WWKW 2009 - And Counting

So there are six days 'till WWKW 2009, and I just noticed my shutter servo tab has cracked, and my rig is inoperable.

AAAAAARGH!

I'm glad I saw it, though. Nothing worse than to have gear fail in the air and not know it. The way it happened was this:

One of my leg brackets wound up getting bent about a week ago, resulting in a crack almost completely through the bracket. Rather than risk failure, I ordered a new pair of leg brackets from Brooxes.com along with a folding Picavet.

The folding Picavet really is a thing of beauty. It comes in two pieces, and replaces the stock single-piece Picavet. By pulling a quick pin, you can rotate the top half of the Picavet, which can then be rotated parallel to the rig for some really compact packing. Even better, in the packed position there's a second hole to insert the quick pin so that it locks the Picavet in that position, too.

After installing the new Picavet, re-lacing my Picavet lines because I couldn't keep the pulleys straight, removing the broken leg bracket and my old antenna bracket, and installing the new leg bracket, I finally saw that my shutter servo was sitting at some oddball angle. Oh dear...

I toyed around with the idea of building a new bracket, and even bent up some of my 1/64" brass strip stock while testing out a couple of ideas. In the end I went back to trying to get the GentLED-CHDK2 working with my camera, a Canon Powershot A650IS. When I first got it I had no end of problems trying to get the A650 to recognize the timing coming out of the CHDK2. Things hadn't improved, and more testing only indicated the same behavior.

As a last ditch effort, I asked to see if I could exchange the CHDK2 for a GentLED-CHDK, which does work remarkably well with the A650IS. Hoping for a positive response.

If not, I've got enough Atmel ATtiny hardware lying around to make a fair simulacrum of a GentLED-CHDK, and can get that built before WWKW 2009. And failing that I'll sacrifice another shutter servo to my existing bracket, knowing full-well the mounting tab will likely crack off within the year.

I'm not giving up on my chances of doing massive KAP during WWKW 2009, but I hate having set-backs this late in the game. It makes me paranoid.

Tom

Plans for WWKW 2009

World Wide KAP Week 2009 is two days away, slated to start Friday, 24 April, 2009, and extend through 5 May, 2009. My own planning started months ago when the dates were first announced, but as things are getting closer, plans that were once vague maybes are firming up into certainties.

Gear -

I've made a number of changes to my gear, and added some new things to the bag:

4x5 - Lots of changes since the last WWKW, but nothing new in months. All my film holders are loaded, so it's a matter of bringing it everywhere I go, and hoping for dead smooth wind. Maybe also bring some counterweights to try to damp down the remaining vibrations.

Archaeo - I've got a new rig this year that's all ready to go: my ortho-only archaeology rig. This is the rig I also plan to use for garden photography, so that may be where I use it during WWKW 2009.

RC Rig - I've changed out my radio to a 2.4GHz Turborix radio, and added a prototype for an AutoKAP controller that's now under development. Both will get field time this year. I'm also adding a folding Picavet to make packing my rig into my bag even easier.

Anemometer - I bought an anemometer from one of my print sales, so I can keep better track of the conditions in the field, and go back later to compare with the wind models.

Winder - My new winder is now a thoroughly tested and battle-scarred denizen of my KAP bag, and will be my primary winder for the duration.

Locations -

Kohala:

• Pu`ukohola Heiau
• Spencer Beach Park (New)
• Kawaihae Canoe Club (New)
• Archaeological Sites along the Kohala coast
  
• Lapakahi Historical Monument (New)
• Mahukona + Lighthouse (New)
• Decay north of Mahukona Park (New)
• Mo`okini Heiau
• King Kamehameha's Birthplace
• Wind Farm (New)
• Lighthouse
• Pololu Valley
• Next valley over (New)
• Kohala Architecture & Sugar Camps (New)

Kona:

• Hapuna (New)
• Beach 69
• Petroglyphs at Puako (New from kite)
• Anaeho`omalu Bay
• King's Trail Petroglyphs at Anaeo`omalu Bay (New)
• Scoria Abrader Quarries at Waikoloa
• Waikoloa Beach Resorts (New)
• Beach Without a Name
• Wainanali`i Pond and Kiholo Bay
• Kua Bay
• Anchialine Ponds along Kona Coast (New)
• Puako Tide Pools (New)
• Pu`u Waawaa

