DJI drones

A few weeks ago, my cousin Jeff gave me a demonstration of his DJI Mavic drone. It is pretty incredible how fast prosumer drones have come in such a short period of time.

We decided to take a landscape panorama using a feature that was unlocked by a firmware upgrade. Jeff flew the drone high above the trees, then the drone sat there, motionless, and took about thirty high resolution pictures. The program stitched them together automatically to form a ultra HD image.

This is obviously a pretty cool feature, and it’s one of many. The tracking feature also comes in handy. Essentially you can tell the drone to identify an object, such as a person, then have the drone follow that object. It will shoot 4k high definition video, keeping that object in the centre of the shot. Alternatively, if you are a passenger in a car or boat, you can also control the drone yourself. Here is an example:

First attempt at some #tiltshift video in beautiful #muskoka. Shot with the #djimavic #dji #dronestagram

A post shared by jeffsdrone (@jeffsdrone) on

It is noteworthy to add that after he captured the footage, he imported it into Premiere Pro and added a miniaturization effect. The raw footage also looked really good.

I was reading an article in CNet that the new models of the Mavic Pro and Phantom 4 Pro are going to be 60% quieter (the blades) and last up to 30 minutes in the air. With the price being about US$1099, these drones are a reasonably priced way to add character to any creative project.

by Rick Sturch