Its Me wrote:
On Monday, April 10, 2017 at 4:58:28 PM UTC-4, Poco Deplorevole wrote:
On Sun, 9 Apr 2017 16:40:28 -0700 (PDT), Its Me wrote:

On Wednesday, April 5, 2017 at 9:00:49 PM UTC-4, Its Me wrote:
Well, I finally pull the trigger and bought one of these:

http://www.dji.com/mavic

I only have a few flights in so far, and just a couple of videos, but wow! It is really a capable platform. 4K video, 12 mega pixel camera, GPS stabilized, etc. Easy to fly. The controller and drone fit in a roughly 5x5x10 soft bag that you can throw over your shoulder and take with you. It's amazing.
Against my better judgement, here's a link to the 2nd video I took with it. No sound, no editing, no camera tweaks. There's a lot to learn as far as the software and capabilities, and I'm just taking baby steps right now.

This is at about 350ft max. I pause on the lake in the distance with the new dam to the right, and also the skyline of Columbia. It's boring. Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/SKkP0Jtj7qQ
Are you doing this with FPV, or just estimating the view of the camera. Good job
The controller has a smart device attached, an Apple Mini 4, and the camera image is streamed live to it in 1080 or 720, depending on the signal strength. It shows the camera view or a map view, or can show both. The map view is downloaded and it shows your location and the drone's, so you can, for example, fly a property's borders without even looking at the drone or the image it's taking. I did this looking at the camera image. It's a bad video with large stationary images while I get my bearings and figure out what to do next. And my landing area is small and has overhanging Oak branches so I have to maneuver it out and back in carefully. Like I've said before, flying it in GPS positioning mode is easy, but the vast array of software features and settings has a learning curve. I'll get better with time.

I'm surprised how steady that video is. They have come a long way.

On Mon, 10 Apr 2017 20:25:17 -0400, Alex wrote:


I'm surprised how steady that video is. They have come a long way.

These days they can manipulate the image digitally, fixing on a spot
so "steady" is not an issue as long as you can keep it in frame.

On Monday, April 10, 2017 at 8:47:31 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Mon, 10 Apr 2017 20:25:17 -0400, Alex wrote:


I'm surprised how steady that video is. They have come a long way.

These days they can manipulate the image digitally, fixing on a spot
so "steady" is not an issue as long as you can keep it in frame.

That's not what's happening here. Not only is the drone locking in on GPS coordinates and staying there, the camera's gimbals are also stabilized to provide a steady picture. You can see the effect of that early in the video when I'm ascending. The dark "halo" that appears in the top of the frame is actually the camera guard. It's a black bubble that snaps on with a cutout for the lens view. As the gimbal rotates up to compensate for my jerky movement the camera get a glimpse of the edge of the cutout. I'm going to spend a few minutes with a Dremel tool to fix that.