Drone 4K Resolution Aerial Video is Essential

There’s a lot of white noise around the hype of image resolution, particularly in the consumer market. Major electronics companies tout 4K resolution as a major selling point for all of their newest model televisions, and it’s even a key aspect of Apple’s newest “shot on iPhone” campaign. It’s no surprise that the drone industry is following suit, providing many quadcopter options with 4K video, but is it necessary for aerial videography?

The answer, in short, is yes. 4K is slowly becoming the new standard for video; mainstream movies have been shooting at 4K or even higher resolutions for the better part of a decade and now with the new aforementioned televisions that are starting to permeate the market, standard HD will soon be fully upstaged by 4K, or “UltraHD” in every living room around the world.

So where does aerial drone photography fit in to all of this? Fundamentally, there is a general need to keep up with the Joneses- as a disruptive technology, it’s always important to be at the forefront of new advancements. It keeps a company both relevant and competitive. DJI is a good example of this ideology. Their Inspire drone was DJI’s first foray into 4K video at a time when not a lot of people, even prosumers, were clamoring for 4K resolution. But since the Inspire’s release, 4K has become a standard feature in all of DJI’s subsequent drone and camera releases including the Phantom and Osmo lines.

Speaking more creatively, shooting in a resolution as high as 4K from the air simply means all of those gorgeous aerials will look even better. Most drone cameras focus to infinity, meaning anything and everything in the frame is evenly sharp. With 4K, smaller details like tree branches, cars, and even people will stop being colorful blotches and will actually possess detail and sharpness.

On the consumer side, this is a passive feature that will make their amateur and home footage look stunning without really having to do anything different other than fly around with the camera recording. For professionals, shooting aerials at 4K means the footage can finally match the visual fidelity of expensive motion picture cameras from companies like Red and Arri. This in turn means movie and television productions will be encouraged to use the technology. It also provides the option to zoom in to specific elements within the frame if the final video is being finished at a standard HD (1080p) resolution.

4K resolution has become an essential component of not just standard video and film, but for drone and aerial photography as well. It quite simply can mean the difference between ho-hum images and jaw-dropping video.

 

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Yuneec review:YUNEEC Q500 vs DJI PHANTOM 4

When it comes to consumer-level drones, one model rules the skies. DJI’s Phantom and yuneec typhoon, is the flying machine of choice for professional videographers, drone enthusiasts, and increasingly, mass-market consumers.

But just like every other drone manufacturer in the game, Yuneec has also been living in the shadow of DJI for the past few years. No matter how advanced or capable Yuneec’s Typhoon drones have gotten, the company just can’t seem to unseat DJI from its throne.

YUNEEC Q500+ TYPHOON DRONE:

This is a drone that is capable of recording full HD 1080p 60 FPS videos and taking 16 megapixel photographs. What we found very appealing is that the package includes an aluminum case, TWO batteries, a battery charger, double set of propellers, a 32GB micro SD card, and ST10+ Ground Station, besides the drone itself.

It also has cool features such as Follow Me, and a totally new way of filming your handheld video with an included handheld gimbal that uses the detachable camera from the drone.

DJI PHANTOM 4:

• Its ActiveTrack allows the drone to follow a moving subject with just a few taps on your tablet or smartphone. You don’t need a beacon and a band, because you can program the drone to follow a moving POI as well as circle around the desired subject as it moves, or you can even re-frame the shot just by dragging the subject on the display.
• The great thing about this drone is that flying is now literally something that anyone can do, because this drone offers features like Obstacle Sensing System, which allows you to focus only on filming, while the drone flies on his own and avoids any obstacles along the way.
• Sport Mode – In this mode, the drone offers the best flight controls in its class. This mode allows you to let your drone fly with 25% more speed, while the positioning systems are in charge of keeping your drone safe.
• 28 minutes of flight – Thanks to a better aerodynamic design, the latest high-tech propulsion system, as well as a larger battery, the Phantom 4 is capable of staying in the air and filming for 28 minutes.

