Lessons

Lesson Info

Accessories

Let me first share with you a couple slides that I want to share with you with regards to my accessories. So I have a landing pad that you guys saw out there, and I like to use this for taking off and landing my drone. And it does a few things for me, it protects my drone from the elements. So I can use this when I take off in the snow. I can use this when I take off at the beach. Even too, when its really rocky, I can set this on the rocks and I at least have a somewhat slightly flat surface. So this could be really helpful. It has 2 sides. But, this could be great too if you get one of the ones with the bright color. Because you can see it from far away when you are trying to find yourself or whatever. But I definitely think you should get some type of landing pad, take off pad. I will say that you could just do like the poor man's version and just get cardboard. That totally works. I did that for actually quite a while. But this is a handy accessory that I think would be worth looki...

ng into. They have them on Amazon. They have them on Adorama. So check out those, a great resource. I want to encourage you to always have an extra battery and this is because even though I was kind of joking about like the 31 minutes of flight time, that is a lot for like a single flight. But if you go out on vacation and you're hiking around for the day and you're bringing your drone, that 31 minutes will go fast, in terms of like being there for the day. So you wanna get an extra battery. I recommend like at least three, get three. If you're doing something with DJI, you can do the fly more combo. That gives you a little carrying case, a charging hub, a couple extra batteries. So that could be a good way to go. Look that up they have them for each of the drones. Next is the charging hub. This is really handy, because right now all the drones, they charge individually. So I have to plug it in, wait for about an hour-ish, go back check it, make sure it's charged, and then swap out the batteries. The charging hub lets me, depending on which one you get for the Inspire, the Mavick, the Phantom. You can put multiple batteries on that charging hub, and then it doesn't charge them all at the same time, but you don't have to keep checking back. I just know like in 3 hours they're probably all going to be charged. So really handy to get that charging hub. Especially if you're on vacation, you go out, you shot all day, you come back to the hotel for the night, and you're like, oh I gotta charge my batteries. You don't want to wake up at like 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, you're just like let it charge, right? Okay get some type lens cleaning kit, just like you would for your DSLRs. Get one of those kits, throw it into your camera bag, wipe off that lens beforehand. I made the mistake of not checking my lens and I've had specs on there, so its a tip to get one of those. You can also get a lens hood. So this is when I used to shoot a lot with my iPad mini. I would put my iPad mini into the controller, so I... My phantom has the built-in screen. But if you don't get that one, then you're gonna have to put a cell phone or tablet in here. And you can adjust it by pushing this button. And it raises up and you insert your iPad. If you just have a cell phone, no big deal, just pop out these little arms and you can set your cell phone right here. But what I used to do is I would have my iPad and then I'd have my lens hood over the iPad. So I'd be like this, like looking at it, right? Cause it gets really hard to see. Like the iPads aren't really super bright outside. That's why I really like this built-in screen. There's also an even better screen that you can get on the DJI website. It costs a pretty penny but it's even brighter than the one I have, it's even bigger. So there multiple options for you. But you might wanna look into getting one of these, they make them for the Mavics. So they can even make them for your phone. So really handy maybe to get a lens hood, this is a great accessory. Definitely recommend you guys getting extra props. So there will come a time I'm sure, where you're gonna have insect guts all over this thing, literally. Cause they're just attracted to it, but then they get too close, and they're goners. So you want to get extra props. But also too, you wanna pay attention to like nicks on here. So if they get, like you hit something, you got really close to a tree and the drone didn't crash, but it got a little nick, you're gonna wanna replace these eventually. And the thing that I always do, is I'm always bringing at least a full complete set and when I'm doing a commercial shoot I'm bringing like four. Like just extra safe, extra careful. So definitely wanna check out getting extra props. And then next up