Low altitude aerial view of spinner dolphins swimming off the Kona coast of the Big Island of Hawaii, Hawaii, USA

Tags:   Hawaii USA KAP Kite Aerial Brooxes BBKK Canon A650 A650IS Rokkaku Spinner Dolphin Dolphin Big Island Island of Hawaii

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Low altitude aerial view of spinner dolphins swimming off the Kona coast of the Big Island of Hawaii, Hawaii, USA

Tags:   Hawaii USA KAP Kite Aerial Brooxes BBKK Canon A650 A650IS Rokkaku Spinner Dolphin Dolphin Big Island Island of Hawaii

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The view of the honu really was spectacular.

Tags:   Hike to Kiholo Bay Canon A650 A650IS kiholo bay honu vertical kap kite aerial aerial polarizer Hawaii Big Island Kona Coast Outdoors Directly Above Color Image Photography Daylight Day Seascape Nature Ocean Water Water's Edge Inlet Rock No People One Animal Animals in the Wild Turquoise

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From a recent outing with the Kona Camera Club to Kiholo Bay

A honu, or Pacific Green Sea Turtle, at Kiholo Bay.

This was the first time I ever did two-person KAP. In this case I was flying the kite and a fellow member of the Kona Camera Club, Craig Elevitch, was driving the rig and camera. I stood directly upwind of the honu, and Craig was about 90 degrees off to one side. I let out line, keeping the rig low to the water, and when Craig called "Stop!" I stopped letting out line and Craig hit the shutter. I'm more than pleased with the results.

Tags:   KAP Kite Aerial Brooxes BBKK GentLED-CHDK CHDK Canon A650 A650IS Rokkaku Kona Camera Club KCC Hawaii Big Island Kiholo Bay Honu Sea Turtle Turtle

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This is a near-infrared panorama of the 10m Ridge at the summit of Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The South Kohala Coast is visible just to the right of the rightmost telescope (the NASA IRTF), and the cloud covered Kohala Mountain is visible just to the right of that.

Not the best test of an IR camera since there's no vegetation to speak of at the summit of Mauna Kea. But the view of the sky is interesting. At 4000m altitude above sea level there's very little water vapor in the atmosphere. Except for clouds there's not much there to reflect infrared light. I was pleased to see a black sky above the cloud layer.

The vegetation along the South Kohala Coast is also a good indicator the camera is operating as expected, though until I have a chance to try it closer to sea level I won't know for sure.

Since I'm not using a real IR cutoff filter for this, I was curious if I'd be able to white balance this in a usable way. I used the tops of the clouds on the other side of the mountain to white balance off of. The result turned out quite well.

For a DIY conversion I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. I can't wait to try it from a kite!

Tags:   NIR Canon A2200 Panorama Hawaii Big Island Summit Mauna Kea Telescopes Observatories

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