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Drone photography and video

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t.z.
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Joined: Tue Jan 29, 2013 8:01 am
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Re: Drone photography and video

#11

Post by t.z. »

one more thing ... about "revealing" - say you want to show your casting hand as close as possible but also want to give the context of where all this is happening / Lake / boat etc - start with the drone stationary right by your side and fly it out to the highest spot where it shows the whole area ... I mean you have to shoot film while you fly out. Then flip this around in post so it plays backwards. This way it looks like you started high above and then flew in to your hand ... just an example. The speed of the movement can be altered in post too. Don't try to "fly" this acceleration.

The gimbal wheel is the most underused tool ... use it very much to "reveal" - example - fly stationary right above your boat and slowly tilt up the gimbal. You can also practice this move together with changing the ISO. The downwards shot often is way underexposed and the straight into the sky is overexposed. If you let the drone compensate automatically for this you end up having ugly jumps in the exposure.

About filters - there are combined polar and ND filters. Very nice and useful tools.
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Paul Arden
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Re: Drone photography and video

#12

Post by Paul Arden »

I’ve got some lads bringing me up some ND filters next month. Getting smooth shots seems to be my challenge at the moment. Will have a bit of a fly tomorrow while fishing. Great fun! :D and another learning curve!

Cheers, Paul
It's an exploration; bring a flyrod.

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t.z.
Posts: 872
Joined: Tue Jan 29, 2013 8:01 am
Answers: 0

Re: Drone photography and video

#13

Post by t.z. »

I have gotten myself a whole set of these filters. That was the most .... erm ... cost effective way to do it. I taught myself to fly a little, but the footage became so much better as soon I tried to make the viewer forget that this was shot with a drone ... the problem with that thing is that it is way to advanced in a way. One wants to play and fly etc. However, in a filming scenario this tool is mainly meant to shoot B-Roll. The other very good buy I did lately was a Røde Wireless Go microphone set. It is soo much easier to get meaningful footage and content. I wouldn't have thought that this makes that much of a difference.

Since I am bored and in a babble mood and you have not asked for that information ;-) --- This is what I use for pictures and YouTube (video)

CANON EOS 5D Mk IV
Canon 24 - 70 mm f4 IS
Canon 70 - 200mm f2,8 IS
variable ND filter for the lenses above
proper tripod & gorilla pod

SIGMA 20mm f1,4 ART
Canon 40mm f2,8

DJI Mavic mini with ND & polarising filters

GoPro Hero 5 with ND filters (filters mostly used for time-lapse stuff)

Røde Microphones (Røde Wireless GO and Video Micro) + adapter cables so I can voice over directly into the Mac with the same mic. Makes post processing much faster.

Post processing
for stills
Adobe Lightroom
Adobe Photoshop

for video I use iMovie. I used Adope Premier Pro before, but this gotten so expensive so it stopped making sense.

For animated graphics I use apple keynote, believe it or not. This a killer easy tool. There are manuals on YouTube on how to do that.

To generate thumbnails for YouTube I use a chrome plugin called tube-buddy. It also helps with SEO and other things. I use the free version.

I make sure to have similar cinematic settings on all devices. I most shoot in 25fps with shutter speed of 50. I set all colour corrections to neutral. Otherwise you have a problem getting the footage consistent in you final production. What helps is to shoot some stills with your preferred camera and use the iMovie colour correction method to match the video clips to the stills you shot. Here comes the drone in good use as well. One can generate crazy high res panoramic photos with it. I take a bunch of stills and rotate 10 degrees in between the shots. I then use LightRoom to stitch this together. That you can also generate a sort of a panoramic "flight" with the Ken-Burns zoom effect in iMovie. Same with panaromic shots with the DSLR or heck, the iPhone.

Cheers,
Thomas
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