- Joined
- Jul 17, 2014
- Messages
- 1,442
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I had this practice flight 2 weeks ago (just making flight minutes), taking it up from my balcony. After the first in flight checks I turned the nose towards the lake and spotted a beautiful ancient sailing ship, antique and restored (actually a completely rebuilt). It turned out the be the Yacht of State 'Utrecht', originally built in the 1743, during the Dutch Golden Age.
Anyhow, unprepared and surprised as I was, I decided to head to that ship to check it out. It turned out to be a bit further than I thought. Around 700m before I got a good image of it. Although I could see the I1 the entire flight, after 200m it was no more than a dark spot, there was no way I could determine the nose position. I didn't have my morning star light yet, but this was definitely the reason I installed it afterwards.
I kept the gimbal looking straight ahead. So I had to keep the ship in the frame by yawing and pitching. The ship moved fast, there was quite a lot of wind (7m/sec), and it was difficult to encircle her while keeping the nose pointed at the ship. Had I used horizontal gimbal control, I would never have been able to check my relative position to the mast or other ships (that I might not have spotted at first). And I would have lost orientation at some point, probably.
Just saying, when flying alone, you can't afford any mistake. I felt quite alone, hanging over that ship and the water, more than 600m from shore. I was a bit shaky I admit. With my Phantoms I fly over water all the time, but with the I1 this was only my 6th flight......
I had the camera on manual, auto WB, color normal.
The unprocessed and RAW footage (after Youtube compression) is here:
No editing yet at all, just cut off start and end, dull stuff.
Sure, (some of) the footage is nice, be it I didn't have a storyboard, and had to make the best of what I saw at that moment. Framing could always be better of course. The horizon was tilted (of course, thank you DJI for not addressing this).
Anyhow, unprepared and surprised as I was, I decided to head to that ship to check it out. It turned out to be a bit further than I thought. Around 700m before I got a good image of it. Although I could see the I1 the entire flight, after 200m it was no more than a dark spot, there was no way I could determine the nose position. I didn't have my morning star light yet, but this was definitely the reason I installed it afterwards.
I kept the gimbal looking straight ahead. So I had to keep the ship in the frame by yawing and pitching. The ship moved fast, there was quite a lot of wind (7m/sec), and it was difficult to encircle her while keeping the nose pointed at the ship. Had I used horizontal gimbal control, I would never have been able to check my relative position to the mast or other ships (that I might not have spotted at first). And I would have lost orientation at some point, probably.
Just saying, when flying alone, you can't afford any mistake. I felt quite alone, hanging over that ship and the water, more than 600m from shore. I was a bit shaky I admit. With my Phantoms I fly over water all the time, but with the I1 this was only my 6th flight......
I had the camera on manual, auto WB, color normal.
The unprocessed and RAW footage (after Youtube compression) is here:
No editing yet at all, just cut off start and end, dull stuff.
Sure, (some of) the footage is nice, be it I didn't have a storyboard, and had to make the best of what I saw at that moment. Framing could always be better of course. The horizon was tilted (of course, thank you DJI for not addressing this).
