Grandstaff Canyon - I'd love your feedback

[IShouldBeWorking]

Hi everybody,

Over the holidays, I finally found time to edit together the last of my footage from a trip to Moab this past fall. The shots are all from Grandstaff Canyon, just east of town. Everything was filmed in 4k in DLog10 on my Mavic 2 Pro and edited together using DaVinci Resolve 16. Because I was shooting at sunrise, the shots have different lighting conditions and I've done some work to try and make them match. Not sure if it hurts or helps. But I'd love feedback from you all about the editing, flying, color, music, whatever you'd like. I want to keep learning from you all.

Thanks a million! Wishing you all many wonderful flights in the new year!

 

[MAvic_South_Oz]

Fantastic location.
Hard to edit light where those deep gorges and rising sun mix it up, but you did a good job I think.
Would love to walk in that sort of terrain, you'd feel pretty small in the midst of those towering walls.

 

[sar104]

Still my favorite mountain biking location. Great views of the rim on Slickrock and Porcupine. That was challenging lighting.

 

[Skyflyer129]

Happy Holidays! What a fun looking location to fly in, your video conveys that nicely. Was wondering what distances you were flying and if there were any signal lost? Thanks for posting.
Blue skies from SoCal

 

[IShouldBeWorking]

Thank you! @MAvic_South_Oz, @sar104 and @Skyflyer129. I love the beauty and variety of Southern Utah. Those red rock cliffs do make you feel pretty small. And I agree with @sar104 on the amazing mountain biking. Some of the world's best and so much fun. Although in the future, I think I'll stop trying to catch the light at sunrise and just fly when the light is less extreme.

@Skyflyer129, I didn't have any signal issues and the video downlink stayed solid the whole time. I flew from the parking lot at the mouth of the canyon. You can see it in some of the shots. Then I just kept the Mavic in sight while I flew. I just looked at my logs from that day and the farthest the drone got was about 1,600 feet from the home point. Main thing to keep signal strong is just to keep terrain from getting between you and the drone. Happy holidays and happy flying!

 

[Photo Beaty]

I loved your video. I live and fly south of Moab and your video has given me inspiration to fly more down in the canyons. As those massive canyon walls passed by in the video with Fall colors in the canyon bottom it is hard to imagine anything more beautiful. Nice smooth flying and your transitions were very good.

 

[Mavic Air Head]

Great flying, really nice smooth shots. I live near there and have similar canyons in my "backyard" in Colorado that I fly with my MA.
I am by no means criticizing your work (my post skills are pretty weak), just throwing out that the saturation seems pretty soft compared to what my footage gives me. Do you use filters? I don't yet. I get some of the same saturation issues when I transition the view to the stark contrast between the shaded and skyline shots, but my shaded shots are pretty true to life with the deepness of the various hues in comparison.
We recently had a rare orange morning sunrise where everything looked surreal, like a Maxfield Parrish winter scene and I really wish I was in a canyon when it happened. Morning and evening light can yield awesome results when the clouds contribute. Of course everyone wants those typical clear blue days.
In the Moab area you can get some great sunset shots where shadows from mountain ranges to the west break up the vibrant oranges of the setting sun. It's a great setting for something similar to the Japanese Rising Sun effect. It's one of the best places to go for dynamic sunsets.

 

[apeel]

I enjoyed the editing and soundtrack synchronization. Color grading looked like a challenge. Perhaps it would have been better at golden hour rather than early morning. Overall nice job though!

