Drooooone foooootage!

henryf said:
I still haven't forgotten Valencia and seeing a certain someone enjoying the race from their boat every single lap !
Henry
Click to expand...

You probably mean this
IMG_0701_Small.jpg


Ahh yes - that was a year to remember - 4 years ago - doesn't time fly.

Having said that, I'm currently at home - no Sky TV and it seems that Channel 4 is the only coverage - and that will be in the evening - not live.
At least when I'm on the boat, I can tune the satellite to RTL (or even Spanish terrestrial TV) and get the race live.
 
Fantastic footage. SWMBO said she hates you and when can we move :).

Never heard of the Batavia story but looks a great read. Will download it from Amazon today.
 
Hurricane said:
I bought the drone last Christmas and have flown it half a dozen times but I really wanted it to capture some Med images. The early part of this season has been installing upgrades and getting all the kit serviced so the drone has been at the bottom of the list.
But over the next few months, I will be able to spend some time on it and do some of the "practice practice practice" that you are saying.
Click to expand...

Hurricane - If you haven't used it for a while you may find DJI try to force a firmware upgrade on you the first time you fire it up. Happened to my P3A last week. Got everything ready to fly and - Grounded! Upgrade required - upgrade failed - back in the bag and fix it at home - start again - it tells me it's upgraded - spend a whole afternoon trying to connect RC to aircraft - fail - online chat with DJI representative who gave me a load of bad information - search the forums - find solution - upgrade again - now flying but lots of reports that current aircraft firmware is buggy. Scared to fly over water at the moment.

As a result of reading the forums where every firmware upgrade leads to a rash of complaints from pilots all over the world I am tempted to try and stop DJI forcing upgrades as soon as I have a stable combination of App/RC/aircraft firmware versions. But so far although I have found forum posts saying that this can be done I haven't found out how to do it. I suspect I may need to buy a cheap phone or tablet, download the current App, disconnect WiFi and cellphone connections, and keep the device just for flying the aircraft.

michaf said:
Yes I'mn using a polarised filter. It's a total must in our water world. Make sure you turn the filter right to the best position to maximise it's effect. The one I'm using is this one https://www.polarprofilters.com/collections/phantom3filters/products/dji-phantom-3-filter
Click to expand...
Thanks for the tip. Very light lenses - ordered today (3-4 weeks delivery time).
 
TwoHooter said:
Hurricane - If you haven't used it for a while you may find DJI try to force a firmware upgrade on you the first time you fire it up. Happened to my P3A last week. Got everything ready to fly and - Grounded! Upgrade required - upgrade failed - back in the bag and fix it at home - start again - it tells me it's upgraded - spend a whole afternoon trying to connect RC to aircraft - fail - online chat with DJI representative who gave me a load of bad information - search the forums - find solution - upgrade again - now flying but lots of reports that current aircraft firmware is buggy. Scared to fly over water at the moment.

As a result of reading the forums where every firmware upgrade leads to a rash of complaints from pilots all over the world I am tempted to try and stop DJI forcing upgrades as soon as I have a stable combination of App/RC/aircraft firmware versions. But so far although I have found forum posts saying that this can be done I haven't found out how to do it. I suspect I may need to buy a cheap phone or tablet, download the current App, disconnect WiFi and cellphone connections, and keep the device just for flying the aircraft.


Thanks for the tip. Very light lenses - ordered today (3-4 weeks delivery time).
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice.
At the moment, I have a fast 4G broadband internet connection on the boat and, of course, my PC systems are virtually the same as at home.
When I was on the boat a couple of weeks ago, I upgraded the software on the drone, controller, batteries and tablet (Go app).
Yes it is a PIA but I have been keeping it all up to date even though I haven't yet had the opportunity/time to fly it seriously.
 
Just a note on ND and polirized filters. They are quite different. You know about the polirized and what it does. The ND filter serves a different purpose. An ND filters reduces the overall light without discrimination. It's a bizarre thing to do in the world of capturing images, because we always seem not to have enough light. The idea is that for each still that composes a video, you want to have a certain amount of motion blur. This will in effect make your video smoother. The blur helps linking a frame to the next one. If each frame is 100% sharp, you end up with an effect called staccato, a good example is the opening scene in Saving Private Ryan.

So the idea in using an ND filter is to get the shutter speed roughly max 2 x the frame rate. So if you are shooting at 60fps, you would want a max speed of 1/120.

Now the problem is, until lately, you couldn't get a polirized and ND in the same filter. You can't stack them together either. But a saw yesterday that they stared makes them : https://www.polarprofilters.com/collections/phantom3filters/products/djiphantom3filternd32
 
I've not heard of this before.

The reality is unless you're going to retrospectively slow the footage down which happens a lot in the type of action shots for which GoPro cameras are used then you only need 25 or 30 frames per second. Extremely bright environments such as snow or sunny climes on water might cause problems with a fixed aperture camera like the GoPro particularly as it is a wide aperture of f2.8 I believe.

Traditionally you would close down the aperture in bright situations to allow shutter speeds and film speeds of a more normal level. This of course changes the depth of field so sometimes you use a natural density filter to darken the shot overall without affecting the aperture setting. With a fixed aperture camera like the GoPro adjustment isn't possible and everything has to be done by the electronic shutter speed.

I would expect to be able to film at a lot higher than 1/50 or 1/60th of a second for 25 / 30 frames per second or 1/120th of a second at 60 frames per second and not suffer any problems. Action shots will require you to film faster otherwise the whole lot will be blurred.

A polarising filter naturally reduces the amount of light coming into the camera by 2-3 f stops.