 

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How to choose your first drone

If you’re looking to buy your first drone, you can save a lot of time by asking a simple question:

What do I want to use my drone for?

UAV pros say the answer will make it easy for a dealer to help you find the drone that’s right for you. Stores like Kentucky-based Fly High USA have UAVs for all uses, from agriculture to public safety to backyard photography.

Fly High CEO Ralph Rigdon says what really matters when purchasing a drone is end use, price point and ease of use. “Those are the three big ones,” he said.

No experience? No problem

When a customer with no UAV experience calls Fly High looking for a drone to take pictures, Rigdon steers them toward DJI Phantom 4.

“The Phantom 4 is an easier bird to fly,” says Rigdon.

All it takes to get a DJI Phantom 4 off the ground is charging the battery and installing the DJI GO app on your smart phone. The best part is that DJI flight controller is compatible with every DJI drone – just in case you want to upgrade to a model like the Inspire 1.

“It works so flawlessly it’s fantastic,” says J.T. VonLunen, president of Rocky Mountain Unmanned Systems, a company that specializes in commercial and industrial UAV sales.

Another DJI feature that will save you the time you would have spent checking out other drones is obstacle avoidance – a perk you’ll want to have if you’re working up to your first flight.

DJI’s obstacle avoidance system continuously scans the surrounding environment and detects obstacles in real time. The feature will tell your flight controller to automatically avoid collisions – even at high speeds.

That means if you’re flying a Phantom 4 and you come too close to a tree, the drone stops.

The feature sets DJI apart from other companies – especially in tandem with its innovative TapFly system, which allows you to fly your drone in any direction by simply tapping your finger on a specific point on your flight controller app’s map.

And get this: It doesn’t matter if there are trees or buildings in the way. With obstacle avoidance switched on, the drone will automatically avoid obstacles, slow down or hover.

What’s your budget?

It’s important to know how much money you want to spend on your drone.

If you’re a new pilot, the best drone dealers will take that into account when helping you choose a model.

“It’s a partnership,” Rigdon says. “We can save you a world of hurt.”

When it comes to replacement parts, choosing a beginner model like the Phantom 4 will save you a headache.

“If you crash it, it doesn’t cost you and arm and a leg to repair it,” Rigdon says. “The worst case scenario is $1400 bucks.”

A first-time drone buyer will also want to consider added costs like buying a case – and a few extra batteries (although the Phantom 4 ships in its own case).

Battery brands make a big difference. Some offer a lifetime warranty. Others don’t.

Bottom line? Do your research. And stick with an established brand.

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Is the heavy and expensive Yuneec Q500 worth its price tag?

The Yuneec Q500 is marketed as a drone that can be used for film and photography, but the ultimate use is, really, up to the pilot and some of the restrictions in the design and what might be considered a shortage of R&D.

While the battery life in the Yuneec Q500 is reasonable, it doesn’t last as long as the battery in the DJI Phantom 4.

The Yuneec Q500 has a control unit that fashions a big display screen on the remote, a screen that is almost too big and low res. There are other issues with the Yuneec Q500 controller. The buttons and switches are not organized in the most logical or intuitive manner. And using it can be an overly complicated affair even for experienced pilots.

It is also worth considering that the Yuneec Q500 isn’t supported by a mobile app as efficient as the DJI Go app.

The tracking features on the Yuneec Q500 are decent but fail to live up to those in many a DJI model. In fact, a DJI Yuneec lawsuit underway is based on the similarities of some of these features between Yuneec drones and those from DJI.

The Yuneec Q500 is part of the effort by Yuneec China to challenge DJI – the largest among the world’s UAV drone manufacturers.

The DJI vs Yuneec contest underway is fairly interesting but one that DJI appears to be winning with some ease.

With the Phantom 4, DJI has further cemented its position as the undisputed leader in the market. Yes, the Yuneec Q500 can be an attractive looking drone with a bit of flair in its design, with a swept-back body and curved surfaces but its plastic material is far from classy or tasteful and it can also raise questions about the strength of the drone.

