Funny, I never even heard of this guy till last week. Now I'm consumed by him. He's like a combination of Bobby Flay and Chef Robert Irvine for Drone nerds. Found this article. What a difference a year makes.
http://www.austinmonthly.com/AM/January ... ght-Ideas/
Colin Guinn was working at a marketing firm for custom-home builders when he noticed a missing link in the realm of architectural photography. “We’d have a photographer hanging out the back of a helicopter with a camera—the whole thing seemed ridiculous to me,” he says. Figuring there had to be a better way, Guinn investigated other options. “I had seen some people around the world building their own helicopters to carry cameras,” he says, “but it’s a four-to-six month process to get this Frankenstein rig to hold a camera and fly.” Guinn reached out to China-based company DJI, which creates autopilot systems for remote control helicopters, and stepped in to run the American line of a high-performance, unmanned aerial system called Phantom—basically, a drone with photographic and video capabilities. The original Phantom could run for 8 to 12 minutes on batteries and was designed to mount a high-definition action video camera, such as the GoPro. But the new Phantom 2, released in October, comes with a built-in camera and can fly for a full 25 minutes on a lithium polymer battery. The device is linked to a standard remote control, as well as a smartphone app, that shows what the camera sees in real time from 1,000 feet away. Guinn wants to continue making the systems more capable by increasing fly time and designing them to be lighter weight, lower cost and user friendly. “We want to make aerial photography accessible for anyone who wants to put a camera in the air,” he says.
http://www.austinmonthly.com/AM/January ... ght-Ideas/
Colin Guinn was working at a marketing firm for custom-home builders when he noticed a missing link in the realm of architectural photography. “We’d have a photographer hanging out the back of a helicopter with a camera—the whole thing seemed ridiculous to me,” he says. Figuring there had to be a better way, Guinn investigated other options. “I had seen some people around the world building their own helicopters to carry cameras,” he says, “but it’s a four-to-six month process to get this Frankenstein rig to hold a camera and fly.” Guinn reached out to China-based company DJI, which creates autopilot systems for remote control helicopters, and stepped in to run the American line of a high-performance, unmanned aerial system called Phantom—basically, a drone with photographic and video capabilities. The original Phantom could run for 8 to 12 minutes on batteries and was designed to mount a high-definition action video camera, such as the GoPro. But the new Phantom 2, released in October, comes with a built-in camera and can fly for a full 25 minutes on a lithium polymer battery. The device is linked to a standard remote control, as well as a smartphone app, that shows what the camera sees in real time from 1,000 feet away. Guinn wants to continue making the systems more capable by increasing fly time and designing them to be lighter weight, lower cost and user friendly. “We want to make aerial photography accessible for anyone who wants to put a camera in the air,” he says.