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What is the next level: Advancing drone business

As a professional Aerial Cinematographer I own them all and have been on many a professional movie sets and I can tell you that the sad truth has been spoken by White Air Wolf. The PH4P is usually more than good enough for most shots, but it is all about show. Here is a real-world example that you will totally understand. As a GH5 owner, I can tell you that it's quality is overkill for most projects, yet what the producer and or client what to see show up is a RED or ARRI Alexa. And I would stack my reputation on the fact that if you showed them the identical seen shot on each, they could never tell what shot what. Hell, I am a Davinci color grader as well and sometimes it's hard for me to tell! In closing, if you are truly serious and can get the cash I would drop the money on an inspire 2. First off all of the inspires will allow you beautiful camera moves that you can't always achieve with the Phantom lineup, but most importantly as long as the Aerial platform is maintained in good working order you are basically flying a GH4 but with better mbs per second and with interchanable prime lens. It would be hard to understand how you could ever professionally outgrow it.

My 2 cents,
rb,

PS. I am not advertising my real, but it is old and does not contain any Inspire 2 footage. I say that cause if you take a look you will see nothing but Phantom 4 (not Pro) and inspire 1 and I believe at least 50% of those shots are still sellable. Good luck to you, and if nothing else, please fly safely!
I completely agree. Beside the 60fps, the GH5 400mb/s or 6k video will rarely be used by me. The only reason I bought it is due to the 4k 60fps. It can do anything any client would ever want or need. Yet if I walked into a movie set, they would want RED Weapon or something like that. I don't deny that the Inspire 2 is great. I really want one. But their is no need for one in my current business model, but I am trying to change that. As discussed above, the drone I need has pretty much been decided. What hasn't been discussed in any appreciable detail is new business ventures. Now who knows, maybe they are codependent and I need the I2 for new work but I need to see a need for the Inspire before i can drop $5k.
 
I completely agree. Beside the 60fps, the GH5 400mb/s or 6k video will rarely be used by me. The only reason I bought it is due to the 4k 60fps. It can do anything any client would ever want or need. Yet if I walked into a movie set, they would want RED Weapon or something like that. I don't deny that the Inspire 2 is great. I really want one. But their is no need for one in my current business model, but I am trying to change that. As discussed above, the drone I need has pretty much been decided. What hasn't been discussed in any appreciable detail is new business ventures. Now who knows, maybe they are codependent and I need the I2 for new work but I need to see a need for the Inspire before i can drop $5k.
Here's the overarching problem for me and others will most likely not agree with me. What I am seeing is that most of the drone industry is rapidly becoming a race to the bottom. One small example; I dropped a pile of cash on an RV a while back and I asked the manager if in return for my business he would throw me a little a little work in the form of $500 to do a beautiful series of Aerials of his expansive dealership. I pointed out that hiring a professional with insurance was important and that my FAA certification would give me the ability to get a waiver from the major airport 1 mile away Class C airspace. He thanked me and said he would contact me. 2 weeks later there is his dealerships commercial with Aerials on my TV! I called and he said that he was sorry, but that he paid a neighbor's kid 50 bucks to come out and do it. And here's the worst part. The Neighbors kid used a Phantom 4 Pro and the footage looked fantastic! And every bit as nice as I would have done. Here's another. Go to dronedeploy and download their free app. Walk out your front door to a construction site or beautiful building armed with nothing, but their app and a phantom 3. Draw a square around the building with your finger, tell it how high you want to fly and hit start. The drone will take off run a zig-zag route taking as many overlapping photos as it needs and will land. Go home upload the photos to their site and in three hours you have high res 2d mapping and or plant health maps or even more impressive an interactive 3d map, All without using a single skill or brain cell. Now until everyone catches on, you can do the same thing and charge good money for it, but catch on they will and then you will need to reinvent yourself again or lower your prices. Not trying to be cynical here just telling you what I am seeing. As for me I have a few very loyal customers that keep me working, but the revenue stream is not what it used to be.
 