 

[IShouldBeWorking]

Great flying, really nice smooth shots. I live near there and have similar canyons in my "backyard" in Colorado that I fly with my MA.
I am by no means criticizing your work (my post skills are pretty weak), just throwing out that the saturation seems pretty soft compared to what my footage gives me. Do you use filters? I don't yet. I get some of the same saturation issues when I transition the view to the stark contrast between the shaded and skyline shots, but my shaded shots are pretty true to life with the deepness of the various hues in comparison.
We recently had a rare orange morning sunrise where everything looked surreal, like a Maxfield Parrish winter scene and I really wish I was in a canyon when it happened. Morning and evening light can yield awesome results when the clouds contribute. Of course everyone wants those typical clear blue days.
In the Moab area you can get some great sunset shots where shadows from mountain ranges to the west break up the vibrant oranges of the setting sun. It's a great setting for something similar to the Japanese Rising Sun effect. It's one of the best places to go for dynamic sunsets.

Thanks! Yeah, I think the early hour I shot that made it look that way. I do always use ND filters when shooting video to ensure I can keep my shutter at 1/60. I don't recall exactly which one I had on the camera this particular morning. Here's some video from that same trip but it was shot around mid day. You can see the difference it makes. I think I had my ND32 or 64 for on for these because the sun was so bright.

 

[IShouldBeWorking]

Thanks @Photo Beaty and @apeel. I'll be looking forward to going back down there and shooting some more to see if I can make my shooting even better.

 

[Mavic Air Head]

Thanks! Yeah, I think the early hour I shot that made it look that way. I do always use ND filters when shooting video to ensure I can keep my shutter at 1/60. I don't recall exactly which one I had on the camera this particular morning. Here's some video from that same trip but it was shot around mid day. You can see the difference it makes. I think I had my ND32 or 64 for on for these because the sun was so bright.

Oh, very nice. I'm still pretty much Auto on a lot of my settings, and in comparison I can see the benefit of the filter with this clip. Now everyone will flock to Moab. Again, stellar flying, you really capture the epic scale of Corona. Are you using any settings like tripod, or just good steady control? I want to get to Newspaper Rock sometime, there are times when no one is there and so many of the petroglyphs are high enough that a drone's eye view would be fascinating. I know of a lot of petroglygh panels that aren't mapped that I've been documenting with my MA. White Rim Road offers some great opportunities when you get out of Canyonlands NP. Why does work have to get in the way? Thanks for posting these.

 

[IShouldBeWorking]

Oh, very nice. I'm still pretty much Auto on a lot of my settings, and in comparison I can see the benefit of the filter with this clip. Now everyone will flock to Moab. Again, stellar flying, you really capture the epic scale of Corona. Are you using any settings like tripod, or just good steady control? I want to get to Newspaper Rock sometime, there are times when no one is there and so many of the petroglyphs are high enough that a drone's eye view would be fascinating. I know of a lot of petroglygh panels that aren't mapped that I've been documenting with my MA. White Rim Road offers some great opportunities when you get out of Canyonlands NP. Why does work have to get in the way? Thanks for posting these.

Thanks! Most of those flights were in manual mode just flying around. I did use point of interest orbit mode a couple of times to go around the arch.

I love your ideas for shooting around newspaper rock and the petroglyphs. That would be very cool. Another location I’d like to fly is out by Fisher Towers. https://www.visitutah.com/things-to-do/hiking/moab-hiking/fisher-towers/ I think that would look amazing. So many cool places to fly out in that desert.

 

[sar104]

Thanks! Most of those flights were in manual mode just flying around. I did use point of interest orbit mode a couple of times to go around the arch.

I love your ideas for shooting around newspaper rock and the petroglyphs. That would be very cool. Another location I’d like to fly is out by Fisher Towers. https://www.visitutah.com/things-to-do/hiking/moab-hiking/fisher-towers/ I think that would look amazing. So many cool places to fly out in that desert.

Every time I've been to Fisher Towers it's been too windy. But I agree that it would make for spectacular aerial views of Ancient Art and its neighbors.

 

[Mavic Air Head]

Every time I've been to Fisher Towers it's been too windy. But I agree that it would make for spectacular aerial views of Ancient Art and its neighbors.

The trick with Fisher Towers is often time of day- morning and evening can be challenging (but dynamic views) as air moves away or toward the Colorado River (cold dropping/warm rising). Big Bend offers some great canyon/ water views.

