There are many drones out there to choose from, even consumer electronics stores now easily have a couple on display. While many countries and states around the world are struggling to keep up with their legislation on the matter, the use of drones has become something almost unavoidable in commercial video productions.
Audiences and clients are simply craving for those enticing establishing shots that add so much production value to your visual storytelling and can easily impress with some mind-boggling perspectives. So, if you are a drone user, chances are you’ve already landed (pun intended!) on one of the offerings in DJI’s lineup. Here, we have a couple of tips to get the most out of the Mavic 2 Pro, one of the best choices you can currently make in the drone world.
The Mavic 2 Pro is a great choice, first of all for its portability. Once folded, it fits easily in a backpack and you can take it for a long hike with no problem, weighing in at less than a kg.
For the price and weight, it’s difficult to get better images. One factor you should consider, though, is the price. If you’re an amateur or a beginner in the drone field, you may be better off with some of the smaller drones in DJI’s lineup, such as the Spark or the Mavic Air.
There are many accessories you’ll find for your drone, but none can be more important than having a good amount of batteries. Forcing the drone to get everything out of a battery is not a good practice, it’s only a matter of time before you’ll make a mistake in calculating the remaining time and end with a crash.
Better safe than sorry, so get a couple more batteries as priority one on the list. Immediately after that come ND filters. Just as it is in the case of ground shooting, you’ll have to crank up aperture and shutter speed to expose correctly in a sunny day, thus almost certainly make your footage look weird and unnatural. Hence, a nice Neutral Density filter will allow you to have great looking aerial videos even in the most bright days.
When hiking around it’s great to have the drone ready to fly in your backpack, and while it’s a matter of seconds to get the Mavic ready to fly from it’s folded configuration, it’s not the same for the controller. That’s why you could get a thumbstick protector, a little cover that allows you to have the controller always assembled and ready to go.
Also, it’s highly recommended to have a spare SD card for your footage by picking a good and fast one. Slower cards may seem to work in the beginning, but more often than not, you may find yourself with corrupted files due to the lack of speed of the card. And since SD cards have got so cheap nowadays, it would be a real shame not to invest in a quality one.
On the security side, there are a couple of things you should always keep in mind, like waiting that extra couple of seconds the drone needs to lock up with the GPS signal.
You definitely don’t want it to catch up mid-air and decide to move those few feet on the side and go crash in a tree. Another a bit counterintuitive safety tip covered in the video is to fly high. You may think you’re better off not too high, but truth is that up in the air, there are fewer things to crash into.
Last but not least, set your manual exposure right from the beginning and avoid your camera deciding to change the setting right in the middle of an otherwise perfect shot. You can also help yourself by enabling the histogram and zebras at all time so that you can keep an eye on while shooting.
So, this was a quick round-up of some helpful tips for using your drone, now it’s up to you. Are you ready to take off?
[source: Engadget]
Order Links:
DJI Mavic 2 Pro Drone (B&H, Amazon)
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