Here's the overarching problem for me and others will most likely not agree with me. What I am seeing is that most of the drone industry is rapidly becoming a race to the bottom. One small example; I dropped a pile of cash on an RV a while back and I asked the manager if in return for my business he would throw me a little a little work in the form of $500 to do a beautiful series of Aerials of his expansive dealership. I pointed out that hiring a professional with insurance was important and that my FAA certification would give me the ability to get a waiver from the major airport 1 mile away Class C airspace. He thanked me and said he would contact me. 2 weeks later there is his dealerships commercial with Aerials on my TV! I called and he said that he was sorry, but that he paid a neighbor's kid 50 bucks to come out and do it. And here's the worst part. The Neighbors kid used a Phantom 4 Pro and the footage looked fantastic! And every bit as nice as I would have done. Here's another. Go to dronedeploy and download their free app. Walk out your front door to a construction site or beautiful building armed with nothing, but their app and a phantom 3. Draw a square around the building with your finger, tell it how high you want to fly and hit start. The drone will take off run a zig-zag route taking as many overlapping photos as it needs and will land. Go home upload the photos to their site and in three hours you have high res 2d mapping and or plant health maps or even more impressive an interactive 3d map, All without using a single skill or brain cell. Now until everyone catches on, you can do the same thing and charge good money for it, but catch on they will and then you will need to reinvent yourself again or lower your prices. Not trying to be cynical here just telling you what I am seeing. As for me I have a few very loyal customers that keep me working, but the revenue stream is not what it used to be.
I agree wholeheartedly. I wish the FAA could punish business owner for using pilots illegally. As for the Drone Deploy, I really dont like the way that app is set up. First, it's illegal in many cases because the houses are not vacant so you are invading privacy and trespassing on their property. Secondly, it's really unethical. You make the content first, then try to sell it to the realtor? Thats like going to a steak house and making a meal, then trying to sell it to a customer who didnt order. Just doesnt make sense.
 
I agree wholeheartedly. I wish the FAA could punish business owner for using pilots illegally. As for the Drone Deploy, I really dont like the way that app is set up. First, it's illegal in many cases because the houses are not vacant so you are invading privacy and trespassing on their property. Secondly, it's really unethical. You make the content first, then try to sell it to the realtor? Thats like going to a steak house and making a meal, then trying to sell it to a customer who didnt order. Just doesnt make sense.

I think you're confusing Drone Deploy with DroneBase.
 
You are both correct. I was referring to dronedeploy and Drone Base is unethical.

Regarding the FFA, yup they have yet again proven that virtually everything the government does, it does poorly. I also threw myself way out of my comfort zone to study and get my 107. I did it as I felt that the risk and penalty of breaking federal aviation laws would be so severe that it would keep the idiots and lawbreakers at bay or at least reduce the number of pilots to those that are serious and curious hobbyists. They would join RC clubs, fly in fields and over their own houses, etc) I also thought it would separate us from the hobbyist in the eyes of the business community. Nope, the FAA is failing us all. The bottom line is that in one afternoon they could go on youtube and identify a thousand pilots blatantly breaking laws (I don't mean the guy that flew a little high or possibly out of VLS) but pilots that are actually being unsafe flying over concerts, through cities, buzzing trains and flying in restricted airspace, etc. They could simply get their info and mail them violation tickets. Hell they would raise enough money in a week to fund real enforcement and, FAA certified would actually mean something and pilots like us would have a very nice job. But like I said, name me 5 things the government executes well.

Sigh...
 
I think you're confusing Drone Deploy with DroneBase.

Shhhh, dont let others know :D

my bad
You are both correct. I was referring to dronedeploy and Drone Base is unethical.

Regarding the FFA, yup they have yet again proven that virtually everything the government does, it does poorly. I also threw myself way out of my comfort zone to study and get my 107. I did it as I felt that the risk and penalty of breaking federal aviation laws would be so severe that it would keep the idiots and lawbreakers at bay or at least reduce the number of pilots to those that are serious and curious hobbyists. They would join RC clubs, fly in fields and over their own houses, etc) I also thought it would separate us from the hobbyist in the eyes of the business community. Nope, the FAA is failing us all. The bottom line is that in one afternoon they could go on youtube and identify a thousand pilots blatantly breaking laws (I don't mean the guy that flew a little high or possibly out of VLS) but pilots that are actually being unsafe flying over concerts, through cities, buzzing trains and flying in restricted airspace, etc. They could simply get their info and mail them violation tickets. Hell they would raise enough money in a week to fund real enforcement and, FAA certified would actually mean something and pilots like us would have a very nice job. But like I said, name me 5 things the government executes well.

Sigh...
Yea, it proves that the Part 107 seems more like a tax stamp then a license. But we are going down a rabbit hole here and getting off topic.

If anyone else has some recommendations, I am all ears.
 