The shiny silver-and-white plastic skin of the body makes the Yuneec Q500 look more like an oversized toy than the serious device that the Yuneec Q500 is supposed to be.

The design is decent but not completely free from flaws – a fact that points out why DJI is the clear winner in terms of R&D and consumer focus.

DroneCompares reviews have overwhelmingly acknowledged the Yuneec Q500 as a drone with reasonable operating range with automated takeoff and landing. Having said that, against a DJI Phantom 4 comparison, the vast majority of experts endorse the DJI drone’s easy handling and control.

The Yuneec Q500 control unit may be a bit tricky to the first time user as well. While DJI features like ActiveTrack or TapFly put the Phantom series in a separate class from the Yuneec Q500.

Another major point of DJI Phantom 4 comparison against the Yuneec Q500 is the camera. The Yuneec Q500 costs more than most other drones Yuneec and other manufacturers. But pilots with first-hand experience are labelling the Yuneec Q500 camera as disappointing. The resolution seems to be inferior to even the older DJI Phantom 3 model. The Yuneec Q500 lens feels cheap and the image quality sometimes may look like it was shot with an amateur smartphone lens.

On the other hand, almost every DJI Phantom 4 review has showered an abundance of praise on its camera.

Overall, the Yuneec Q500 is an interesting drone with numerous flight modes and an ok camera but the biggest drawbacks for the Yuneec Q500 are performance inconsistencies and some of the features that are overcomplicated and difficult to use.

 

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DJI Drone Flying through Fireworks

It rises from the ground with glowing light. Hundreds of feet in the air you see flashing colors traveling through the sky. No, it’s not a firecracker, it’s a DJI Phantom 4, the most recent incarnation of DJI’s most popular line of crafts, flying steadily through fireworks.

Before consumer drones were available to the public, spectators have had to watch fireworks displays from the ground. Fireworks most commonly explode 200 to 1500 feet from the ground so there is a significant amount of distance from the audience to the magical display.

In the past few years, UAVs (aka drones) have allowed filmmakers all over the world to get a perspective never before available. Getting up close and personal with the fireworks, the drones fly around, through, and over the incendiary spectacles with perfectly stable professional quality cameras.

The most common drones we see taking the footage that photographers and videographers need are DJI’s Phantom series and Inspire 1series crafts. With the range and stability necessary for safety in flying, cameras that can capture the low light footage with no grain necessary for nighttime fireworks shows, and a number of smart flight modes that allow pilots to maneuver in complicated situations easily, DJI’s aircrafts are proving to be the best tool for a large number professionals and amateurs alike.

Popular vlogger Devin Graham, aka devinsupertramp, recently released a video showing his use of a Phantom 4 at an event run by Firestorm Pyrotechnics in Utah. Inspired by an incredibly popular video released in 2014 showing a Phantom 2 flying directly through a large fireworks display, Devin decided to take on the subject with a much more powerful tool.

In many of Devin’s videos on his popular YouTube channel, he successfully uses his Phantom 4, but shooting fireworks from so close is unlike anything he’s done. “[For] most of this video with the DJI Phantom 4 we actually filmed it with an ISO of 1600. And I was a little scared to kind of push the ISO that high, but there was no grain on the image whatsoever so I was like mind blown stoked about that.”

Other popular and up and coming vloggers like BFvsGF and DeathByVlog have also recently released their own drone captured fireworks footage using DJI crafts getting over 1 million views in just a few months.

Like any good pilot, safety is Devin’s crew’s highest concern when flying at public events like this. “Because there were going to big fireworks going off we also made sure that we were in a designated area where we were not above people, so lets just say if one of these drones did get hit, which they actually [did] get hit several times, but if one got shot down it wasn’t going to land on someone or hurt someone.” With the Phantom 4’s collision avoidance and return-to-home functionality Devin and his team had no problems flying their quadcopter home amidst the hectic environment.

