify GIS featires and feature attributes perhaps.

Thanks again.

The Sunburned Surveyor

You would be better served with a tethered baloon. That has been done successfully in relatively still air.

There is a husband and wife in the Placerville area who specialty business built on aerial photography from kites. I doubt that you would be able to get any reliable stereo images for accurate locations or elevation, but you could get some good obliques and non-rectified orthos for reference only.

Do you remember the name of the Placerville business? I'd be interested in learning more about how they do it.

Thanks,

The Sunburned Surveyor

Here's their website: http://www.uniqueaeriography.com/

I may have a contact name on my home computer. If I can find it, I'll email it to you later. Edit: Turns out I don't need to email contact info. The contact info goes to the person I spoke with a few years back.

If the BLM is using this information to develop management policy (restricted use), the information gathered should stand up to scrutiny in court. Restricted use policies are bound to be protested. Even GIS data has to have some sort of accuracy statement.

I can see it now, the meta data reads like this …”this information was digitized from aerial photos obtained by a licensed Professional Surveyor. A 10 Mega Pixel, Sony Cyber Shot pocket camera was attached to a kite using duct tape. The string was marked with a sharpy pen to ensure consistent altitude between photos. The resulting oblique picture was then rubber sheeted to roughly fit a ortho rectified 10 meter resolution NAIP aerial image. Estimated accuracy for this dataset: SWAG”

PS: Welcome over from a fellow new-timer. JRL

Amazing to see what folks are doing with even consumer-grade hand held photography given projects like PhotoSynth.

Agree, tethered balloon is probably far more stable...