I am thinking to enter drone business as well. But, need lots of knowledge about it to survive this line. Now I am learning deeply about it......You need total guide from any book or website.
Just want to add here. Last week, I bought a drone business book. It is written by Patrick R. Shaub.
You will get all beginner guide from this book I think. However, I run a technology blog and I am thinking I will write details about drone future and business model near future.
 
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I am thinking to enter drone business as well. But, need lots of knowledge about it to survive this line. Now I am learning deeply about it......
Yea. I think alot of people think this job is easy and requires no work. Thats not true. I have been pretty "successful" and have been very blessed when compared to others. But if you are trying to support a family on this, it could be difficult.
 
Being “good with drones” is quickly going to become like being “good at computers”. It is a field that many people find intriguing. Thus the prices to hire a drone pilot will diminish as more supply meets and exceeds the demand. Pilots will eventually lower the price to make sure they get the job. I was always an RC enthusiast so when drones came out I was excited. I own a land surveying company and I was “good at computers” and now I am “good with drones”. I have two employees that never flew drones but now have their part 107 licenses along with me, and it only took each of them one month to study and pass the test. (I’m also a single/multi/instrument pilot).

To sum this up... I’ll give you the same advice I have all my friends that would tell me they wanted to do Information Technology (I.T.) because they were good at computers... You need something else to go along with that skill. Be good with drones and be good at another job that requires drones, and you will find the career that you desire.

Eric Blackburn
President
EBI Surveying
 
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Being “good with drones” is quickly going to become like being “good at computers”. It is a field that many people find intriguing. Thus the prices to hire a drone pilot will diminish as more supply meets and exceeds the demand. Pilots will eventually lower the price to make sure they get the job. I was always an RC enthusiast so when drones came out I was excited. I own a land surveying company and I was “good at computers” and now I am “good with drones”. I have two employees that never flew drones but now have their part 107 licenses along with me, and it only took each of them one month to study and pass the test. (I’m also a single/multi/instrument pilot).

To sum this up... I’ll give you the same advice I have all my friends that would tell me they wanted to do Information Technology (I.T.) because they were good at computers... You need something else to go along with that skill. Be good with drones and be good at another job that requires drones, and you will find the career that you desire.

Eric Blackburn
President
EBI Surveying
Yea I mean what makes someone "Pro". Because I have seen people flying high end DSLR on a $10,000 drone that suck at flying. I think I am able differentiate myself because of my video editing with After Effects and some other stuff.
 
Yea I mean what makes someone "Pro". Because I have seen people flying high end DSLR on a $10,000 drone that suck at flying. I think I am able differentiate myself because of my video editing with After Effects and some other stuff.

Ok, sorry I got long winded sharing some of my experiences! Lol

After effects skill is a great thing to have. Unfortunately, that isn't going to differentiate you too much for very long. The post production and effects can be easily outsourced fairly cheap online. Unless you have a pc that can render lightning fast and your workflow is professionally efficient, like the guys over seas that do that stuff full time, all day everyday. I got pretty good with it myself, but by the time I got good enough to be happy with my work, I met some guys that just outsource it cheap to these foreign guys that do outstanding jobs for them. They'll do it cheaper than what my own time is worth to do the advance effects myself.

Unless I wasn't getting enough work to keep me busy in the field, I felt like it wasn't worth the hardware and time investment learning what I wanted to do when I could have been enjoying the field work, developing operations, training, aerial platforms and just outsourcing the production. You'd think quality and turn around time would plummet by doing that. But it's really an efficient way to do things if you're basically a one man show and getting plenty of field work.

IMO, no matter what your niche is, to really stand out and offer outstanding services you need to have a diverse team to work with. Individuals with different sets of skills that when combined can offer a well rounded experience.

That's pretty much where I'm at, mostly just me, knowing just enough about a lot of different things to get by. But master of none. Except manual piloting, I'll toot my own horn in that aspect lol. Deep down, flying is what I've loved to do since I was 13 flying unstabalized helis and large scale aerobatic airplanes in competitions. Those were the days!

I wish I would have spent more time putting together a solid team before marketing myself useless. I'm stuck in an endless cycle of real estate (low hanging fruit) and random media work when it was suppose to just be temporary income while I break into industrial applications. I love the media stuff, not complaining at all. I just won't be satisfied until I'm doing something outside of media and marketing. But it's almost off-season, so I'm looking forward to some free time this winter to execute some ideas.

