Visual line of sight 2300 ft - Pushing the envelope

[PhantomWetSuits]

With a drone, we can achieve the camera moves that only a crane and a grip truck and a crew of six or more operators would achieve. So I like to practice those kinds of moves.
Flying backwards.. definitely under visual contact only. The advantage is that you don't see the props in your frame, even if you have the camera pointing up a little.

Yes and the effect is stunning with the speed , and not having to worry about the props is nice, and its and added skill. I think its going to catch on more as people try to shoot more dramatic effects.

 

[Basspig]

Yeah, that fast flying makes me real nervous though. I only try that in wide open places. Alternative is to do a slower flyby and then speed it up in post. Hmm.. this takes "guerrilla filmmaking" to a whole new level..

 

[Nightwolf]

Strobe lights are powerful for night flying and increase the visual dramatically for night flying , do the strobes interfere at all with the video as I h


Strobe lights are a great solution for night fling , the problem we had is sometimes they catch the wind. We have been using a bar light that attaches across the legs of the drone, but not as bright as strobes but for night flying works well.
Not as bright as you can see, but very aerodynamic and can also be seen about 3000 ft or so. Do you have a picture of your strobes ?.
View attachment 99600

I was just trying them out quickly, didn't get a chance to get pics.
I plan to get day and night shots of it when I get time. I will be sure to share them here.

 

[Deleted member 109724]

Yes and the effect is stunning with the speed , and not having to worry about the props is nice, and its and added skill. I think its going to catch on more as people try to shoot more dramatic effects.

I always crop the video to give it the cinematic look, around 2.39 to 1 aspect ratio, since I use my drone and DSLR mostly to make short films. Cropping that much gives me a lot of room to move the video around on the y axis. I mostly fly forward, and the props show up on the top of the video, but when I crop and color correct the video, the props are gone and I have a great video.

 

[Basspig]

Aspect ratio is but a small part of what cinematic look is. It has more to do with color grading, motion cadence, freedom from sharpening halos and how the camera moves. I noticed that when my drone was flying at elevations reachable by jib crane, and I did a slow descent with some sideways motion, it looked like an establishing shot for a movie.

 

[PhantomWetSuits]

I always crop the video to give it the cinematic look, around 2.39 to 1 aspect ratio, since I use my drone and DSLR mostly to make short films. Cropping that much gives me a lot of room to move the video around on the y axis. I mostly fly forward, and the props show up on the top of the video, but when I crop and color correct the video, the props are gone and I have a great video.

That is great, The only time I have ever cropped was to fix the horizon, for some reason I never thought about cropping the Props out. Wow, thank you for a great idea.

 

[Nightwolf]

Picture didnt work on another thread. Try again.

 

[PhantomWetSuits]

Picture didnt work on another thread. Try again.

Try using the advanced option when you post and upload a picture from your computer. Try that.

 

[lickitysplit11111]

Visual Line of sight is one of those Gray areas,

There have been a lot of posts about how flying a drone now kind of sucks because of Visual line of sight and Height Restrictions , so this posts shows what I consider my Visual Line of sight which is still an adventure for many.

I also wanted to point out that you do not have to fly really high to get a dramatic effect as going over the tops of trees give a pretty nice cinematic approach and does not require crazy height.

The video also show that using the RTH to come home once visual sight is lost can also provide you with another cinematic view coming back .

I want to make it 100% clear that the Visual I am showing is with a Phantom 4 Pro wearing the Phantom Wet Suit the Trauma 1 which is Red and Black Neoprene. The Neoprene has no shine thus providing the best visual possible on the drone in the sky, trees ect.

I also think its kind of Cool to see a Drone wearing the Phantom Rain Wet Suit that has been through so much Extreme Weather still Providing Stunning 4k video which just blows my mind, when I think of the abuse we put it thru this this year and last..

You can see the extreme weather at phantomrain.org


A lot of people cannot really justify in there head what 2300 ft is so the video adds a pretty good visual to show how quickly that can come up.

2300 ft for me is pushing it , if I were to go into atti mode it would be hard to get the drone back.

I think that last thing I wanted to point out was that even seasoned pilots use RTH every chance they can to get the orientation of the drone back as quick as possible conserving the most amount of battery life by doing so..

That black dot below the line is the naked eye picture I see at 2300 ft , which is are limit before the RTH is engaged and made useful.

I do realize that seasoned pro's may know all this but I can assure you that new pilots do not..



View attachment 99545
This is the Actual flight below

This is the drone

View attachment 99546

I’d never enter RTH just to get the orientation just gotta use the red arrow in the map box

 

[PhantomWetSuits]

I’d never enter RTH just to get the orientation just gotta use the red arrow in the map box

we use it for the Orientation to return home and than take over the controls again. But the red arrows are useful if you can see them.