the ND filters, which I know a lot of people have questions about. So if you don't know what a ND filter is, I'm gonna pull out mine. There's various brands. I specifically use Polar Pro I really like the Polar Pro ND filters, and they make a few different versions. And they come in these cases and if I open the up, you can see what ND filter I have by looking right here. This one says ND 64. So this would be for a pretty bright day. And why do I say that? Because the easiest way to think of ND filters, is to think of them as sunglasses over your lens, that's the easiest way. So it's literally, as if I took a pair of sunglasses and held them up in front of the lens, it's gonna be darker, right? So if my lens is letting in less light, because there's something blocking that, I need to open up my camera, right? And this is a real big advantage for those that are shooting video. And why do I say that? I say that because let's say we go out, you guys come with me to So Cal, right, it's a little sunnier down there, you got that warm So Cal sun. And I'm like let's go shoot, right. And you're like, first of all, you're gonna have your glasses on and you're gonna be like where's the shade, right. The sun's beating down on you. I know that's something you guys probably aren't used to. But what you're gonna do though is you're gonna realize, like oh I gotta like kick my shutter up really high, to like 2,000, something like that, right, 4,000. But then you're gonna be like oh but Dirk said I need to keep my shutter, I need to double my shutter. So if I'm shooting 30 frames per second, my shutter needs to be at 1/60. How do I go from having the shutter at 4, because it's so bright, to all the way down to 1/60? Well the way you do that is with ND filters. You put the sunglasses in front of the lens to block out the light. So I have a few versions here. I have, I'll walk you through this one real quick. Woops. ND 256, that's stopping a lot of light, super dark. Let me show you the difference real quick. I put one on already, but I just wanna show you the difference. This is the default UV filter that comes on the Phantom, so clear. It shouldn't have any light being blocked right. And then the 256. And you probably can't even see my face. Yeah, but you can see my face right. If I go with something not so dark, like maybe my ND 8, can you guys still see my face? It's a little darker though, right? So this one's letting in more light, but it's still blocking light, right? So once you guys start to understand that, you start to be like oh, okay, so I can put up one of these lenses and then I can kick the shutter down to something really slow like 1/60, right. You guys already know from shooting with your bigger cameras, that 1/60 will give you some blur if you took a photo, right. But blur is good for video, so we want that blur. So it's really finding that balance. So you may be like, why do you have a 256? This one's obviously blocking a ton of light. I have it because I could shoot waves crashing, high-noon and get like a long exposure of all those waves going and take a photo and I can just like set it to like three seconds and it captures all the light and I get a cool effect, right. So this is a really cool lens. The next one I have is my ND 128, ND 64. You're tracking huh? And then over here I have my ND 32, my ND 16, and the one on there right now is a, I think it's my ND 4. Yep, my ND 4. So, a quick note, when I'm shooting with my ND filters, I don't wanna go through all these calculations of F-stops and blah blah blah. So a cool tip for you guys is to download the Polar Pro app. It's a free app. I'll switch to my screen real quick and ... Sorry, I'm gonna switch to my keynote, I meant that. Polar Pro, this is a great app, it's free. Because all you have to do is just import your frames per second and you put it at what your current shutter speed is and it figures out what ND filter you need. It makes a suggestion for you. So you don't have to do a whole bunch of figuring out, like what is it, you're confused, you're like I have all these lenses, I'm so confused, just let the app do the work. Really handy and super cool. Back to this slide. And just to let you know that if you were to go get your first batch of ND filters, you probably just need the one. You know, like a four, an eight, and a sixteen, something like that. All these are just for like really getting shots that I don't get all the time. It's to get that slow-mo of waves, right, at high-noon. That's not a shot you're getting all the time. So if you're looking at these, I'm not saying, go buy all these lenses. It's like, you probably just need, kind of like the starter pack. It really depends on where you live and where you're shooting. Down in So Cal, I'm probably needing an ND 64 and ND 32, like, that's