SEO and your website is probably the most important part of getting plenty of clientele in your industry of interest. But you can't necessarily do that first. With a good SEO comes a lot of phone time, which means you're distracted when you need to be focused becoming proficient at it before you do sloppy work for potentially long term clients. Even SEO is hard to do effectively if you're not already proficient with it. Not cheap either if you do adwords incorrectly. Having a full time experienced phone operator paints a really good image plus you won't be as distracted. If you have multiple "crews", reliable scheduling and dispatching is needed, along with field support when there are discrepancies with addresses, the clients point of contact, equipment issues etc

Also the financial record keeping of you and your crews, each aircraft's flight logs, maintenance logs, logs on every piece of hardware related to flight.. so now we're getting into database territory so alerts can be automated and logs updated and connected amongst the team. I always thought I could learn any software by doing self studies on google and YouTube. Learning database kicked my arse for quite a few months. Like really, I spent a ridiculous amount of my off season last year solely focused on building a robust and versatile database for myself. My efforts with that were not rewarded. Do not waste your time trying to do that yourself! Hire a professional or use some of the apps available specifically for drones. I personally haven't seen a turn key solution that does what I want it to do. Maybe I'm just not knowledgeable enough to use them to their full extent.

So next level? There's an endless amount of things you can do to be prepared for handling the workloads, optimizing training, developing equipment (this can save you a lot of money if you're moving outside of media jobs, dji is just not worth the money for things outside of media IMO), record keeping, marketing, SEO, networking, developing your new services, training through the manufacturers of the high end sensors and related software, its endless. There's always a more efficient way of doing things. There's always a better, clearer way of training and writing field manuals in the form of "executable task" that any competent person can follow and understand so that you have a SCALABLE business. Just choose your niche and go! I say all this as if I've achieved it already. But I haven't. Not the way I want it to be. Maybe someone can point out some flaws in my thought process or offer some insight.
 
Ok, sorry I got long winded sharing some of my experiences! Lol

After effects skill is a great thing to have. Unfortunately, that isn't going to differentiate you too much for very long. The post production and effects can be easily outsourced fairly cheap online. Unless you have a pc that can render lightning fast and your workflow is professionally efficient, like the guys over seas that do that stuff full time, all day everyday. I got pretty good with it myself, but by the time I got good enough to be happy with my work, I met some guys that just outsource it cheap to these foreign guys that do outstanding jobs for them. They'll do it cheaper than what my own time is worth to do the advance effects myself.

Unless I wasn't getting enough work to keep me busy in the field, I felt like it wasn't worth the hardware and time investment learning what I wanted to do when I could have been enjoying the field work, developing operations, training, aerial platforms and just outsourcing the production. You'd think quality and turn around time would plummet by doing that. But it's really an efficient way to do things if you're basically a one man show and getting plenty of field work.

IMO, no matter what your niche is, to really stand out and offer outstanding services you need to have a diverse team to work with. Individuals with different sets of skills that when combined can offer a well rounded experience.

That's pretty much where I'm at, mostly just me, knowing just enough about a lot of different things to get by. But master of none. Except manual piloting, I'll toot my own horn in that aspect lol. Deep down, flying is what I've loved to do since I was 13 flying unstabalized helis and large scale aerobatic airplanes in competitions. Those were the days!

I wish I would have spent more time putting together a solid team before marketing myself useless. I'm stuck in an endless cycle of real estate (low hanging fruit) and random media work when it was suppose to just be temporary income while I break into industrial applications. I love the media stuff, not complaining at all. I just won't be satisfied until I'm doing something outside of media and marketing. But it's almost off-season, so I'm looking forward to some free time this winter to execute some ideas.

SEO and your website is probably the most important part of getting plenty of clientele in your industry of interest. But you can't necessarily do that first. With a good SEO comes a lot of phone time, which means you're distracted when you need to be focused becoming proficient at it before you do sloppy work for potentially long term clients. Even SEO is hard to do effectively if you're not already proficient with it. Not cheap either if you do adwords incorrectly. Having a full time experienced phone operator paints a really good image plus you won't be as distracted. If you have multiple "crews", reliable scheduling and dispatching is needed, along with field support when there are discrepancies with addresses, the clients point of contact, equipment issues etc

Also the financial record keeping of you and your crews, each aircraft's flight logs, maintenance logs, logs on every piece of hardware related to flight.. so now we're getting into database territory so alerts can be automated and logs updated and connected amongst the team. I always thought I could learn any software by doing self studies on google and YouTube. Learning database kicked my arse for quite a few months. Like really, I spent a ridiculous amount of my off season last year solely focused on building a robust and versatile database for myself. My efforts with that were not rewarded. Do not waste your time trying to do that yourself! Hire a professional or use some of the apps available specifically for drones. I personally haven't seen a turn key solution that does what I want it to do. Maybe I'm just not knowledgeable enough to use them to their full extent.