 

[IShouldBeWorking]

The trick with Fisher Towers is often time of day- morning and evening can be challenging (but dynamic views) as air moves away or toward the Colorado River (cold dropping/warm rising). Big Bend offers some great canyon/ water views.

Thanks for the tips! I’ll hope to get some footage of Big Bend and Fisher Towers next time I’m down that way.

 

[Almaz Aswad]

Hi everybody,

Over the holidays, I finally found time to edit together the last of my footage from a trip to Moab this past fall. The shots are all from Grandstaff Canyon, just east of town. Everything was filmed in 4k in DLog10 on my Mavic 2 Pro and edited together using DaVinci Resolve 16. Because I was shooting at sunrise, the shots have different lighting conditions and I've done some work to try and make them match. Not sure if it hurts or helps. But I'd love feedback from you all about the editing, flying, color, music, whatever you'd like. I want to keep learning from you all.

Thanks a million! Wishing you all many wonderful flights in the new year!

I thinks it’s good work. I’m new to Aerial shooting and post process for video too. Before I add any further critique, can you post your cam settings and export settings.

 

[IShouldBeWorking]

I thinks it’s good work. I’m new to Aerial shooting and post process for video too. Before I add any further critique, can you post your cam settings and export settings.

Hi Almaz, sure, I'll share what settings I can remember. The original video clips were shot without any ND filter in place with the aperture wide open or maybe one stop down due to the low light. The shutter speed was 1/60 of a second for some nice motion blur. I like to keep the ISO at 100 or 200 but some shots in this vid may have been a bit higher just due to the low light again. Everything was recorded as a 10 bit DLog h.265 video file. As for the output, I'm running the free version of DaVinci Resolve 16, so some of my options are limited but this video was a 4k h.264 file output at 30 frames per second. YouTube, re-encodes everything after I upload it, so what you see online may not be quite as high quality as the original. Hopefully, you enjoyed it. Thanks for watching!

 

[Almaz Aswad]

Hi Almaz, sure, I'll share what settings I can remember. The original video clips were shot without any ND filter in place with the aperture wide open or maybe one stop down due to the low light. The shutter speed was 1/60 of a second for some nice motion blur. I like to keep the ISO at 100 or 200 but some shots in this vid may have been a bit higher just due to the low light again. Everything was recorded as a 10 bit DLog h.265 video file. As for the output, I'm running the free version of DaVinci Resolve 16, so some of my options are limited but this video was a 4k h.264 file output at 30 frames per second. YouTube, re-encodes everything after I upload it, so what you see online may not be quite as high quality as the original. Hopefully, you enjoyed it. Thanks for watching!

Of course. I asked about the settings because your footage does not look like 4k footage, even YouTube compressed footage. It’s just not as sharp as 4K footage. I’m wondering if the rendering and subsequent export was lacking due to not having some features. I‘m gonna watch it again on a couple different screens, to make sure I’m seeing the vid at its highest resolution.

 

[IShouldBeWorking]

Of course. I asked about the settings because your footage does not look like 4k footage, even YouTube compressed footage. It’s just not as sharp as 4K footage. I’m wondering if the rendering and subsequent export was lacking due to not having some features. I‘m gonna watch it again on a couple different screens, to make sure I’m seeing the vid at its highest resolution.

Hmm. Not sure why that would be although, I believe YouTube only streams 4K to Chrome browsers. Any other browser tops out at 1080p.

 

[Almaz Aswad]

Hmm. Not sure why that would be although, I believe YouTube only streams 4K to Chrome browsers. Any other browser tops out at 1080p.

okay, I changed the settings on YouTube from auto to 1080p and it’s much sharper. Anyway, it’s a great video. Some of your gimbal moves were really impressive, as was your use of foreground objects to accent the sense of movement, and parallax effect. Well done?