Risking My Brid to Get Some Good Video

[DownunderPhantom]

Hi everyone, today I flew my bird at a popular whale watching site off the coast of New South Wales in Australia, called Woolgoolga. While I was there a whale was sighted some 500m - 600m out to sea. I was very reluctant to fly out that distance over the ocean to try for some really good video.

My question is, should I bite the bullet next time and try for some unique video and fly out to sea or stay safe and just get footage of the whale breaching at a distance.

whilst there I was also able to get a few short seconds of a Sea Eagle flying below my bird...

I will edit the video I was able to get and post it later...

 

[Meta4]

Re: Risking My Bird to Get Some Good Video

Whales and dolphins are difficult to shoot particularly from a distance. Because of the extra wide view angle of the cameras we carry, you need to get in fairly close to get anything to show.
At that distance you'll only have your FPV screen to work with for positioning.
You also have to think about where the sun is and where you should shoot from.
You should get practice so that if the chance comes up again, it won't be the first time you have flown that far out and you can easily do what you need to.

I've been trying to shoot dolphins lately and it's tricky.
Still haven't got the shots I really want but practising.
I see plenty of humpbacks jumping but too far out to chase them from shore.

 

[mattparker]

I risked the bird last Saturday...



Video is here: http://youtu.be/V2r97BlPpQw

 

[Dirty Bird]

My question is, should I bite the bullet next time and try for some unique video and fly out to sea or stay safe and just get footage of the whale breaching at a distance.

In a way we place our bird at risk every time we lift off. 500-600m isn't all that far. They say, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained..."

 

[Mako79]

Re: Risking My Bird to Get Some Good Video

Whales and dolphins are difficult to shoot particularly from a distance. Because of the extra wide view angle of the cameras we carry, you need to get in fairly close to get anything to show.
At that distance you'll only have your FPV screen to work with for positioning.
You also have to think about where the sun is and where you should shoot from.
You should get practice so that if the chance comes up again, it won't be the first time you have flown that far out and you can easily do what you need to.

I've been trying to shoot dolphins lately and it's tricky.
Still haven't got the shots I really want but practising.
I see plenty of humpbacks jumping but too far out to chase them from shore.

If you are in 1080p, change to narrow and this may help a little with video to get closer to the subject matter. However, if you're taking stills, change to 1080p wide. The stills are ALWAYS wide and 4:3 ratio. This why you can always see the props/arms in stills when the camera tilt is maxed in the up position.

It's real silly with the camera option DJI has chosen. I understand with action cams that you need the wide angles (to capture everything around you), but with aerial, they should have used a 5.4 flat instead of 2.8 wide. 5.4 looks natural and easier capture subject matter and it also helps with depth perception to judge distances in fpv.

So just to reiterate, the stills is not always what you see on your FPV.

And the whales look pretty.

 

[dpdpkpcom]

Thanks for taking the risk. Awesome !! I'd venture to say that this is one of the best reasons to own a p2v+

Well done !!!

 

[slothead]

Re: Risking My Bird to Get Some Good Video

If you are in 1080p, change to narrow and this may help a little with video to get closer to the subject matter. However, if you're taking stills, change to 1080p wide. The stills are ALWAYS wide and 4:3 ratio. This why you can always see the props/arms in stills when the camera tilt is maxed in the up position.

Can anyone confirm that reducing the image width in the video modes "gets you closer"? Generally with optics like the ones used in the FC200, it just crops pixels on the sensor and narrows the view (rather than optically amplifying it). If that is the case, you can do the same thing by cropping the image in post processing. I concur that in my experience (with my P2V+), narrowing the video mode does not affect the still image format.

 

[InterMurph]

Generally with optics like the ones used in the FC200, it just crops pixels on the sensor and narrows the view (rather than optically amplifying it). If that is the case, you can do the same thing by cropping the image in post processing. I concur that in my experience (with my P2V+), narrowing the video mode does not affect the still image format.

This cropping applies to stills, but not to video.

The Vision+ camera's sensor is 4,384 pixels by 3,288 pixels, for a total of 14,414,592 pixels. Lets call that 14 megapixels, with a 4x3 aspect ratio.

When you take a still photo, the resulting images are 4,384 pixels by 3,288 pixels. Every pixel on the sensor ends up as a pixel in the photo. This is true regardless of whether you are in 1080p/wide or 1080p/narrow mode. Those modes apply to video, and not to the stills.

When you take a video, things are a bit more complicated. 1080p video is 1,920 pixels by 1,080 pixels, for a total of 2,073,600. Let's call that 2 megapixels, in a 16x9 aspect ratio. So in video mode, the camera is always 1) ignoring some pixels at the top & bottom, to fit the 16x9 aspect ratio, and 2) downscaling the remaining pixels to the 1,920 x 1,080 video resolution.

Here is where the field of view enters into it. In 1080p/wide mode, the camera samples all of the sensor's pixels*, and downscales them to 1,920 x 1,080 (* = except for the pixels it ignores at the top and bottom). In 1080p/narrow mode, the camera samples a subset of the sensor's pixels, towards the middle of the sensor, and downscales those pixels to 1,920 x 1,080.

I almost always shoot in 1080p/narrow mode, because 1) it tends to look better, and 2) it crops out the pixels near the sensor's edge, which are usually distorted and washed out due to the poor quality of the lens and the sensor.

In short:
1) Still photos always capture the full resolution of the sensor
2) Video always samples and downscales the sensor
3) The angle setting always affects the FPV video you see on your phone, and always affects the video recorded to the MicroSD card, but it never affects the photo images recorded to the MicroSD card.