Hamakua:

• Waipi'o Valley
• Akaka Falls (New)
• Old trestles on the Hamakua Coast (New)
• Gulch bridges on the Hamakua Coast (New)
• Laupahoehoe Point (New)
• Kalopa (New) (MAYBE)
• Boiling Pots / Rainbow Falls (New)
• One of the beach parks, but this is tough (New)

Waimea / Central:

• Various sites in Waimea
• Mana Road
• Whistling Canyon (New)
• Waimea Resevoirs (New)
• Head of Waipi`o Valley (New)

Mauna Kea:

• Mauna Kea Summit (New - Heiau has fallen over)
• Lake Waiau (New)
• Adze Quarry (New)
• Cinder Cone Edge (New)
• Domes & Dishes

Saddle Road:

• Pu'u O'o Kipuka Trail (New)
• Pu`u Huluhulu
• Hunter's Cabin (New)
• Silverswords on R14 (New)
• Pu`u near Kilohana Check-In (New)

South Point:

• South Point
• Green Sand Beach (New)
• Whittington Park
• Across the bay from Place of Refuge (New)
• Kealakekua Bay at Captain Cook's Monument (New)
• HOVE - Road to the Sea, turn north (New)
• Na`alehu (New)

Puna:

• Kapoho Tide Pools (New)
• Kalapana
• Hike to Pu`u O`o ? (New)

Volcano NP - Contingent on permission from NP Director:

• Ka`u Desert Trail; Footprints in Lava *
• Chain of Craters Road Trail *
• Great Rift? * (This may be hard to get to)

Goals -

I want to fly in new locations, most specifically on the south side of the island. There really is architecture down there, along with the Kapoho tide pools, sites inside and outside of Volcano, Green Sand Beach, and a couple of archaeological sites.

I'd like to fly some of the less-likely locations for Hawaii. I've done tons of beaches. I want to show off cattle country, desert country, volcano country, etc. There's more to Hawaii than beaches. Besides, this is a vitally important component of the book I'd like to do later in the year of low altitude aerials of Hawaii.

I want to take some 4x5 photos from the air. I'd really like at least one rock solid image I can print at wall mural size. If I can get a couple of solid ones, I'll be happy as can be.

Mostly I want to have fun, knowing that all over the world people will be flying cameras on kites anywhere and everywhere they are, and sharing what they see. I was blown away by the output for WWKW 2008. I can't wait to see what happens for WWKW 2009!

-- Tom

I Bought an Anemometer

Not the most original title for a journal entry, but it's the truth. I did buy an anemometer: a Kestrel 2000. I can't say it was an impulse buy since I've been looking at anemometers a little over two years now. But the decision to get it right now? I suppose it was.

I've been holding off on getting an anemometer, probably for relatively silly reasons. I can gauge wind pretty well, and the wind models I use are generally accurate. But I've had a bad run of KAP outings recently when I would either find the wind too weak to lift a rig, or too strong to safely fly a kite. I've come home frustrated, more often than not, with little to show for it. An anemometer can't make the wind blow, but it can send a very clear message if the conditions just aren't right.

Another reason I decided to buy one now is that World Wide KAP Week 2009 is coming up soon, and given my finances, there's no way I'd be able to get the kite I've been lusting after (a Dan Leigh Trooper RS, a high-wind delta that can handle the conditions at Upolu Point and Southpoint.) So I took what finances I had and put them into the anemometer. It will be a useful addition to my KAP bag, and if it gives me better awareness of the flying conditions at a new site, it could make the difference between a successful outing and one that ends in damaged or destroyed gear. A sound investment.

But in a larger sense, it was just plain time. A few years ago, if asked which hobby was actually paying for itself the best, I would have to say machining and writing. I wrote a couple of articles for a machining magazine, and when they were published it was the first time I'd ever actually had a hobby start paying for itself. The funny thing is, I used the money from the articles to pay for KAP gear rather than tools. To be fair, I did use some of it to buy two years worth of subscriptions to my machining magazines, so it did go back into the hobby to some extent. But it also helped bootstrap the next.