As drone and camera technology is advanced by companies like DJI, filmmakers will continue to test the limits of these tools for the sake of their audience to provide footage never deemed possible.

Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28nHbglR8Xo

source from: http://ift.tt/2jUPSKY

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5 Reasons Why the DJI Phantom 4 is Awesome for Travel Photography

Travelling with a drone is one of the best ways to explore new parts of the world from new perspectives. With a camera-equipped quadcopter, you’re able to look the world from new, revolutionary angles and capture it for others to see.

Let us show you exactly why the DJI Phantom 4 UAV is an amazing addition to the travelling photographer’s toolbox!

A wider view

Ascend just a hundred meters up in the air and you get access to completely new landscape shots. Whether deserts, oceans, forests or mountains, many types of scenery are best captured from above. And seeing the shot on the live HD view from your drone before you capture it is a thrilling experience.

Capture the impossible

It’s not just about perspectives but also about smart features enabled by powerful software that let you capture shots that you would otherwise never able to. With ActiveTrack, you can easily track for example a kayaker, a mountain biker or a skateboarder — or capture yourself while doing any of these activities! This simply isn’t possible any other way, unless you have your own film crew handy.

Also, in case you think this seems risky and crash prone, don’t worry. The DJI Phantom 4 has a Sense and Avoid system that lets it automatically avoid obstacles in its path. While other platforms on the market do claim to have similar systems, we have found the Phantom 4’s to be the most effective.

New perspectives on well-known sights

With the Phantom 3 or 4, you can capture landmarks from new angles to see their grandness in new ways. See for example how Christ the Redeemer in Rio looks like when shot from above, instead of the usual perspective from below.

Travel video

If there’s anything that’s better than drone travel photography, it would have to be drone travel videography! The Phantom 4 has a powerful, crystal clear 4K video camera that lets you shoot professional quality video from the sky. As a bonus, you can both edit and share the footage right from the DJI GO app, so your footage is up in just minutes.

Livestream

With the newest version of DJI GO, you can also stream to YouTube Live directly from the app. This not only means that your audience around the world can see the same sights as you do, but they can experience new places at the same time as you do, bringing them closer than ever before. It’s truly an amazing to be able to share the wonder you feel with people around the world at the same time.

source from: http://ift.tt/2k9q4be

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Hover Camera quadcopter drone review

Consumer drones have exploded in popularity in recent years. These flying camera computers have the ability to detect faces, follow people around, fly on their own, land safely, and perform all sorts of cinematic tricks that used to require helicopters, cranes, steady hands, and lots of patience. And the prices are falling all the time: DJI’s Phantom 4 drone costs $1,100 and can avoid objects while tracking moving objects at over 25mph. And a new drone, from Chinese startup Hover Camera quadcopter drone, aims to be the first affordable drone to normalize constant filming—like a pet paparazzo that can track your every move.

The Hover Camera Passport allows users to chronicle their adventures, hands-free.

Zero Zero Robotics developed Hover Camera quadcopter drone to be the easy solution to a traveler’s needs. The camera almost serves as your own personal camera crew. It doesn’t require a selfie stick or attachment to capture videos. (There’s nothing stranger than watching a friend’s Go-Pro footage and not seeing their forearm in the frame the whole time.)

And don’t worry if flying a drone seems intimidating; the Hover Camera Passport uses facial recognition technology to follow you around automatically, letting you focus on being the model, not the photographer. If you want more control, just use the simple, intuitive iOS or Android app with just a few taps and swipes. The 13-megapixel camera can be tilted while in flight, and electronic image stabilization provides 4K video of your holiday adventure. And while flight time may seem a bit limited at under ten minutes, it’s easy to swap out a fresh battery and keep the fun going.

