ALL TOO FAMILIAR…

Ten years ago (I think), I got a DJI Phantom 1 for my birthday in sixth grade. The original DJI drone, these were pretty old school – no built in camera (I had to 3M adhesive one on myself) and Lithium Polymer batteries that wouldn’t recharge if fully depleted. While it was super cool to have at my age, I more less used it as a toy rather than a piece of camera equipment. I ended up selling it to a friend in 8th grade for about $100 (after I had crashed it a significant amount of times). He was very excited.

Since then, DJI has released a slew of new products, and are actually on the Phantom 4 Pro V2. They have several other lines, and it felt fun to get back in the saddle with the Mavic Pro. After taking a few minutes to shake off a decade’s worth of rust (see left), it felt rather familiar controlling it, everything was largely the same. I think the biggest concern was that the drone was not mine, which caused me to be a bit more cautious with my flying style. The Mavic also handled a bit differently, likely due to its smaller profile and weight. One neat thing that DJI has added since the original phantom is a landing pad (see right), which the drone can seek and land on, which is a lot safer than grabbing it out of the air like I did with my Phantom.

Lots of automotive influencers use drones, and I can see several applications. Whether it be god shots that slowly zoom in on a car, or capturing motion,  it seems like they have a lot of potential to be used in my work. I see a lot of potential in my mini doc homage to Top Gear and The Grand Tour, where they incorporate drone shots a lot into their car reviews in exotic locales.

           While I may not be able to have the same skill as the BBC or Amazon, I think I can successfully recreate some of the shots that make their content so special.