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FreePreview: Gear & Types of Drones

Let's start with the unboxing of this specific drone, which will be again a version of this one here. And I think you all had recommended that I was gonna bring it over here to, um this area here and we'll keep this area. And, uh, we'll do that in terms of gadgets. I mentioned that poor bands drone thats the poor man's drone. Okay, a GoPro on a little model pot. But it's amazing how you conduce you footage just by going. And that's a completely different view of the world, right? One. You've got a fisheye and to remember we see the entire world, you know, five feet every every shot you ever take unless you're down on the ground. We're on a bridge or something is always at eye level. So this right here and that's how that shot I took of Ricky down on Molokai. I'm above the drone, you know, shooting down. So if you want to get some fun shots of your drone, but just in generally in terms of photography, remember that that you, in terms of creative photography, a different way of seeing a ...

GoPro on a stick. Okay, go put on a stick that's patented that dot com GoPro on a stick is an amazing way to shoot. I'm landscapes. Not only, you know, crowd scenes where you need to get over people, but it's just a different way of seeing trees and sand dunes and things like that. It's just a so it's about as cheap as you could possibly get. Speaking of GoPro's, you have to get this stickers to turn your GoPro into a little like a camera. Isn't that the most Cubist adorable thing? And then this is what I put on yesterday, and this is how old whore or as a man for surfing. If you've seen the go pro surfing footage these days, that's how pros are shooting in the tube. If you haven't just done a YouTube search for GoPro and surfing there, talk about creative photography. But basically people are surfing and having to go pro in their mouth. So this one is nice because it as a closure so you don't swallow water. Issue about yes heavy ordered pizza that way. Have a hard you would scare the heck out of anybody if you met them at the door where they actually do that while the guys surfing in the orders pizza. And that's right. It was actually as Samsung, the waterproof, the waterproof Samsung. When we do our mobile of photography class in a few days, I will have a Samsung Galaxy to here, which is an amazing camera, not the phone. But Android based camera is an awesome one. Great little pack. Get the's on eBay's these air cheap, you know, under 50 bucks, and they're super light for backpacking. I love it. This is my am I go to, even though I have a metal case as well. This is when I travel with, especially since that copter did not join me in the Caribbean for an entire 10 day shoot I did not have. That's why I went down there. It was to shoot aerial footage, Um, and this one was great yesterday, when I checked this in carry on, they didn't even open it up. It was just no problem. Even with the lithium batteries and everything else, it just went straight through and and it was funny when Neil brought his down, he could not check us. He had a little bit larger case, and they forced him to check it. Fortunately, it wasn't lost in mind was I did have to check mine anyway, So this one is nice. It's got the, um, exterior package here. See if I've got about extra cables extra. I was thinking that I had my did. Not since I was travelling light. It's got your extra spare parts that you're going to see it like that. This one will leave these out. These there are prop guards, which I didn't use yesterday. That's the one. Problem is the prop guards are actually, um, screwed in semi permanently into the copter. And so, in terms of traveling and things like that, it's their teeny tiny little hick screws that strip really easily. So, um, if you're shooting around your house and you know you're just gonna be carrying it open in the car, set him up and just leave him on permanently. If you're doing a lot of travelling, then it could be a situation where you get creative and you're very cautious with it. So here what we have is our, um, phantom vision to plus, like I said, the Phantom Siri's If it has the word vision in it. That means it comes with a camera. The is the phantom two, which is a non stabilized one, uh, in any significant way. And the vision to Plus is the one here that has this stabilized gimble set up. So this is the latest and greatest from them in terms of their own camera set up. Um, the props will put the props on, even though I said I mentioned will take him off later. These air self tightening, which are awesome, they're just fantastic. Very hard for these two to fly off. You'll notice that they're also color coded because the blades spin in opposite directions to counter balance each other for more stable flight. Um, you put the silver ones on the ones that are silver. You put the black ones that have a little black dot on them, and basically, I was put the silver on first because the default setting is gonna be clockwise. And so these air always clockwise and the black always counterclockwise and you can just do a little bit of tightening. But because they're going to tighten on their own as soon as they come up, they're actually great. They by definition. Since they're spinning in the opposite direction, it's virtually impossible that for them to come off in the earlier phantoms they were not. You actually would take a ranch and you'd lock him down because they weren't self tightening. Could I also mentioned that, um, they do have carbon fiber there. The black ones that are not a soft is these. And, uh