A friend made a video in and around the Kancamagus Highway (New Hampshire) with his DJI Phantom 4 drone (post-production in GoPro Studio on a Windows desktop machine).
If only we could get results this good from a $400,000 helicopter!
5 thoughts on “Foliage Season Drone Video”
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Nice. Did the drone actually fly under the bridge? Either way it’s awesome. NH board or tourism should be using this footage.
He did fly under the bridge but I think the footage is reversed and sped up. So it wasn’t quite as Top Gun as you might think.
Nice colors and angles.
The thing I can never understand is why all drone footage I see seems to be from a commercial for drones rather than about what is being shown.
When you see aerial shots in a Tarantino or Scorsese movie, you just think about the scene, not the heli or boom that took it. You are aware something like that must be involved, but the how doesn’t grab your attention as much.
I think it’s a combination of:
1) Stepper motors pan/tilt at essentially constant speed, rather than accelerating fluidly. Somebody should design some algorithms for this.
2) “Amateurs” (I mean non hollywood DF) tend to move on every single shot (“that’s why I bought the drone right”). Also movements are typically straight ahead or straight back (not sure if that’s a technology limitation, I’ve never used a drone.)
3) Typically static subjects (it’s hard to coordinate a drone move with a subject move).
4) Only drone shots, and all shots could only possibly be taken with a drone. No shot is ever taken from say – 8 feet above the ground – even if perhaps that made more sense compositionally. You never see a tele macro shot of a leaf, followed by the drone move, followed by a wide angle of a fall, followed by static drone from above, etc.
This isn’t to crap on your friend’s beautiful work…. just saying.
Yes, indeed a very amazing video and a sure tourism attraction. Unfortunately, things don’t look as amazing when you are on the ground: you are an ant in a jungle and can only see 1/1000 of what the video captures.
How about taking this into virtual reality? Hookup the drone to a VR equipment and let the user of the VR control the drone. This way, I can be out there, flying around — in real time — from the comfort of my private room.
@Philg: What is the range of those drones? Time in flight and distance.
What’s next? The NFL can take all camera streams (and add some more strategically positioned around the stadium) and feed them to an array of computers (they already do this today [1]). From the streams the computers can then generate 3D VR view of the field such that someone can wear a VR that’s getting input from this system and thus let the VR user position himself literally anywhere in the stadium, even on the field next to the QB — in real time — and get the experience of a lifetime watching a game.
Want to make this even more fun? Take it a step further and team up with your friends who are in the same VR as you and augment them into the VR. I.e.: I can now see and interact with my buddies, on the field, in real time, while the game is ongoing.
While I used NFL as an example, this can be done for any other event.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_%26_Ten_(graphics_system)
Quad copters can’t go horizontally very far or very high. It’s resulted in the easily recognizable quad copter look. Casey Neistat goes out of range & it ends up costing more in lost quad copters than a full sized copter.