Experimenting with the Quadcopter

My new quadcopter camera arrived a few days ago, and I’ve been getting some practice flying it and experimenting with different camera angles and type of shots. Here’s a brief compilation of the progress so far:

19 Comments

  1. Looks cool! Should make for some interesting shots.

    I do have to question that forward mounted scoped AK… 🙂

  2. Technology gives new and unseen before advantages. The copter is surely interesting addition. Cool setup overall!

  3. Just a heads up. Do not try to make/show one penny of gain from video shot with it (or at least have some plausible deniability if you do lol). That comes under the classification of “business purposes” and is currently illegal under FAA regulations. Camera ‘drones’ are currently being hotly contested by both sides, and the flak is not due to settle for quite awhile. A college got hammered badly last year for using drone camera footage in one of their promotional videos.

  4. Those were some very impressive shots! Until recently, footage like that would cost a lot of money to do. You’ve also got a pretty good imagination for what sort of camera angles would be interesting in a firearms context.

    You mentioned having a shotgun microphone. You might want to consider recording the audio separately from a mic carried on you and then mixing it into the video afterwards. That will probably give better and more reliable results than trying to record it from the quadcopter.

    Drones are used commercially in Canada for all sorts of things like mapping farms, quarries, mines, etc. There’s not a lot of regulation except for basic safety rules intended to reduce the risk of crashing into things. I imagine the US will follow this example before too long. It’s a fairly new technology, and I’m sure there are business possibilities for people who develop the know-how related to using them in various niches. I guess it’s not so much what you have as knowing how to use it.

  5. Ian, which quadcopter did you get, and what camera does it use? Any specs available, as to flight time, camera range, zoom capabilities, maximum control distance, cost, etc.? If you have time during your experimentation phase, I’d be interested in seeing video of known size objects from various altitudes (which might be useful to you as well, so you know how close/far to fly from what you’re capturing video of).

    • It’s a DJI Phantom Vision 2+. Comes with a proprietary camera (not sure of the make). No zoom on the camera, just that fisheye lens. Flight time is 15-20 minutes on a single battery, and max range is something like 700m. Costs $1300.

    • Sorry, but I really don’t know much about the other quadcopter options on the market – I needed something pretty high-end to get the necessary video quality for the site.

  6. Really nice!
    A word of caution: remember that we’re here for the guns, not the cool footage. At least I am. So please don’t sacrifice on the quality or quantity of the information on the guns presented in the videos because you’re to busy getting that really cool shot.
    Keep up the good work! 🙂

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