Large Format KAP - Not There Yet

I'm getting closer to doing large format KAP, but I'm not there yet. It was a good weekend, nonetheless.

After my last 4x5 KAP experiment, I tried adding what I thought was a stabilization system similar to what George Lawrence used for his famous picture of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. But after watching a video of Henry Jebe setting up and attempting to launch his scale replica of Lawrence's camera, I realize my own design fell far, far short of the mark. Lawrence's design was a rigid tripod while mine was a tensive system using #150 line and carbon fiber spars. Essentially mine was a traditional Picavet with 24" of steel pendulum, surrounded by this carbon fiber and Dacron structure, with a camera somewhere in the middle.

The fun part was testing it. I realized I could fly the thing 'till I was blue in the face, and never quite understand what it was doing. So instead I found some good, high branches in the trees outside, and rigged it up to them. After watching it for a while I set up my digital KAP rig in the tree as well so I could compare the two. The digital rig, a standard BBKK kit with pan gear reduction and PeKaBe blocks, was almost rock solid in gusty, 30 knot winds. The 4x5 camera? Holy cow, it wobbled all over the place.

The interesting thing was that the whole structure served to put the bulk of the energy in the system into a very slow side-to-side oscillation. Most of the high-frequency oscillations damped, but that low-frequency oscillation just kept getting worse.

So I started taking things off. Taking off the suspended weight brought back the high frequency oscillations from the less-than-rigid pendulum, but damped down the low-frequency oscillation. Removing the spreaders and top lines got rid of most of the rest of the low-frequency oscillations, but made the higher-frequency oscillations even worse.

With just the Picavet and the 24" pendulum, it was clear the pendulum was letting the camera oscillate all over the place, but the Picavet sat rock solid the whole time. So I took out the long steel pendulum.

With the camera bolted straight to the Picavet, it behaved almost exactly like the digital KAP rig. No surprise, considering they were essentially identical at that point, from a physics standpoint. But it's encouraging because it means it's as good as I can get it. Not much in the way of oscillation, even in a gust, and what oscillations I did get were quickly damped.

So now there's nothing left to do but fly. I have Monday off from work, and plan to go somewhere photogenic and expose at least six sheets of film. The problem is the best place for black and white KAP is probably Whittington Beach or South Point... a full four hours from here. It's a drive I'm not sure I'm ready to make. Granted, I've been wanting to do KAP at South Point for months. I did some limited KAP back in October, but didn't get to fly at the Plastic Beach (a beach where the bulk of the sea trash tends to wash up) and at Green Sand Beach (a beach whose sand is almost entirely composed of olivine crystals.) Given the choice, I'd fly at both those places, and capture the rough surf of South Point with digital KAP.

The problem is the winds at South Point can be truly hellish. In October of last year the wind was blowing 26 knots. I flew on a Flowform 8, and worried at every point that I was going to lose kite, rig, the whole shebang. I really don't like flying in wind that high. Whittington, just around the corner, was blowing 15 knot winds, which are much more flyable. Whittington is also as photogenic as a rocky beach can get, and has yielded some of my best surf images to date.

I'll wait to see what the wind models predict in the morning. If the wind is going to be too high, I'll give it a miss. But I hope it works out. Ever since Scott Haefner took pictures of the old South Point windmills, I've wanted to make another trip down there. Maybe it will work out after all.

Tom