um, Well, supposedly, because they're aerodynamics are enhanced because they could be thinner because of the fact that their strength comes from the fact that their carbon fiber they can fly longer and be a smoother flight. Have you found, um, smoother flight significantly with carbon Piper? Uh, definitely increased flight times by in order, 5% or something like that. It's negligible, but it it is there. Yeah. So the flight time and the stability Is that the interesting thing for me? If you do have a crash, these will start to Nick. And that's the one thing I would say be really, really cautious off because a nick, even though it'll fly fine, it's gonna have a little bit of a vibration. And if you're shooting video, even stills, that vibration is obviously our enemy. So make sure that your blades are in great shape. You can if you do get a little teeny Nick, you go down the grass or something like that, you could take a fingernail polish, you know, figuring profile to it and just kind of clean it off a little bit. But it comes with two sets, and they're cheap. You could, you know, buy these the big question. So those are our blades. Would you put those on first? The, um, camera is going to have. And this one, you can see that the gimbal lock actually already came off. This right here has a lens cap, and that one came off even in Ah, don't let you get so it does have a lens cap. Thank you. It does have a gimbal lock. Teoh. Make sure it's not bouncing around. Well, it is in transit. It has these little brushes for, um um absorbing some of the inherent vibration of the copter, which is great. The gimbal is a three axis gimbal. Ah, very high quality. One that's going to allow you for both ya pitch and roll. So it's going to give you a little bit of a dampening even on the side to side as you move, Even though you can't control the camera side to side as you move it, it will give a little bit of ah, softening to it. You can move the camera up on Dan, you can pin up and down and, um, that will allow that movement and then the, um, side to side. You can see a little bit, will turn it on and will become. And this is where it's essential. This part of the gimbal is essential. And what's not part of the phantom vision to not to plus. So if you are actually doing this side, you know, Pan and the scene, it will not automatically compensate for that. So that really is. If you have any thought of doing video whatsoever, I would not recommend getting the phantom vision to go ahead for the plus, okay, and other components in terms of what we have here, I'll just do the box. Since we removed that here we have our remote control controller. OK, this is our little baby, and I've got a little head sent here because it gets tiring. If you're flying all day so and also, it doesn't mean you have a death grip because some people like to control it with their thumbs. Some people are doing it with their fingertips and that if you ever get a death grip on it, you know is not going to help you here. So having this little thing is a guitar hero little set up here, and I put a little bungee on it, so it's got a little bit of give, so it's I don't feel restricted. This is the remote controller. This is a WiFi extender. This is what actually is controlling the camera. Specifically, this is what's sending out the signal that will go with our phone, which is right here. I have set this up is a little bit of a tip here. Um, it comes with this little attachment over to the side here. I've moved it to the back end here because that allows me to get the camera right in close the mobile device right in close to the remote controller. So I'm looking there, as opposed to being a bit further away. Uh, Extender, This is going to be charged. It's a USB charging make sure this is I'm thoroughly charged. The remote control device itself is a battery driven. Doesn't drain batteries a lot, but make sure you've got extra batteries in your case. Make sure this is fully charged. The case itself holds. As you can see, you can hold multiple batteries. It's an expense you're gonna have to pay. They're not cheap, but obviously you're gonna want those because they do take a while to charge. This is what the charger basically looks like and basically plugs in to the little components here and that doesn't allow you to charge. Said whether you bring this out in the fielder with you or not is up to you. Um, since I'm traveling with this, I certainly do want to have it with me. Um, other tools. Little wrenches again. The things for drone. Okay, battery pack. When it comes to will touch mawr on. I'm safety. This is Make sure you do not put it in backwards in front of a large crowd of people that you're trying to instruct. So that is the battery pack. It's an awesome. They're rated to 25 minutes, I think on the two vision plus up to 25 minutes, which is just awesome. Again, if you're you know, back in the day gasoline powered Hiller conferences, Adam was saying that he's used, But that is also one of the nice things about the phantom deejay. I Siri's is their battery life is, you know, some of the top that are out there just fantastic. Okay, um, I mentioned in terms of safety and set up the one thing that you're gonna want to make sure and do aside from checking your blades and making sure that their tight you've got a number of different components on the Phantom that you do want to do a visual check on the compass, which is used in concert with the GPS lock in the gyroscope. This is the compass right here. So it's orientation. But it's a fine little set of wires coming up here. So to check this, especially if you have had