Today a more truthful answer is that it's KAP that's bringing in the most real revenue. I've sold a number of prints, and have had requests for even larger prints though so far none of those requests have led to a sale. Nonetheless, my KAP hobby has done more to pay for itself than any other hobby I've got. By and large, about half my KAP gear was paid for by print sales. This is better than my ratio for my machine shop and those magazine articles, but it's still not a hundred percent.

I'm at a bit of a leaping-off point. Selling prints is great, but I don't really think that's where I'm going to stop in terms of letting KAP pay for itself. I'm looking at other options, most of which involve doing paying gigs. But for paying gigs to work out, there has to be some guarantee that the flight can happen, and that the right tools are used for the conditions. And for new kite purchases to make sense, I have to be able to demonstrate to myself that I've been asked to fly in conditions that would warrant them.

Hence the anemometer. WWKW 2009 is an excellent opportunity to characterize each of the kites I use, to find out the wind range for each one where I can reliably lift my KAP rig, and the line angle I'm likely to get. This information can be used to plan shots in ways I've never been able to do, and to provide a better guarantee that I can pull off a particular shot.

My goal, by the end of WWKW 2009, is to have a portfolio of images to show to prospective clients, and the ability to know if my gear can pull off a shot that a customer asks for. The anemometer is the first step in this direction.

There's an old adage that as soon as you start to do a hobby for money, it turns into a job. The point, of course, is to keep hobbies as hobbies and to keep work as work. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't thrilled when I saw my first article printed in that magazine. It only made me want to write more. And when my first KAP print sold, I was ecstatic. I hope this next leg of the venture works out as well.

-- Tom

KAP Aerial Archaeology and Photosynth

I've been frustrated in my attempts to turn KAP aerial archaeology shots into maps, or even into stitched panoramas that bear any real resemblance to reality. For the most part this is because I really don't have the right tools to get the job done. Photogrammetry, and georectification are not simple to do, and most consumer-level tools aren't suited to the job. Typically this involves software like Photomodeler, Leica Photogrammetry Suite, and GIS software. It also typically requires a grid of GPS-referenced ground control points. I'm not positioned to do any of these things.

But I did run across something that produced oddly pleasing results. It's a Microsoft R&D product called Photosynth. It's not so much stitching software (though I use Microsoft's Image Composite Editor for most of my stitching these days). Instead, Photosynth assumes the shots are not taken from the same vantage point, and finds all the points at which the shots overlap. This in turn is used to create a point cloud of intersection points between shots, so a viewer can place themselves at any of the vantage points from which the photos were taken, and see the scene from that point.

All of which is hard to say, but a lot easier to see. I tried this out using one of the flights from last weekend:

It worked remarkably well. Even more fun is to view it with the images turned off so you only see the point cloud of the intersection points between all the shots. Photosynth does a really good job of picking up the three-dimensional structure of the scene.

I tried it with some of my other KAP flights, just on a whim. The archaeology flights were almost all orthogonal to the ground, but most of the time when I'm out doing KAP I'm busy taking oblique shots rather than orthos. I was amazed at how well Photosynth dealt with this:




I think there's a lot of potential for what Photosynth is doing. There are all sorts of other features I'd ask for (and have asked for) beyond the existing Photosynth interface. Among others, it's ideally suited for picking out proper stereo pairs from a whole collection of images. It would be wonderful to have them all gathered, arranged, cropped, and ready to go.

Even better would be 3D model extraction from a random collection of photos of a scene. One KAP flighti n particular resulted in a really good point cloud for a large truck: a deuce-and-a-half. I'd love to be able to export that truck as a 3D model.

I don't know how much time I'll devote to this, but right now it's pretty fun. And for now walking around an archaeological site using my aerial still shots is as close as I can come to what i want: real 3D scene reconstruction.