Some of the issues with the Passport might get fixed in the future, since the drone gets software updates fairly regularly. My first gripe, and one that may be fixed, is with the auto-follow modes. It’s actually a little difficult to get the camera to follow you if you aren’t moving extremely slowly and staying in its field of vision at all times. So, it’ll follow you on a run in a straight line, but it tends to cut out or “lose” you if you turn — even if you go slowly. That’s just for the body-based follow mode. The face-based mode should follow you based on facial recognition, and I only got that one to work once.

Keep in mind that the auto-follow modes are one of the Passport’s biggest selling points, so this is kind of a big con. However, like I said, the drone gets software updates, so this issue could be resolved. The company even said they might add auto-follow for animals or objects (which isn’t available yet).

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Will you get hover camera?

The Hover Camera Passport is finally here. Safe, portable, foldable, and easy-to-use. Everything you need in a flying camera. What we really want to know is will you get a Hover Camera?

Once unfolded, users can see an adjustable camera —complete with flash —on the front of the device. It’s capable of capturing 4K ultra-high-definition video, as well as 13-megapixel images, putting it about on par with Apple’s iPhone 6s lens.

Impressively, the Passport includes sensors on the bottom, including sonar, to measure the distance from air to ground. This allows for safe indoor use, giving the drone some idea of how far it is off the ground, and helping it to maintain a set altitude.

Once it’s in the air, it can capture 13MP photos and 4K video, which you control from a smartphone app. And thanks to facial recognition technology, it’ll follow you around, trying to stay perfectly level as it does.

Here’s where the fun begins. Once airborne, the Hover Camera will follow a subject autonomously as he or she moves and record all the action with its 13-megapixel camera. The camera records video at resolutions up to 4K Ultra HD. The device can also rotate in place to take 360-degree panoramic photos, and it has plenty more tricks up its sleeve.

The team at Zero Zero claims anybody should be able to use the Hover right out of the box, because its AI and advanced flight algorithms will do all of the work of keeping Hover airborne for you.

There’s no getting around it. The Hover Camera Passport looks like it could be the tech product to buy. Sure, the DJI Mavic Pro offers an unparalleled high-spec experience, but for your standard flying selfie machine, the Hover Camera has been built with simplicity in mind and comes in at half the price – not that the two can really be compared of course. The Hover Camera is directed at a totally different clientele – we’re thinking younger people with no previous experience of flying, but that are still comfortable using an app to control a device. So pretty much all millennials then.

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Lost in the crowd: Yuneec Breeze VR Review

Yuneec wants you to wear a 2 lb plastic bucket while selfie flying.

Some ideas are best left on the drawing board. And as this Yuneec Breeze VR Review explains, that includes wearing a 2 lb plastic encased virtual reality screen on your head while operating a camera drone with a battery life of about a dozen minutes.

The initial Yuneec Breeze VR Review for this “selfie” drone is mixed, with the item reaching a handful of distributors and some brave outlets taking orders. The main complaints center on the stability of the camera in streaming 4K video – the short answer is to avoid this and move to 1080p – and the value for money in the US$500 price tag.

We’ll look at those features in a minute in this Yuneec Breeze VR Review, but reports suggest Yuneec has now moved beyond the initial use of the SkyView FPV headset from the Typhoon H and Tornado H920 models to the Breeze.

That adds a whopping US$250 for the complete set, taking the Yuneec drone out of the realm of plug-and-ply to take some quick aerial snapshots on a sunny day to a price well above the more robust and feature-laden DJI Phantom 3 Standard with proprietary Lightbridge 2 technology for solid communications.

So for $750 what would the targeted first-time drone buyer get?

A beetle-shaped drone that weighs half a pound and is about the size of a large cream puff with a camera that has a review swivel advertised at 90 degrees, but which a Yuneec Breeze VR Review suggests is closer to 75 degrees.

This will be tethered by a cable between a smartphone or tablet to the VR headset that has a 5-inch, 720p display with a 75.5-degree field of view, a bit shy of direct competitors that offer 110-degree fields of view.

The Yuneec R&D team needs to review internal specs a bit closer.

