Drone footage whilst underway

henryf

henryf

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www.911virgin.com
I finally grew a pair of balls and filmed the boat underway on Friday. I've been wanting to for ages but for one reason or another haven't been able to. Too much wind, not comfortable with hand launch & recovery etc.

Friday conditions were pretty much perfect so there were no more excuses. Quite hard to get your head round what direction controls to use as you are moving along and the drone is constantly moving around in relation to you.

I did have one brown trouser moment when the drone, quite rightly decided that with 45% battery remaining it was going to head to where it thought home was 4.5km away. Luckily managed to stop it and get it back on board. You obviously don't want to set a home position when filming on the boat.

Found I had to fly in sport mode to keep up with the boat. All in all a lot of things to keep thinking about and also had to make sure the boat wasn't going to run aground or do anything silly. I would have rather had a bit more footage to play with but cobbled this together. See it as a first attempt.





Henry :)
 
I missed this earlier - great footage, Henry.

I've been trying to improve the quality of my old Phantom clips.
The DJI cameras have a tendency to "wash out" the detail in the boat - particularly the white areas.
Maybe it is strong sunlight that does it but I still had the problem when I added filters.

I am currently looking for a good post processor that can re-adjust the levels in the same way that Photoshop does for photographs.
I have "kind of" got there using Shotcut - this is the best I've been able to do so far.

https://vimeo.com/204752941
 
Henryf- have you looked at using "litchi" software to control the drone? You can use it so it controls the camera and would keep the boat in focus all the time (at least I think it can do that on the fly). I have used it very briefly and I admit not done this myself yet - but is supposed to be good for action shots like this.
 
I use Final Cut Pro 10 for editing and it seems to have everything you could ever need. I just scratch the surface of its capabilities but a quick search on Google or YouTube always comes up with an answer. This was the first time I've ever played with the colour, out in the Solent the water was a bit green so I made it a bit more blue. Literally a 10 second job per clip.

In terms of software to control the drone DJI has some clever stuff if you want to use it. I'm just finding my feet in the analogue control at this stage. Once I get confident in the technology I'll see how good the auto features are.

Henry :)
 
Nice bit of flying there Henry, you managed to nail the speed pretty perfectly. Do you recall the speed you were doing? At a guess around 20 kts? My phantom 3 struggles to keep up at anything more than 18 which is a bit of a pain.

Re color grading: I haven't given it a go myself yet but plan to next time. Based on quick googling one is supposed to 'flatten' the image while shooting (ie. pull back the saturation and contrast) so that there's more to play with while editing. Haven't checked yet if/how this is possible on the phantom.
 
We will have been going about 20 knots. In Sport mode the Phantom 4 manages fine.

I think if you fly the Phantom 3 in ATTI mode it will go faster, obviously make sure there aren't any disadvantages in using ATTI mode.

Henry :)
 
scubaman said:
Re color grading: I haven't given it a go myself yet but plan to next time. Based on quick googling one is supposed to 'flatten' the image while shooting (ie. pull back the saturation and contrast) so that there's more to play with while editing. Haven't checked yet if/how this is possible on the phantom.
Click to expand...

I would be interested to hear if you find anything.
I think the current Phantom 4K cameras and the Mavic's 4K camera are pushing that type of camera to its maximum ability.
The Phantom 4 Pro Plus has a better camera - now that it is out, it will be interesting to see if its results improve the contrast issue.
I've gone down the Mavic route though - portability being more important.
 
A random tangent, but as an avid PC gamer this reminded me of third person viewing of your boat, except in a game you're busy controlling the boat while the camera is "automatic", whilst you had your hands full here controlling the camera.

Made me wonder if in a decade or so people will be using autonomous drones along with their boat joystick controls to navigate into tight spots where visibility from the helm isn't ideal
 
I'm not sure the recreational boater would benefit. Possibly the military might find a use. For the most part Reeds Almanac the chart plotter and our radio keep us in the right place.

It's quite rare that someone is waiting round the corner for us with their RPG-7 although maybe the South of France boys might experience that as Superyacht crews compete for available berths :)

Henry :)
 
"BLIMEY" H !!!!!...... never mind all that video stuff, i need to know where you bought/borrowed/stole those BRILL conditions from ???!!!!!!!!!!....................... .........ps. SUPERB vid mate !!!!
 
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