Video: Finally the Skydio drone works well for capturing on the water footage!

The @skydiohq drone finally works really well!
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I’ve had the Skydio for a little over a year now and I have to be honest that at first it was really frustrating. It froze in the sky often, the camera bobbed wildly up and down, the footage always pushed you into a corner and partially outside the frame, their super cool Beacon controller lacked return to home functionality, and it was prone to all sorts of random autonomous behavior. When it worked it worked amazing but it only worked like that a small percentage of the time… until now.
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The most recent software update addressed every major issue I had with the skydio and I’m blown away by the difference in performance. Have any other Skydio fliers noticed this?
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The following footage is straight out of the camera with no color correction or retouching, and it was this stable for THE ENTIRE 15 MINUTE FLIGHT in moderately high winds. It never lost tracking from the beginning to the end of the flight and I think the camera only bobbed twice.
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I’ll put up more edited footage later but I wanted to post this minute long uncorrected clip to show how it’s performing. This is shot at 2 PM on a sunny day which is just about the worst case lighting scenario for this type of filming, and yet the auto exposure and the color on the Skydio never misses a beat.
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I set it to 4K 30fps with a shutter speed of 60, put a N16 neutral density filter on, launched it with the new beacon controller (I killed my old one) and then just set it to a slow 1 m/s orbit the entire time and it’s slowly revolved around me catching a wide variety of great shots.
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This is just one flight, but if this performance holds up it’s gonna be a total game changer for what we can capture and share on the water. As a designer it’s also just hugely helpful for me to see the boats from a different angle.
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I want to personally thank whoever at Skydio put the entire range of return to home functionality on the beacon. That alone changes everything for my particular use.
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The Skydio drone finally works really well!

I’ve had the Skydio for a little over a year now and I have to be honest that at first it was really frustrating. It froze in the sky often, the camera bobbed wildly up and down, the footage always pushed you into a corner and partially outside the frame, their super cool Beacon controller lacked return to home functionality, and it was prone to all sorts of random autonomous behavior. When it worked it worked amazing but it only worked like that a small percentage of the time… until now.

The most recent software update addressed every major issue I had with the skydio and I’m blown away by the difference in performance. Have any other Skydio fliers noticed this?

The following footage is straight out of the camera with no color correction or retouching, and it was this stable for THE ENTIRE 15 MINUTE FLIGHT in moderately high winds. It never lost tracking from the beginning to the end of the flight and I think the camera only bobbed twice.

I’ll put up more edited footage later but I wanted to post this minute long uncorrected clip to show how it’s performing. This is shot at 2 PM on a sunny day which is just about the worst case lighting scenario for this type of filming, and yet the auto exposure and the color on the Skydio never misses a beat.

I set it to 4K 30fps with a shutter speed of 60, put a N16 neutral density filter on, launched it with the new beacon controller (I killed my old one) and then just set it to a slow 1 m/s orbit the entire time and it’s slowly revolved around me catching a wide variety of great shots.

This is just one flight, but if this performance holds up it’s gonna be a total game changer for what we can capture and share on the water. As a designer it’s also just hugely helpful for me to see the boats from a different angle.

I want to personally thank whoever at Skydio put the entire range of return to home functionality on the beacon. That alone changes everything for my particular use.

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