Drone and lens

[Patrick Lavaud]

Hi,

I planned to purchase a Erista drone from Hoverfly and I was wondering if it will make sens to use Canon IS lens on it with the Epic.

Will IS lens help to have a stabilized final image or not ?

 

[Robert Ruffo New]

What you need is a really good gymbal. Stabilized lenses only work with very small changes in position - they have little place to travel until they "hook on" to the motion - although IS will help a lot with micro-vibration. IS does work with Epic generally, as much as it would with a DSLR, but it's meant for photography, not for smoothing out active pans and such.

 

[Patrick Lavaud]

hum, that what I was afraid of...

so, do you think it will help, at least a bit, considering that the Hoverfly gimbal seems good enough to have a proper stabilization, or it is completly useless to have IS ?

For the IS lens I had in my mind, they are mostly wild angle, 24 and 35mm Canon prime.

 

[Patrick Lavaud]

another question, if I use Canon IS lens with a 5D camera on the drone, will it work better than with the Epic or the problem is the same because we are dealing with motion picture and not stills ?

 

[Paul Watt]

Well, from my experience (mostly shooting out of full sized helicopters) it works well to shoot with no IS, and at a high framerate (and therefore shorter shutter speed) then stabilize with warp stabilizer or something (takes a bit of time for this). Then speed up the footage to real speed. The jumps that the IS does are really hard to fix since it'll leave blurry frames that jello from the rolling shutter. Shooting the higher frame rates (I use 72fps at 5k with 180 degree shutter and no IS) and framing a bit wide then warp stabilizer, then a 3x speed up leaves pretty buttery smooth shots. Or get a really good gimbal. I've found similar IS jumping on almost every camera, with none of them being a ton better than any others.

 

[Nick Gardner]

I have found that Image stabilizing lenses cause more problems than they solve when dealing with a multicopter.

Nick

 

[Stefan Scherperel]

Checking out the Hoverfly Erista, it looks like it already includes a gyro stabilized mount, on a good mount there should be no need for IS, and usually with IS running on something that is allready stable will cause more issues.

 

[Chris McKechnie]

When you're talking about flying an Epic vs a 5d, you get into a whole other leage of costs when you're trying to fly an Epic. Beefier motors,props, gimbal, etc. A proper epic rig will cost about $20-25k if you're buying it retail. But the gimbal is probably the most important component when it comes to flying, so don't cheap out on that.

 

[Patrick Lavaud]

Thank you all for your answers.

@ Chris: Yes flyiing Epic is the key to our market and well, yes with the Gimbal it's a $30-35K package...

another question in my mind:

Is there any wireless follow focus, lightweight with at least, a control range of 300 meters (1.000 feet) ? Something cheaper than the VariZoom VZTOC-F1 !!!