Just a quick bit of drone footage I shot yesterday of the F1 on the water for an upcoming video comparing our different kayak designs. Honestly, I’m gonna have to redo this because the paddle I grabbed was a little too short and my skills are garbage right now because I haven’t been in a kayak since March. Couple nice shots here though so I thought I would share them.
In the first clip you can see me moving the Skydio2 drone using their Beacon controller. This is honestly the main reason I purchased this drone. The ability to drag and drop the drone in the sky quickly for self filming is a huge advantage.
As I’ve written about before the Skydio definitely has its disadvantages but that’s everything on the drone market right now, you just have to pick yourself poisons and learn to live with them. The Skydio has the most advanced tracking technology on the market, the super useful beacon controller, and incredible image quality straight out of the drone (there are no color corrections on these clips). That probably saved me 15 to 20 minutes of post production on this one little movie alone which really adds up when you shoot as much video as we do.
On the other hand it can take an extremely long time to pair to the GPS signal (often 2 minutes or more), burning precious battery that is already in short supply for on the water filming because you have to launch and land from land. It also has a spicy personality and is prone to random fits of misbehavior that often leave me scrambling to manually fly it back to shore before it runs out of battery over the water.
Today’s launch was especially entertaining when it flew up, turned around, looked me straight in the eye from about 15 feet away, and then slowly turned to the left and started flying south prompting a quick switch to manual control to get it back in front of me for a target lock. I think of it like a pet that I really love but sometimes attacks the furniture!
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