So next level? There's an endless amount of things you can do to be prepared for handling the workloads, optimizing training, developing equipment (this can save you a lot of money if you're moving outside of media jobs, dji is just not worth the money for things outside of media IMO), record keeping, marketing, SEO, networking, developing your new services, training through the manufacturers of the high end sensors and related software, its endless. There's always a more efficient way of doing things. There's always a better, clearer way of training and writing field manuals in the form of "executable task" that any competent person can follow and understand so that you have a SCALABLE business. Just choose your niche and go! I say all this as if I've achieved it already. But I haven't. Not the way I want it to be. Maybe someone can point out some flaws in my thought process or offer some insight.

Yea I agree. I was not aware of outsourcing the work. Please PM about that because that interest me. As for SEO/ Website, I have a friend who does that for some pretty big companies that helps me out when I need it. As for the "DJI is not worth it" could you please elaborate? What other options do we have beside home-built rigs or things to carry RED's and stuff like that. I am being brief because I agree with most of your points. I think for me, while I want to grow my business, I also want to keep enjoying it. This will not become my full time job that I will support a family on, it's a job where I have yet to "work" a day at and have made better money than I could have made elsewhere.
 
As far as the DJI alternatives, if all you need is basic thermal or zoom, up to intergrating LiDAR or UV detectors with long flight times, dual/ triple sensors and feeds, more robust signal to counter interference or noise, or maybe an energy efficient mono wing airplane for mapping or search and rescue missions, high accuracy gps integration for surveying - basically, anything you need very specific features for, you don't have to spend a ridiculous amount of money for dji rigs, which are very versatile. But you can put together a ready to fly bird and a back-up and have a lot more batteries/ charging stations for the price of one high end dji setup with limited peripherals. Using autopilots like pixhawk 2 with the cube that can do a lot of onboard processing is pretty powerful. Building your own rig also means you have a lot of versatility when it comes to charging and the price of the batteries is much lower... dji is great and all, but the prices are awfully steep when you're just trying to do basic inspections and mapping with limited resources. Then you have the firmware nightmares, mysterious glitches, poor customer support for something you can't really dig into to fix yourself without voiding warranties.

The hard part is learning how to build what you want if you're use to dji having everything turn key with easy interfacing and not thinking twice about batteries, esc's, motors, achieving dual or preferably triple redundancy, designing airframes if necessary (mainly monowing stuff), I don't believe dji has anything to offer for airplanes as far flight controllers go.

I mean one dji radio is what, $500? No versatility with switch assignments, no flight modes other than controlling gps modes. I have a lot pet peeves when it comes to dji. In the context of videography, hands down, dji. I don't have the software knowledge to build a rig better than what the inspire 1 can do when using 3rd party apps. It's phenomenal and cheap for what you can achieve with it.

For a mostly hassle free acquisition, no brainer interface and no time spent planning, designing and building; DJI is legendary! They are the reason why it's so easy to get started.

In your case, as a side thing, no reason to burden yourself with custom setups. Dji wraps it all in a nice pretty bow. For me, I've always enjoyed building and testing. It wasn't a very big leap to go from the rc mindset to the commercial drone mindset. It is crazy how fast things have developed in the last few years in the open source world!

DJI is like Apple

Custom setups are like an android. Much more flexibility and cost efficiency

Here I go ranting about equipment again ;)
 
As far as the DJI alternatives, if all you need is basic thermal or zoom, up to intergrating LiDAR or UV detectors with long flight times, dual/ triple sensors and feeds, more robust signal to counter interference or noise, or maybe an energy efficient mono wing airplane for mapping or search and rescue missions, high accuracy gps integration for surveying - basically, anything you need very specific features for, you don't have to spend a ridiculous amount of money for dji rigs, which are very versatile. But you can put together a ready to fly bird and a back-up and have a lot more batteries/ charging stations for the price of one high end dji setup with limited peripherals. Using autopilots like pixhawk 2 with the cube that can do a lot of onboard processing is pretty powerful. Building your own rig also means you have a lot of versatility when it comes to charging and the price of the batteries is much lower... dji is great and all, but the prices are awfully steep when you're just trying to do basic inspections and mapping with limited resources. Then you have the firmware nightmares, mysterious glitches, poor customer support for something you can't really dig into to fix yourself without voiding warranties.

