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Lesson Info
7. Drones
Lessons
Workshop Introduction
04:42 2Aerial Photography Theory
14:18 3Aerial Composition
18:51 4Route Planning
11:51 5Clothing & Safety Gear
17:18 6Camera Gear
21:49 7Drones
07:15 8Cessna Walkthrough
09:10Lesson Info
Drones
All right, so the last thing I wanted to talk about with gear is a drone. And really just, again, my drone of choice. Why is that? Well, when it comes to being able to shoot a landscape with a variety of perspectives and lens lengths, I prefer the Mavic 2 Zoom. And what the Zoom does, is it allows you to have kind of a function where you can actually zoom in or zoom out giving you like a 24 to 70 style look. And I love that because it mimics the real life idea of being in a plane and being able to use your own lenses. The sensor is not as big or as high quality as the normal Mavic Pro or obviously it's never gonna be as good as an Octocopter or a bigger drone, but if I'm traveling and I'm going somewhere this is kind of my kit. The one thing I love about this is having your drone in a kit. As you can see on this very, very tattered bit of tape here, it says Mavic 2 Zoom. And I open this thing up and what is it? It's my drone. There are one, two, three, four... Totally losing count. I t...
hink there's even more, okay. One, two, three, four, five, six batteries in here because battery life is everything. This will give me basically two and a half hours of flying. It's like 25 minutes per battery, flight time. I've got a charger in here. I've got filters in here. And I have my controller in here. And the thing I love is that this all fits into this one tiny, simple kit. And kind of the, the beauty of this setup is that, again if I'm on location and I'm going somewhere and I need to bust out the drone, it can all live in this one thing. I'm not gonna use this dedicated bag and then another dedicated bag for cameras and batteries and all these things. I love being able to kind of have this kit right here. And I know that this can really just get going in a couple minutes, right? Oftentimes what I'll do as well is I will actually have with my controller kind of a dedicated phone that goes with it. What I mean by that is I've got an old, old iPhone that just has everything wiped on it, and it pretty much just works for this. So I have it in this bag, so I'm not trying to pull out my phone and, oh, crap, I don't have enough battery. If you wanna be successful with utilizing one of these you gotta dedicate the time and the space to getting used to it. For me, again, on this drone, I also have a polarizer, another critical tool being able to create kind of those beautiful landscapes and cutting through that water, seeing through that reflection. This drone, again, for me, I've printed images, super high, super big, in my gallery photographs I'm really proud of. Obviously it's not gonna have the same quality anywhere near the Sony system is shooting from a plane, but with what I'm given and with where I can take this it's a really special tool that always finds its way into my bag and on expeditions. I would even say that at times being able to utilize a drone to photograph whales or photograph orcas or get close to wildlife, this is one of those beautiful tools because it's kind of noninvasive in that way. It doesn't scare them away. You're not forcing them out somewhere. And you can get a lot closer than you would comfortably feel from a boat or from land or something along those lines. So again, this is kind of the kit that I use. Oftentimes, too, even when I'm at the airport and I'm with a pilot and maybe you do wanna shoot some plane to plane. One thing you could consider asking them is how comfortable pilots are flying around drones. If they know where your drone is gonna be, the elevation where you're gonna be flying, and they know where they can fly safely, you could potentially shoot from the air of a paraglider flying around or a trike or a plane for that matter. But you just wanna make sure you have that communication and, really, that line of communication open so they feel comfortable being around you flying a drone. The other thing I love about this one, unlike the other drones that are are mostly just wide angle, is the ability to zoom in on wildlife shooting at 70 millimeter, which feels like more like a hundred on the smaller sensor, allows me to kind of get close, in Alaska, towards bears, but I'm not disturbing them. Cause I'm still over the water and I can zoom into them. It allows me to really film in a way that feels much more cinematic 'cause you're not just constantly shooting that wide angle perspective, but you're actually kind of can move through a landscape and things will reveal quicker because you're shooting at a 50 or a 70 millimeter length. So these are some of the perks that I would use the drone. There's not really any setup or functionality that I try to like really lean on to get great images just obviously shooting in raw and kind of dialing it in to where you feel either comfortable shooting in single shot or burst mode or whatever that is. But this should hopefully take you to the place where you feel comfortable with the kit you have knowing that you're gonna go out and create successful work no matter where you end up and no matter what craft you're shooting in. Now, one quick addendum I want to add when it comes to using a drone is, in this case, you're the pilot. So you have full responsibility of understanding where you're flying this, what the flight restrictions are. Don't rely upon the controller to tell you where you can and can't fly. Don't rely upon, you know, somebody to come up to you and tell you that this is an illegal place to fly or that you're too close to animals. Know the right and the wrong things to do. Know and be aware of when you might be disturbing people, when you might be in a national park, when you might be in a national forest. Drones have really given a lot of photographers a bad rap because they've shown up in some really, really terrible places. And I would urge you to understand the difference between flying commercially and flying publicly, meaning that if you're going out and you're flying a drone to sell the footage or to use it or for a commercial, you need to have a license to do so. And that is so that the, basically, the FAA can record kind of where this is being operated and where it's being used. Drones can be super, super fun, but they can also be a bummer for a lot of people when they're flying over their homes and they don't wanna see them, or in wildlife where they can kind of scare away horses and whatnot or animals for that matter. I've even heard of situations where drones have scared birds away from their eggs and they've never returned. It's a terrible thing. So I really wanna make sure that you as the pilot relies upon this. If you are flying with a pilot in a plane, we're really relying upon them and their responsibility to know those flight restrictions, know the areas they're getting into. One of the conversations that you'll have or hear me talk about with somebody is the Monterey Marine Wildlife Sanctuary and where we can fly and where we can't because of birds and because of other wildlife. So these are questions that I'm thinking about when I'm getting in a plane the same types of questions you need to be thinking about when you're launching one of these. What wildlife am I gonna be affecting? What people I gonna be affecting? My rule of thumb is, is if there are people around and just a handful, I ask them if they're comfortable with me flying a drone. Obviously I wanna know all my state and country regulations, rules, this and that. I also wanna make sure that I'm being very, very aware of how I might be affecting wildlife in that situation. So again, I just wanna make sure that you understand that these are incredible tools. They can create incredible images but take the responsibility and the time to get to know all those local regulations and just having common sense when you fly this thing.
Ratings and Reviews
lorenzo p
Great intro class from one of the masters of adventure photography