a rough landing. So to make sure that there's not some little, you know, misalignment of the wires, I've also had that same situation with some of these small little wires that air in here. Any significant, um, bump has the potential of loosening any of those wires, and if so, it's not gonna be able to do a lock. It may not be able to get a video signal for the camera. So this is the camera itself. Actually, this is the camera right here. This is a lens, and Gimbel set up cameras actually built here into the base. And that's where the micro SD card slot is is actually in this camera here. But you'll notice because of that, it has little teeny ribbon cables that are needing to go. The electron ICS are actually in these little paper thin ribbon cables that are coming over here that are allowing, um, the movement while still being completely wired. So a visual check of all those things, I think is, is essential. Just because they are as toughest DJ has made these things. They're still relatively fragile. The's a replaceable. The one thing you'll notice here is they've now put on little locks. These little plastic locks mean that if for some reason thes bushings come disconnected, that they will disconnect. But they won't actually dropped the camera from the sky. The thing to remember about thes that I had to do when I replaced camera on one of a of my drones. Is that these, um that have a little teeny plastic lock on them. Need to be cut. You can't Actually, you know, it's not like, if you really sincere and you press really hard. Excuse me? That you can take off this little teeny washer that really has to be cut. And they give you replacements, Plastics that do snap back on. So don't spend a week trying to figure out how to get that washer off. That actually needs to be cut. And they're quite cheap if you want to buy replacements. Okay, so we've now done that kind of, Ah, thorough inspection of the copter. The other thing that will mention in terms of the set up of this system is your gonna always want to turn on your remote control before anything else. If you were to turn on the copter before this, the copter is looking for a signal of control signal. And if it gets theoretically a rogue signal, some satellites, some hiccup, there is the potential of that being controlled or started or doing a fly away because it just it it has no parent associated with it. It's nothing controlling it. So you're always gonna want to turn on your remote control first, because this is going to send out a signal, This one. As I said, this is the WiFi extender. This is primarily doing your camera. The main thing is to make sure that the camp that the copter is being controlled. The other thing is that these switches here, um, are for your GPS and these or your advanced flying options the intelligent orientation controls. These were different options here. Basically, your default setting is both of them up and leave them up. Unless you have a reason to not have them up, this one can be used. Sometimes there's little teeny tricks of a quick 2345 and using that to reset different things or as an example that can be used to instigate a compass calibration mode on also could be used to disconnect to satellite and re establish a satellite link. But for the most part, make sure these air up if they're not up. And of course, by the time you put them in a case, there's a good chance they won't be up. So if you don't do an inspection of this, this will not as example. If that's down, it will not use the GPS and it will not give you a lock. It will not want to fly. Nobody will be happy. You'll spend a week trying to figure out what's wrong with my copter. You'll send it back and they'll send it back and say, It's fine. And that's just simply because there was a little teeny switch. Okay, this is the intended for the remote control. Um, it supposedly have the dead zone. So it's not like you pointed at the device. You Actually, it's coming off a signal. So, you know, at a right angle or 45 something like this is going to give you a better signal than you know, pointing at the device. I mentioned that because this device right here, the WiFi extender really should be pointed at the copter. So if you're flying it ahead, do this. It actually is. This is the antenna and sending out a signal. So basically, wherever you're looking at, you're gonna want to. If you're going out quite a distance, you're gonna pointed out that way. if you're flying it above, you can orientate that. Okay, so that is will help you get the furthest um signaled. That is possible. Questions out in the field or questions or comments. Anything in rooms we do. We have some really good one shack. Yes, I'll just fire amount you? Yes. So one of the folks asked, What are the benefits of having carbon fiber propellers? Carbon fiber is a longer flight time and a smoother flight. The detriment is is that they are incredibly sharp. And if they hit anything, the potential of them severing that object is significant. There also louder that the hum that they make for me is really annoying. It's a it's a higher pitch frequency. And so for me, as soon as I put on the carbon fiber blades one, they scared me because they are literally It's like a Ginsu knife and flying out there. Um, and of course, the proper cards will help with that. But the high pitched wind, even though it may give you Azad um, said a 5% longer flight time. I'm already so conscious people going, you know, you'll see some of the flights that I did yesterday around the park. You know, people are playing tennis and, you know, here's a person trying to play tennis and they're looking