pretty typical, bright, sunny days. Here, you guys got cloud cover, a ND 16, an ND 8, depending on that, right. So that's just something to keep in mind. Now one thing I'll let you know is I do have ND filters, like this one is an ND 8PL, so I have a polarizer built into that. If you're not too familiar with what a polarizer does, is it reduces glare and it increases the color saturation and the contrast. So this is really helpful, you've seen a lot of my photos, I like to shoot over the water. That can be really helpful to me because the glare on the water can be really annoying. It can like, really ruin the shot. Now, do you have to have one of these to get photos of water? No, you can always just change your angle, your drone angle, and find the angle where the glare isn't too bad, but I like to have, I like to, you know, get the shot if I can, and not worry about changing my angle, because I'm usually really specific. I'm like, this is the angle though, I don't want it to go this way, the angle's like right here. So this is a huge benefit. So the ND filter, it blocks out light, the ND filter with the polarizer, NDPL, has the ND and a polarizer built-in. Can I take a question? Yeah. So are you setting your polarizer before you go up? Yeah, so I'll look on my app, I'll turn on my drone, I'll have it face like the sky, what's the general angle of where I'm gonna shoot, to get an idea of the exposure, and then I will adjust from there. So, one thing to note with, and I'm gonna actually show you guys, try to show you a little demo. Is, if I have my ND filter with the polarizer, let's see if I can get some of this desk in here, see if this works real quick. Okay, that'll work, okay. Close this. Getting cramped up here. Okay, alright we'll make it work, we got this, okay. So I pull up the app. Well first what I do, I go to video, I figure out what's my size, just say we got a fast computer right now, we'll do 30 frames per second. So based on that, my shutter should be 1/60, awesome. So there's my shutter. My ISO is cranked up, and again, in this situation, it's dark, I wouldn't be throwing an ND filter on in this kind of light, so we're just kind of pretending. But, I'm just gonna dial this in, take up my, 400. So I'm gonna punch my settings into that app I just told you about, I'll then get my ND filter, and it's on my drone, and if I have the polarizer built-in, let's see if, like pay attention to this area right in here. What I do, is I turn this ring right here on the lens, my finger is in the way. Do you guys see how the screen's showing up? I'll turn it some more, look at the desk. There's the screen. So I look out and I'm like, do I want my sky to be darkened, do I want the bottom of my image to be darkened? So I start there. Dial in, my settings are good, I then take off. So that's kinda how I work the ND filter. Does that make sense? One thing to note, if you have an adjustable aperture, like on the Phantom and the Mavic, you can obviously adjust how much light is coming in. So you could go all the way up to like, you know, F and you've really closed down the aperture, so not a whole lot of light is coming in. Will that be enough for you to go to 1/60 of a second? I don't know, it depends on your scene right? So not all drones have the opportunity to do the aperture, so it's definitely something that's gonna be case-by-case, right. Okay, when I am shooting though, I can just use a circular polarizer, so a CP. And that can just be to not really block any light, but just to help me with the glare. So you could throw that on and it doesn't really block any light, it's just helping you with glare, color saturation, and contrast. One of the things that I'll say about the filters is they, depending on which one you get, they will either screw on like mine, so I'm just gonna screw this, my hands are slippery probably because I'm nervous. I know I didn't put it on too tight. Alright, well, I must've put it on too tight. My hands are pretty slippery. But basically it just screws off and it screws on. If you have maybe one of the original Mavics, it kind of more just goes over the lens and snaps. So it just depends. They make them for the Mavics, they make them for the Phantoms, they make them for the Inspires. So look it up, you can do some research on it, see people's examples of what they say. And it's interesting, I don't really know what's going on online, but there are some debates about pros and cons. If I'm doing photos, I'm definitely not doing my ND filter. I don't want a slow shutter. I wanna snap it and I want my motion to be crisp. If I'm doing video and I'm in So Cal, that might be a different story. I'm probably gonna be throwing on a a filter, right? So everyone's different, that's what's great about all this stuff, right? It's like what works for you.