In any event, that means three battery-operated pieces of equipment, the Yuneec Breeze, your own smartphone and the SkyView, operating in sync over a 12-minute optimum battery cycle. According to a Yuneec Breeze VR Review, this configuration would deliver not mechanically stabilized 4K video, which early reviewers suggest is choppy. As mentioned in the Yuneec Breeze VR Review, most users instead select electronically stabilized feeds at 1080p.

Of course the fun starts if you are walking around with the headset and operating all three gadgets. One Yuneec Breeze VR Review on Amazon described the SkyView as made of “cheap materials” and labelled “uncomfortable, and the light gets inside.” “NOT for multi-focal wearers.”

But the real problems may start because of the limited connection range for the Breeze to the WiFi connection on the smartphone or tablet – about 80 meters. If the connection drops, as mentioned in a Yuneec Breeze VR Review, tearing off the headset and gaining line of sight could be crucial. Though the drone has internal positioning sensors, performance has been described as uneven in the Yuneec Breeze VR Review.

That would also mean severing the cable tether from the headset to the controller. So a drone pilot would need to readjust focus to more intense light conditions quickly on a phone screen that in most cases would lack a hood to cut glare.

Based on this Yuneec Breeze VR Review, it’s hard to see how a solo flyer would pull off all of these mechanics and at the very least some safety protocols would need to be worked out in advance with a second person available to jump in should the Yuneec drone attempt a flyaway or looks set to crash to earth.

Finally, the Yuneec Breeze VR Review shows that Yuneec appears to have made the SkyView proprietary to the Yuneec drone APP and controller, which in a comparison of DJI vs Yuneec shows that DJI models can use a variety of VR headsets with all DJI Phantom models and the Inspire 1 – with pilots often buying units second-hand at low cost on eBay.

So here’s some free advice for Yuneec. Keep this idea on the drawing board.

 

 

 

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It is so troublesome to get my defective Q500 4K fixed

I would like to give Yuneec Typhoon Q500 4K 5 stars, but instead I gave Q500 4K 3 stars. Here’s why.

The CGO3 camera is very good and the steady grip is very good. That alone almost makes the entire package worth it. But the Yuneec Typhoon Q500 4K does have some issues. Mine crashed on it’s second flight due to an engine failure. The Yuneec Typhoon Q500 4K just fell from the sky and hit the ground, one of the props clipped the edge of a branch and the Quadcopter fell about 30-40 feet to the grass and shattered. The material the shell was made of was very brittle and thin and cannot take much of an impact.

We chalked Q500 4K up to material defect and went to find out how to get the Q500 4K repaired. The web site said that the only way to contact service was to call by phone. A major inconvenience. Since we were working with a security client in a very remote rural area with poor cell reception, we had to travel over 90 mins RT to an office to call. You would think that a technology based company would have a simple online repair system to enter the information and send a couple of photos. The process is extremely cumbersome. Yuneec was more concerned with their internal processes, instead of making it easy to get an expensive unit repaired. Finally we were able send the Typhoon Q500 4K to the Yuneec for repair. It took a couple of months before we heard from the Yuneec despite repeated emails asking for a status update. Finally, they sent us a quote by email to approve the repairs. We approved the repairs and then were informed that the only way to submit payment was by calling them on the phone and providing CC information. I had to resort to something that I never do and submit the CC information in multiple emails in order to get this processed. They told us they only accept payment by CALLING THEM. So the unit continues to sit at the repair depot until we can get to an office to call. They couldn’t even take an online payment, send a payment invoice (PayPal or Intuit), take e-checks, checks, invoice the company, or arrange for any alternate payment options.

As consultants, we have many clients in remote rural areas and a difficult repair process costs our clients and us money and time we don’t have. It has been a year. Getting parts and batteries takes forever. We will never recommend to a client to Yuneec again. I have flown Parrot Bebops with much less trouble then my Yuneec Typhoon Q500 4K. I would really like to love this drone, but I just can’t.

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