Sometime in 1996 or `97 I became aware of Charles Benton's excellent Kite Aerial Photography web site ( http://www.arch.ced.berkeley.edu/kap/ ). I saw that you could take intriguing low altitude photos by hanging a camera from the kite string, and was amazed.
By early August '97, I had convinced myself that I needed a nice Sutton Flowform, 16 square feet in size. A flowform kite has no sticks- it's a big multi-celled wind bag that is shaped like an airplane wing when inflated, generating substantial lift. I then got about 250 feet of 150 pound test line, a "halo" spool, whipped together a "picavet" mount to hold the camera level when hanging from the the kite line, and obtained an $8 garage-sale point and shoot autowind camera- a Nikon L35AF. This turned out to be an excellent 35mm point and shoot camera- it takes very crisp photos, and has a motorized film advance. I built a swiveling aluminum bracket to marry the camera and the picavet. Lacking any sort of radio remote control, I simply used the internal timer in the camera. However high it would loft in 10 seconds was it!
I shot a couple rolls of film using the camera's self-timer, and got some nice pictures, but it was a real drag to have to walk the kite down (hold onto the line, walk towards the kite, dragging the kite out of the sky) every time in order to reset the timer. Not wanting to spend hundreds of dollars on a radio remote control setup for something I wasn't sure was going to work, I designed my own remote system to push the shutter button by scavenging parts from a cheap $10 remote control toy car. While the results down on the ground were great, once up in the air the radio range was completely inadequate. I finally had great success when I got an Airtronics remote control set used for boats. This was a "real" radio remote control with a useable range of several hundred feet. I use this remote with one servo motor to push the shutter button on the camera. My advice- forget about home-brewing your own radio remote control and just buy one. The Airtronics model I have retails for only about $60, not the hundreds I'd imagined it would cost.
My Nikon L35AF P&S Camera weighs 14.5 oz, including its 2 AA batteries & a roll of 24 exp film. The balsa wood Picavet and aluminum camera bracket assembly weighs in at 5.2 oz. I've since adopted a Picavet cross made of oak because the balsa broke a couple times during rough storage (ok, so the kids sat on it. I just didn't want to embarass them here.)