I am happy to be corrected by those with superior knowledge.

Henry :)
 
After reading the earlier part of this thread, I bought the set of 3 filters that michaf said he was using.
I will be taking them out in a couple of weeks - the Phantom is on the boat and I'm itching to get it working.

I too, can't see the point of reducing light (unless you actually have too much) but I was really only interested in the polarising filter - I can see the point of that.
Last summer, MapisM showed me the difference that polarising sun glasses made when looking into the water through the surface.
However, having read michaf's post above, I will have a go at the NV filters that are in the same package.

BTW
@michaf
You say earlier in this thread that you have to make sure that the polarising filter is the correct way round.
Can you explain how you determine that and any other concerns that you have with polarisation.
Thanks - this is all very interesting information.
 
Hurricane, first to remove the existing filter there's a trick. Don't try unscrewing it just like that, the more you hold it tight the more difficult it unscrews and the tighter you hold it. The trick is to use a rubber band around the filter and lightly tuck the band while you unscrew it.

Regarding the polirized filter here's what I do:

1) I screw the filter all the way in.

2) I turn on the remote and the drone.

3) I point the drone in the direction from which I will do most of the filming.

4) while looking on my tablet I start unscrewing the filter. While you do this try not upsetting the gimbal too much. While you unscrew the filter there's a point when the sky and water will be at they darkest. This is the right point.
 
@TwoHooter Well before a short while you had to choose between the two. For water I as using the Polarised filter, on land the ND filter. The reason being that the Pol over water bring overall more then the ND because of high glare.

Now there are new filter that are both ND and Pol like here https://www.polarprofilters.com/collections/phantom3filters/products/djiphantom3filternd32

Also on the ND filters. On a full summer day you will always end up using the ND32.
 
On the subject of firmware upgrade. I'm more into always keeping my stuff to the latest FW/SW. I have to agree that the upgrade of the phantom is not super user friendly. The remote should take care of it but anyway I've always managed to upgrade everything without trouble. For those who want upgrade:

1) If you can't upgrade to the latest and you are two FWs behind, try upgrading in steps by upgrading to the one just above yours. All FW versions are here http://www.dji.com/product/phantom-3-pro/info#downloads

2) Make sure you unzip and copy the downloaded files into the root directory of your Micro SD card. Not the Bin, but the unzipped Bin. Boot your Phantom. Your Remote doesn't have to be On to upgrade the Phantom.

3) Wait. And yes it can take a while, so let it do its think. The camera LED has to blink red/green then solid green if the upgrade was successful.
 
michaf said:
Henry, just have a read here it's short and well explained. Agreeed with you there's nothing wrong with shooting 30 fps, but then the shutter speed gets worse, you would then have to slow it down to 1/60. There's nothing really wrong with shooting at 1/600, but the result won't be as smooth as with a much slower speed. Anyway, here the link http://www.dronevibes.com/2016/03/17/neutral-density-filters-explained-when-and-how-to-use-nd-filters-on-your-drone-camera/
Click to expand...


Thanks for that. The clip of the pianist was interesting. I use a circular polarising filter a lot both for still and video work. In particular photographing cars it allows you to deal with window glare, unwanted reflections and also capture a more accurate representation of colour.

With my polarising filters they turn within themselves so you can screw them firmly in place and then rotate (clockwise so as not to inadvertently unscrew the filter) to achieve the required effect.

Henry :)
 
michaf said:
On the subject of firmware upgrade. I'm more into always keeping my stuff to the latest FW/SW. I have to agree that the upgrade of the phantom is not super user friendly. The remote should take care of it but anyway I've always managed to upgrade everything without trouble. For those who want upgrade:

1) If you can't upgrade to the latest and you are two FWs behind, try upgrading in steps by upgrading to the one just above yours. All FW versions are here http://www.dji.com/product/phantom-3-pro/info#downloads

2) Make sure you unzip and copy the downloaded files into the root directory of your Micro SD card. Not the Bin, but the unzipped Bin. Boot your Phantom. Your Remote doesn't have to be On to upgrade the Phantom.

3) Wait. And yes it can take a while, so let it do its think. The camera LED has to blink red/green then solid green if the upgrade was successful.
Click to expand...

I don't know if it is important most of the time but the batteries also seem to need software upgrades.
I have three so I've been going through the drone upgrade process 3 times.
The first time the drone upgrades its on board firmware and the battery that is connected.
I then "reboot" (keeping the same upgrade MicroSD card) in the drone but changing the battery.
And then again for the third battery.

If you then put the MicroSD card into a PC, you will see a log file that seems to have the full upgrade history of the drone - not just the upgrades that were done in the most recent session.

The remote's firmware seems to get its upgrades from the tablet/phone via the DJI App.

It is almost a shame that the Go App is for multiple products - for example, there is a new upgrade released only a few days ago which doesn't affect my equipment.
I will probably be upgrading it anyway, even though it isn't necessary.
 
michaf,

are there any circ pol filters for that short of machines?
I do remember them (I also have one for my Nikon F2...) but I'm not sure they work on video

cheers

V.
 
The reason why there isn't any double ring pol filter, at least to my knowledge, is because

a) Due to vibrations the filter could be turning.

b) The gimbal is highly balanced and adding a havier filter would brake that balance. In fact my filters already brakes it as the camera drops its nose, which it doesn't do with the stock neutral filter. The gimbal is an interesting piece of kit, the motors don't "brute force" the camera's different levels, what they do is just bring the camera back to its balance. If the balance is too much out of wack you risk burning the motors.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top