-- Tom

More Archaeological KAP

I got to do some more archaeological KAP last weekend. The archaeologist I worked with on Ahu A`Umi was on island a few weeks ago, and tried to fly his camera over the lava flows south of the resorts at Anaeho`omalu Bay. It used to be an active quarry for scoria, which in turn was made into abrader tools for working wood, bone, shell, etc. He wanted to see if the quarry and abrader workshops were visible from the air. Foul weather made for a disastrous KAP trip, so I offered to give it a try the next weekend. We traded some email planning out a strategy (wind direction, time of day, angle of light, etc.) and Saturday morning my son and I headed out.

The wind was certainly better than what he'd faced the previous weekend, but it was still turbulent, tossy, and a little too strong. With some reluctance I put up a Flowform 16 and 15' of fuzzy tail, and got down to business. The nature of lava makes it difficult to walk a consistent grid pattern, and I was reluctant to plant my big feet in anything of archaeological value that might be fragile. Nonetheless I spent about an hour and a half pacing around and chanting my mantra: "C'mon baby, steady wind steady wind. C'mon, don't no NOnono... ok, better, c'mon baby..." (I wonder if I'm the only KAPer who talks to his kites.)

At the end of that first session I took my son to a coffee shop at the nearby resort. He had milk and an apple turnover while I sipped coffee and reviewed my shots. As it turns out I'd used the wrong camera settings, and this combined with the turbulent wind resulted in over half the shots being too blurry to use. But there were enough sharp pictures to convince me to give it another try the next day.

The strangest part of the whole experience was that the entire time I was reviewing the pictures I'd taken, the sound system in the coffee shop was playing, Tex Ritter's "I Got Spurs That Jingle Jangle Jingle". I kid you not.

The next day the wind was much more laminar and of more reasonable speed. My son wasn't interested in going this time, so I took my daughter, who brought a book. This isn't unusual for her. What was unusual was that she only brought one. Normally a quick trip somewhere involves at least a small stack of books. "I never know what I want to read when I get there!" pretty much sums up her reason for this. I've quit asking.

The second day went much better than the first. I launched at a second site the archaeologist had marked out, and moved from there back to the original site I'd flown over the previous day. I found a better spot to fly from, and got a better grid the second go 'round. Toward the end of the session the wind was dying down, so I walked the rig back to my launch spot, where my daughter was still reading. I think she looked up maybe once the whole time. So much for getting out to fly kites with your kids. At least she guessed right on her book. It was what she wanted to read.

My daughter had heard of the coffee shop outing with my son the previous day, and was eager to get the same treat. So back we went, my daughter toting her book and me toting a camera with what I hoped were some better pictures than the day before. This time we both wound up getting chocolate croissants, which we munched while she read and I reviewed my pictures. What I saw put a smile on my face. Not only did the steady wind and the correct camera settings work out, the pictures very clearly showed quarry sites, abrader workshops, and even some petroglyphs I hadn't seen from the ground. Euphoria!

But as I continued to flip through the pictures it slowly dawned on me that the coffee shop was still playing, "I Got Spurs That Jingle Jangle Jingle". They didn't miss a beat.

Those two days generated about 3.5GB of data, probably 2GB of which is actually any good. I sent the disks off this morning in the hope they'll be there some time tomorrow. Meanwhile I've got "My Spurs Go Jingle Jangle Jingle" so firmly embedded in my head that even two hours of Linkin Park couldn't clear it out. I've given up. I fear that the very mention of scoria abrader quarries will forever summon up the jaunty notes of "I Got Spurs That Jingle Jangle Jingle":

I got spurs that jingle, jangle, jingle
As I go ridin' merrily along
And they sing, 'Away, too glad, you're single'
And that song ain't so very far from wrong

Oh Tex...

-- Tom

Root Cause Analysis

In a previous career, I worked as a systems administrator for twelve years. When working with computer problems, one of the first things you need to learn to do is to see past the symptoms, and treat the underlying condition. It's something called "root cause analysis", and it's the backbone of computer troubleshooting.

In my present career, I do instrumentation at an international astronomical observatory. When diagnosing and maintaining scientific instrumentation, one of the first things you need to learn to do is see past the symptoms and treat the underlying condition. Root cause analysis again.

