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Drone with Red

Rodrigo Violante

Rodrigo Violante

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I love landscape photography, been city, mountains, anything, I think its amazing, but I'm wondering is it worth the risk? I seen some drones crashing and with 60k+ equipment what are your opinions? Which Drones you recommend? is there anything to avoid the crashes?
 
Yeah it's worth it. But most important is experienced drone operator who has flown RED's or similar heavy payloads and not throws a RED under a S1000 or so ;)


Also custom built rigs can be very good or otherwise the Freefly Alta is as great copter and even relatively easy to fly and manage...
The dji M600, I'm not sure about all the dji copters have been pretty bad apart from the Phantoms and the Inspire. But they might have figured it out with the M600...
We fly cheap zeiss zf lenses with Red which obviously is insured and if we use expensive glass Panavision etc. make sure the insurance covers drone use.

If you are after Photography there isn't a whole lot out there with decent Sensor size and resolution, But A7rII with a Movi M5 would work well on most medium/large drones
 
maybe use a scarlet w or raven to limit costs?
 
Rodrigo Violante said:
I love landscape photography, been city, mountains, anything, I think its amazing, but I'm wondering is it worth the risk? I seen some drones crashing and with 60k+ equipment what are your opinions? Which Drones you recommend? is there anything to avoid the crashes?
Click to expand...

The way you ask the question I assume you don't have any experience with drones. If that is the case I strongly advise you start with a Phantom or Racing Quad. Learn to fly LOS (not FPV) and get confidence first. Then you can upgrade to something bigger.
I speak from experience. If you are just starting out you will eventually crash sooner than you think. Lack of experience makes you panic and black out in an emergency situation.
Although new drones are very easy and safe to fly I would never trust them, especially not in GPS mode. Sun storms, interferences can cause your drone to crash. Even if you have redundancy.
In my early days my Hexa crashed due to sun storm. I could not explained why the drone suddenly fell out of the sky like a rock. Later the day I checked the internet and found out that K value (measurement of solar eruption) was 6 which cause a disruption in the magnetic field. And since I was flying in GPS mode, the FC got messed up and shut down the system.
Since then I swore it will never happen to me again and learned to fly in full manual mode (without levelling). No crash since then. And I basically fly everywhere: at international airports, near power plants etc.

Then the other thing is maintenance of your drone. Unless you have a Phantom or Inspire, it is always wise to check your drone on a regular basis. Loose cable from vibrations, connectors, batteries etc. etc.
I can go on and on.

And yeah, you need liability insurance! Super important! If you crash your drone and damage people or properties, hell you go if you don't have insurance.
 
Last edited:
Thai Christen said:
The way you ask the question I assume you don't have any experience with drones. If that is the case I strongly advise you start with a Phantom or Racing Quad. Learn to fly LOS (not FPV) and get confidence first. Then you can upgrade to something bigger.
I speak from experience. If you are just starting out you will eventually crash sooner than you think. Lack of experience makes you panic and black out in an emergency situation.
Although new drones are very easy and safe to fly I would never trust them, especially not in GPS mode. Sun storms, interferences can cause your drone to crash. Even if you have redundancy.
In my early days my Hexa crashed due to sun storm. I could not explained why the drone suddenly fell out of the sky like a rock. Later the day I checked the internet and found out that K value (measurement of solar eruption) was 6 which cause a disruption in the magnetic field. And since I was flying in GPS mode, the FC got messed up and shut down the system.
Since then I swore it will never happen to me again and learned to fly in full manual mode (without levelling). No crash since then. And I basically fly everywhere: at international airports, near power plants etc.

Then the other thing is maintenance of your drone. Unless you have a Phantom or Inspire, it is always wise to check your drone on a regular basis. Loose cable from vibrations, connectors, batteries etc. etc.
I can go on and on.

And yeah, you need liability insurance! Super important! If you crash your drone and damage people or properties, hell you go if you don't have insurance.
Click to expand...
Thanks for sharing your experiences! I can only imagine what you were feeling when the drone dropped from the sky!
 
Mike Finegan said:
Thanks for sharing your experiences! I can only imagine what you were feeling when the drone dropped from the sky!
Click to expand...

Oh yeah, I can still picture that moment. Man, 10K worth of material just gone within seconds. Imagine I would have flown a more expensive setup with RED.
 
Most drone aerial shots are only a few seconds long and for many productions they are an afterthought that is expendable. As cameras get smaller with higher quality images, many start to question the logic, risk and cost behind flying a RED. It still makes sense for a feature but in many other cases, not so much. Flying cameras has been my day job for many years now and it keeps changing almost daily. It's common for us to provide quotes for 3 different cost drone/camera packages. After weighing cost to quality, more and more clients are opting for the mid to low cost systems over flying the RED. I expect this trend to continue.
 
Kopterworx built a really solid system for Red. Their own Hammer-X and MoviPro underneath. They have sold many and they are shooting a lot of big commercials with them and no crash yet.
 
Wendell Adkins said:
Most drone aerial shots are only a few seconds long and for many productions they are an afterthought that is expendable. As cameras get smaller with higher quality images, many start to question the logic, risk and cost behind flying a RED. It still makes sense for a feature but in many other cases, not so much. Flying cameras has been my day job for many years now and it keeps changing almost daily. It's common for us to provide quotes for 3 different cost drone/camera packages. After weighing cost to quality, more and more clients are opting for the mid to low cost systems over flying the RED. I expect this trend to continue.
Click to expand...

Indeed, times are changing. This is why it is important that you have different price scheme for different needs. However, in my case the only thing that varies in price is camera package plus lens and FF, and man power (single pilot, dual or even tripple with a third guy doing FF). I only use two identical X8/Gimbal setups (1x main and 1x backup). Like this I am flexible. Don't need tons of different drones. Just two drones. Lean and mean in business sense.
And luckily, there are still jobs that require RED or Alexa Mini on drones. Even with my Epic-W 8K. The postproduction company I work with can handle 8K full debayer with no problem at all. Nice.
 
Uros Zuraj said:
Kopterworx built a really solid system for Red. Their own Hammer-X and MoviPro underneath. They have sold many and they are shooting a lot of big commercials with them and no crash yet.
Click to expand...

Hammer is for sure one of the best copters out there, no doubt. But unless you plan on flying very heavy setups (huge PL lenses), you don't need such a powerful copter.
 
Guys its amazing all the experience that is gather in this thread. Definitely the crashing is my biggest fear! And finding good insurance for my equipment.
 
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