I love my Mavic 3 cine, but the limitations it imposes when it doesn't get GPS lock can ruin your gig, beware.
Last night I was on a shoot in downtown LA and we were working between rows of very tall buildings. Basically even under ideal conditions, you can only get about five satellites in that space, which means the drone would limit itself to 9 ft. About 50% of the time, and typically only if I walk to the end of the rows of buildings, I would be able to get a few more satellites, just enough to go up a little higher to get more satellites and eventually get above the buildings to get lock. After that I could come back down and shoot the scene, even after it lost satellites. But it's that initial phase where if you can't get past that initial restriction, you're just stuck.
There really should be some way to bypass that... To go into atti mode and fend for yourself. If you're using these drones in professional setting, this one will come back and bite you. What if you were on a TV show shooting under the jungle canopy, as I was last year?
In this case, luckily when it was my turn for the 250 person production to stop everything and wait for the drone shot, I had already gone up to the end of the row and messed around with it for a half hour or so, so I was able to get up to the roof line and get enough satellites to be able to run the shot.
I brought my Inspire 2, and would have just used that, but in tight confines like that and on that type of show, that's exactly what the Mavic 3 should be great for. Much safer and quieter which is great when shooting that type of TV show with crowds of people in a confined space.
Especially considering the difficulty of acquiring satellites even under ideal conditions, the Mavic 3 should be able to at least fly higher than 9 ft before it acquires a lock. I'm going to be on the lookout for a firmware hack to defeat this. If anybody knows of one, pass it along please
Last night I was on a shoot in downtown LA and we were working between rows of very tall buildings. Basically even under ideal conditions, you can only get about five satellites in that space, which means the drone would limit itself to 9 ft. About 50% of the time, and typically only if I walk to the end of the rows of buildings, I would be able to get a few more satellites, just enough to go up a little higher to get more satellites and eventually get above the buildings to get lock. After that I could come back down and shoot the scene, even after it lost satellites. But it's that initial phase where if you can't get past that initial restriction, you're just stuck.
There really should be some way to bypass that... To go into atti mode and fend for yourself. If you're using these drones in professional setting, this one will come back and bite you. What if you were on a TV show shooting under the jungle canopy, as I was last year?
In this case, luckily when it was my turn for the 250 person production to stop everything and wait for the drone shot, I had already gone up to the end of the row and messed around with it for a half hour or so, so I was able to get up to the roof line and get enough satellites to be able to run the shot.
I brought my Inspire 2, and would have just used that, but in tight confines like that and on that type of show, that's exactly what the Mavic 3 should be great for. Much safer and quieter which is great when shooting that type of TV show with crowds of people in a confined space.
Especially considering the difficulty of acquiring satellites even under ideal conditions, the Mavic 3 should be able to at least fly higher than 9 ft before it acquires a lock. I'm going to be on the lookout for a firmware hack to defeat this. If anybody knows of one, pass it along please
