Photographing Night Flying

Night Two

Location: L'Ancresse Common/Golf Course, Guernsey.
Camera: Pentax automatic, ASA400 35mm, Tripod.
Equipment: Fly By Night LEDs, D6 Maglite, Dictaphone.
Kites: Hi-Mod Fusion, Phantom Elite UltraLight, Airdynamics Dharma
Pilots: Jim, Andre Problems: Getting the damn pictures developed!
Lessons learnt: Red LEDs photograph better than green ones. 60 second exposure of the stars looks great. Take a flash picture of something (perhaps the kite?) every fourth exposure to enable processing machines to locate the frame boundaries (or use APS film)

From the right, stall, right-wing axle, stall, up and away. This is the best picture so far! The white dot at the lower left is the Casquettes lighthouse at Alderney, about 15 miles distant.

From the right, a half-axle.

A 60 second exposure of Orion from a normal camera works quite well - you get the colours of the stars - and a steady pass with the kite puts everything in perspective. I wonder what a UFO photo investigator would make of some of these, anyway?

The best of manouuvres, but I've had to fiddle and retouch the image afterwards to make it even slightly visible. This was an axle take-off followed by a loop to correct the twist in the lines.

A mixture of techniques, LED-lit kite being followed by a Maglite spotlight (actually, only a D6 model) past a Martello tower. The light failed to illuminate the kite, but got the background feature well. The manoeuvre is an axle, but looks different to the other axle pitures I have. I think the kite must have been spinning fast at the same time, or perhaps had been initiated with a different hand.

Leave the shutter open for a few seconds (20, I think), let someone else flap about in front of the lens, then grab your kite and do the same! Confusing, pointless, but quite pretty!

Vertical dive, 540-degree roll and back up again. In comparison to the first couple of pictures, note that the kite looked fine visually, but the batteries were obviously fading. This could have looked spectacular with a fresher power source.

Night One

Location: L'Ancresse Common/Golf Course, Guernsey.
Camera: Pentax Zoom automatic sports camera, ASA400 35mm, Tripod & Cable Release.
Equipment: Fly By Night LEDs
Kites: Icarex Stranger, Rare Air Pro Stealth
Pilots: Jim, Chris, Andre, Lynn
Problems: Foggy, nearly full moon, slightly drunk after a long meal.
Lessons learnt: Avoid the full moon! Fog scatters light to ruin pitures. Learn the terrain before flying - you won't be able to see it when walking backwards later on! Record what each shot was at the time you take it, the resultant images are very difficult to identify.

Two loops with red LEDs.

A double loop using green LEDs. In the background is one of the Martello towers on the edge of the golf course at L'Ancresse, Guernsey. These towers were used as a defence system against the threat of sea attack from Napoleon's fleets.

A manoeuvre as yet unidentified. It could be a stall followed by a loop, but I'm not sure. Perhaps it's a side-slide. It's definitely in green, though.

You can load two or more sets of lights on if you like. Here's a kite flying red and green, with the flyer caught in some car headlights.