up, and I was a couple 100 feet up, so it was minimal distraction. But just that that high pitched wine of the carbon blades I didn't like. So, actually, I'm back to using the plastic ones. So So this is from I S J Portfolio. I just got a D J I Phantom with a GoPro hero black, but I haven't been able to buy the LCD system yet, so I don't usually go up very high. Do you have any suggestions of ways I can approach getting great images when I can't see? Actually what I'm doing on? I'm still learning to fly. I live in the city, so I don't have a lot of wide open spaces at my disposal. So not flying first person view and flying in acidity. Well, the best thing that I can recommend is using the what would be the interval ometer mode on the GoPro. In other words, you're going to set the GoPro the GoPro, the hero three will take three frames between two and three frames a second for Unlimited. It'll take a zillion shots literally would take 1000 shots on thousands of shots on a single battery charge. So setting it up and basically just turning it on to shoot individual skills. Or you can turn it on the video and just started and, you know, fly away. Um, but the synchronicity of just shooting randomly and then, you know, sorting it out afterward as long as you are good in light room in the bridge so you can go through 1000 images really quickly with your left right. Remind me when we get into doing that that maybe a little tip. Make sure that you go into preferences inside of the bridge and turn off the requirement of using the commander controlled key in order to label your images. In other words, you want to have one finger on the one star button and one finger two fingers on your arrow keys, and you could go really quick and just say a potential keeper, you know. But if you're not doing that, if you're doing this, just kill yourself. Don't even bother going through 4000 GoPro images. The other thing that he said, If you're you know, you're gonna in his case because he's not doing a first person view through something like the mobile app, that line of sight is going to be essential. You'll notice that I bought These are not the ones from D. J. I the prop guards. You'll notice that they now come with the stripes on them to show you the front, your orientation you won't. Especially in his case. He's not gonna have an easy way of doing that orientation. So the prop guards color coded is gonna be essential because, you know, like you said, after a few feet, they're gone. So I would say definitely the color coded prop guards, especially since you can obviously there, read from the bottom. Um, you know, it's a little bit hard to see color even on the stripes. Um, certainly doing that practice away from the city, you know, going out and doing all your practice runs in there. But it's amazing that Interval ometer works great. And even if you're doing something like a Pano, if you can shoot three frames a second and again if you've got significant light, remember that in the GoPro. The shutter speed is based upon your light capabilities. It has a certain limit on that shutter speed. It won't go below. It'll kick up the I S O to compensate for that. But in bright light, you actually can as you can, actually, with your SLR, you can shoot a panel by going. If you're in bright light and you've got your shutter speed set tight enough, you actually can have a moving object. And a lot of the panels that you have seen me shoot. I have literally just slowly rotated the camera. It did not stop. It was in motion when it grabbed the shot, even in low light situations. And it was amazing the clarity, instability. So it would just be get the camera in the location and he wants where she wants and then use things like that. Rotate feature. You know, we've got our two shots here and we'll get into the controlling of it. This right here is your up and down. This here is your spinning left and right on what's known as the Y axis. So all you're going to do is slightly move that over to the side and it will continue to spin until you let go. And so just that right there there's your Pano. You're shooting a Pano right now. If you're in that interval, ometer what's known as an interval ometer mode? This is your forward Back and left and right movement. Okay, on a say, a checkerboard. So this is going to be your movement inside one. Place up and down, spending the camera over here. This is your left and right. When we get into the IOC modes, this becomes really cool because you can actually set this up so that no matter what the orientation of the camera, this is always away from you. This is always back towards me, even if the camera's pointed over there, which is really cool. So we're getting that crumb stir would like to know what are the difference. What are the differences between the black and white dampers on the gimbal? I think the black ones are denser rubber. Yeah, they're just a little bit harder rubber. And therefore, basically, what you're trying to get rid of is what's known as the Jello effect. This'd idea that because the copter is doing this, you don't want your camera to be doing that. So how do you compensate for it? And those little brush ings, bushes, bushes? Or what's compensating for that? And the question is how much, you know, I take it that you'd use the black if there was less wind and maybe the way after tension on the conditions. Also the weight of the camera. If the cameras heavier, then you may need a little bit denser rubber bushing, and that would Presuppose that you know you got variable one. So that that is the difference between those is heavier, um, harder, softer plastic.