Recently, my KAP rig has suffered from an oddball problem: Each time I try to rotate the pan axis, there's a lag, and then it starts moving. The first time this happened in the field, I swapped batteries and went back into the air. When the symptoms didn't go away, I assumed both sets of batteries were low.

In a later flight I realized the small pinion in my pan axis gear reduction was loose. DOH! Without thinking about it, I tightened the screw that holds the pinion in place, and put it back in the air. Problem solved, right?

As it turns out, wrong.

About the third time I tightened that screw, I realized something else was wrong. I hadn't done proper root cause analysis; I'd just treated the symptoms of a loose screw. A little more poking around revealed the culprit: The pan axis itself was binding. This put additional torque on the pinion gear, which put extra force on the screw, which pulled it loose, which made the pan axis have backlash, which made for the lag when I tried to rotate it.

ARGH!

The cause of the tight pan axis was a bushing that was too tight in its hole. I made a new one with 0.005" clearance, and everything ran like a well-oiled clock. I also used thread lock compound on the pinion gear screw, so it shouldn't get loose as easily. For good measure I also used a synthetic grease on the two bushings on the pan axis, so hopefully this will be the last time I deal with this problem.

Which is the real benefit of root cause analysis: never having to see a problem come back.

Time to go fly a kite!

Tom

Let's Set The Record Straight

I realize this post will probably offend, but it needs writing nonetheless.

Recently, in an online photography forum, I ran across a thread asking if Photoshopped images should be considered in a different class from non-Photoshopped images. To be fair, the person who originated the thread was asking if obviously manipulated images should be posted to a photography gallery. But as the thread evolved people began to ask and answer the broader question. It was some of those answers that were more than a little upsetting.

In any discussion such as this one, or when discussing film vs. digital (which came up in this thread), someone invariably invokes the name of Ansel Adams as the pinnacle of "traditional photography", and as a figurehead for nobility behind the camera. This thread was no different, and indeed his spirit was summoned. Repeatedly. And, if I might say, incorrectly.

Ansel Adams was a huge innovator in his own right, and championed many ideas that at the time were pooh-poohed as vulgar, shocking, useless, or otherwise unacceptable. A good case in point: When Adams started out, view cameras and box cameras were the only show in town. Adams gravited toward the view camera because of the motions it offered, but to the best of my knowledge he never shut out any form of camera or format for the negative. When Agfa began producing cameras to hold their 35mm movie film so people could use it to take still shots, Adams picked one up early on. Various people gave him a hard time about it, but he persisted and took some remarkable photographs using that "pedestrian" gear.

This was far from an isolated incident. It was a pattern throughout his career. He was one of the field testers for Polaroid's products, and was a personal friend of Edwin Land. He also tested Kodak's first color film products, though he admitted the strength of his work lay in black and white. And he was a big proponent of image manipulation.

I'll say that again just so people are clear: He was a big proponent of image manipulation. This is made abundantly clear in his numerous writings. In his book, "Examples - The Making of 40 Photographs" he goes so far as to show his initial contact print from his negatives, his test prints, and his final print along with the dodge and burn notes for several of his photographs. Contrast adjustment? Yes. Dodging and burning? Yes. Tonal range compression and expansion? YES. (And you thought HDR was new... nope.) If it could be done in the darkroom, it was fair game.

So what about digital vs. film? Unfortunately Adams didn't live long enough to see digital hit mainstream, but in the introduction to "The Camera" (I think... my copy went wandering when I loaned it out a few years ago) he clearly stated that he was excited by the prospect of digital cameras and digital photography. I don't think he ever referred to it as digital imagery as so many film proponents do. Digital photography.

So please, stop invoking the name of Adams unless you really want his opinion. He made it pretty clear over and over and over.

"I have been immensely pleased with many creative explorations I have seen; they are evidence of great imagination and the awareness of enduring qualities of art. I often observe that the more "far-out" any work appears at first, the more exciting and valid it may prove to be."

-- Ansel Adams - "Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs"

I began to write a response to the thread in the forum, but in the end I erased my reply and moved on. Enough passionate photographers for one day. One more wasn't going to change anyone's opinion or do any more to provide an answer to the original question. As a friend of mine put it, "Opinions are like assholes. Everyone's got one." I'm no different.

- Tom