Drone – Photographic Musings……… Or

I joined a drone club last year (or was it the year before – I can’t remember, I’m getting on in years), but none the less, I joined, and paid up my £12 annual fee…. The group is great…and you can find them here:-

Grey Arrows

A really nice group of people, who fly sensibly, and have good ideas….

I met them for the first time, face to face, at a smallish group get together up at the Humber Bridge. We chatted, exchanged ideas, admired each others drones – admired the coloured skins – admired the hyper lapse – you get the idea….

We also flew pretty much in tandem, with no-one getting in the way of anyone else…..

If you do have a drone, I highly recommend joining them.

Log on to see the picture of the day, video of the day, or search for somewhere interesting to fly….

It comes highly recommended by me – again Grey Arrows

A few weeks ago, a friend told me that another friend was selling his drone, did I fancy getting one? I wasn’t sure……….

We decided in the end that we would buy it between us and give it a go.

What did we know about drones? – absolutely nothing…….

However, once it arrived, we found it easy to set up, and get running. The cables were a bit fiddly till you could sort out where they went, but once the batteries were charged, it can be put it into ‘idot’ mode, which makes for an easier start.

The basics are easy – left control, up and down and rotate, and the right for forwards, backwards, sideways – but getting the knack of using both levers at the same time was a bit more complex. You also have to take into account that the camera lens can be moved up and down through 90 degrees. Lots of permutations here.

The first lot of video was shaky to say the least. Stop start, and too quick rotation meant viewing made your head spin, and getting up the nerve to go to the maximum legal height of 400ft was a bit hairy.

The Boring Bit

To legally use a drone in the UK, over the weight of 250g, it must be registered. It can all be done online and there are two parts to this.

Anyone responsible for a drone needs to register as an operator. This is currently £9 annually.
Anyone flying a drone must take, and pass an online education package. This is free, and renewable every three years.
If you want to fly commercially, a whole raft of other requirements are in place.

So, registration complete, test passed (first time – though in fairness it’s not difficult) – and away we go.

What’s hard?

Thinking in three dimensions is not easy for me – yet …. For a start, the thing is moving, and it’s far away from you usually. Taking stills is not too bad as it will hover and the gimbal helps keeps the image steady, plus you can see what the camera sees on your mobile phone app. Video though, for me, is a whole new skill.

So, I’ve got the footage (bad though it may be) and I’ve got some photographs. Processing them is easy – the drone shoots its own version of RAW – in this case DNG files, which I can deal with in Photoshop and Lightroom. The video footage though – well Lightroom can’t handle it – Photoshop is limited, so what else have I got?

I use a MAC, and the free software that comes with that is iMovie – and it actually works pretty well. I’ve got a fairly powerful computer that can handle video, but bear in mind that the files can be huge. I shot in 4K (which is the best quality this drone can handle), and after 40 minutes flying the other day, I came back with 30Gb of footage, which when downloaded and edited made for a bit of a wait whilst the files were exported afterwards.

I’ve also been learning a bit more about how YouTube works. The finished files are a bit too big for me to keep locally, and there’s free space so far on the web, which I can link to. Something else for me to learn….

The other interesting thing I found is that you can take a still image from the video footage, and the quality isn’t bad. (See Below)

So how am I doing? Well, it’s been an experience for sure – and some of the images I can already see potential for.

I was initially a bit disappointed with the quality of the stills. The camera is 12Mp but really does need good light to get the best from it. The sensor of course is tiny – but you can work the files to what I consider an acceptable standard – they can be noisy but software can sort most of that. It’s a bit like flying a medium quality mobile phone. (Though I know that some of the newer drones have much better cameras).

I’m always talking about taking a risk, and experimenting with photography, and this is a whole new way of seeing the world. It’s going to take practice, and although I’m thinking of buying another one (that’s all mine)….. I’m going to wait till I really get to grips with my half of a drone……..

For those of you who know all this already, I’m sorry to ramble on, but it’s an exciting time.

Fingers crossed I can keep up with this, and hopefully get to make some video that is actually worth watching….. till then… fingers crossed.