The hard part is learning how to build what you want if you're use to dji having everything turn key with easy interfacing and not thinking twice about batteries, esc's, motors, achieving dual or preferably triple redundancy, designing airframes if necessary (mainly monowing stuff), I don't believe dji has anything to offer for airplanes as far flight controllers go.

I mean one dji radio is what, $500? No versatility with switch assignments, no flight modes other than controlling gps modes. I have a lot pet peeves when it comes to dji. In the context of videography, hands down, dji. I don't have the software knowledge to build a rig better than what the inspire 1 can do when using 3rd party apps. It's phenomenal and cheap for what you can achieve with it.

For a mostly hassle free acquisition, no brainer interface and no time spent planning, designing and building; DJI is legendary! They are the reason why it's so easy to get started.

In your case, as a side thing, no reason to burden yourself with custom setups. Dji wraps it all in a nice pretty bow. For me, I've always enjoyed building and testing. It wasn't a very big leap to go from the rc mindset to the commercial drone mindset. It is crazy how fast things have developed in the last few years in the open source world!

DJI is like Apple

Custom setups are like an android. Much more flexibility and cost efficiency

Here I go ranting about equipment again ;)
Oh yea like I build racing drones and other large platform drones. I know whats involved in the building and stuff like that, but DJI just seems bulletproof. I mean, I cant build an Inspire 2 for cheaper than it cost. The only camera that shoots anything similar to it is the Lumix GH5, which I have. So that with lens and gear is $2500. That leaves $500 to build a drone that can carry that camera and have the same flight characteristic. No chance. For the price, I think DJI is no brainer. Now yes, for going thermal or more specialized things, yea maybe go home built. But like you said, for film, DJI all the way.
 
I actually don't know if there are any handheld cameras on the market that records 4K 12-bit RAW out of the box that doesn't need a hexacopter to carry. Got an inspire 1 RAW for 3200 bucks with 2 radios a few months ago. That is just too much bang for the buck. Throw the x5r on the osmo with a pvc ronin style osmo holder because I'm a cheapskate lol, now I have some legit capabilities for simple shoots. Although I haven't had a single client that wants to pay for the flexibility of RAW video. Unless I need to pull focus on the X5 I just use the X3. I wish I could navigate my way into broadcast productions.

Outside of videography, I just can't wrap my head around what you're actually paying for. a matrice 600, tractennae, cedence remote or 2, a dozen or so batteries, a couple of chargers, rtk kit... I can't imagine the price tag. Anyone know? M600 with rtk? This all before you even think about the sensors. And they still might fly away given the right circumstances.

If the job is paying more than enough, sure. I just can't justify it until the high end jobs are coming in so much you can't train people fast enough, so you need a more user friendly interface and setup. I'd gladly go that route at that point.

Anyways, I think I've steered us way off the main topic!
 
I actually don't know if there are any handheld cameras on the market that records 4K 12-bit RAW out of the box that doesn't need a hexacopter to carry. Got an inspire 1 RAW for 3200 bucks with 2 radios a few months ago. That is just too much bang for the buck. Throw the x5r on the osmo with a pvc ronin style osmo holder because I'm a cheapskate lol, now I have some legit capabilities for simple shoots. Although I haven't had a single client that wants to pay for the flexibility of RAW video. Unless I need to pull focus on the X5 I just use the X3. I wish I could navigate my way into broadcast productions.

Outside of videography, I just can't wrap my head around what you're actually paying for. a matrice 600, tractennae, cedence remote or 2, a dozen or so batteries, a couple of chargers, rtk kit... I can't imagine the price tag. Anyone know? M600 with rtk? This all before you even think about the sensors. And they still might fly away given the right circumstances.

If the job is paying more than enough, sure. I just can't justify it until the high end jobs are coming in so much you can't train people fast enough, so you need a more user friendly interface and setup. I'd gladly go that route at that point.

Anyways, I think I've steered us way off the main topic!
Yea Id rather use the X5S due to 4k at 60, but that cant be used handheld.
 

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