My first flight

synaesthesia · Feb 5, 2018

So I'm new to drones, model aircraft, in remote controlled anything in general actually. I have been looking at buying a drone for several years but was always stumped by the signal range and battery range conundrum along with wanting a decent enough camera to capture some nice shots but not wanting to spend thousands of pounds on something that I felt I'd put in a tree on its first flight.

After long enough I eventually purchased a DJI Mavic Air, which arrived a few days ago. Here is the video of my first flight. Actually, this is also a video of my first use of Adobe Premiere in addition to my first flight. I don't have anything like neutral density filters for this yet so this was flown completely stock with a very fast shutter speed to get the right brightness which results in propeller shadow being visible at some points within the video and I'm still flying by poking at the sticks like I'm playing Playstation rather than properly gripping the sticks and I think that's obvious in the way the drone moves... either way, it's a learning experience!

Let me know if you have any feedback on anything about this video, from the flying to the shots to my positioning with the sun to anything I do with the editing within Premiere as I'm new to all of it.

My first impressions is that for such a tiny drone it definitely holds its own against both sudden gusts of wind and constant blowing but I don't really have anything to compare it to since it's the first time I've flown. It handled it a lot better than I expected and while the footage from it is obviously not perfect I feel it's not bad for a first attempt by a complete newbie. I enjoyed the whole experience and can't wait for the next opportunity to get in the air!

VARSITY · Feb 5, 2018

You have no right to expect to be that good at a first attempt. I like your style. Edit, just realised this was the AIR, I thought it was Mavic Pro, all the more credit to you

Tommytucka · Feb 5, 2018

not bad mate, you’ll get better with time

philh24 · Feb 5, 2018

I enjoyed watching this, had to watch it twice. For a first attempt that was really good[emoji106]

Irish-apple · Feb 5, 2018

synaesthesia · Feb 19, 2018

Here's my next flight, I feel the control of the drone is a lot better (not as many jerky movements) but the exposure is all over the place. It was an overcast day with intermittent breaks in the cloud that resulted in lots of sun. There are a few sections of this video that I feel are quite good (a couple of shots of the viaduct where the reds come out nicely and the shot at the end with the wind turbine with the sun behind the drone in particular) but the rest have come out rather white...

Is this just a case of spending more time changing settings for each bit of video I capture or am I missing a few tricks here?

Nozzography · Feb 19, 2018

Really nice mate, seems like you’ve been on a similar sort of journey to myself with learning how to control the drone to create a more cinematic feel to it. After my first video (and I’ve only created 3, I’m no pro lol) I asked for feedback and was told to not have such jerky movements but to pretty much always keep the drone on a straight path. It can be up down, forward back, but never really turning in mid air. I’ll link my first video that I did so you can see the mistakes I made with that.

I’m also struggling with the exposures and colour correcting, trying to research it to improve. I think an ND filter will help.

I like in your 2nd video how you incorporate set filming techniques like following the tracks and speeding up, reveals etc. One point I’d say is maybe shorten your video, trouble with shooting in one location is that it can cause a viewer to lose interest unless you’re utilising a lot of different angles and techniques to keep them engaged. Try and tell a story - another piece of advice I was given.

The following was the first video I made. I had a DJI Phantom 3 Standard and I’m going to upgrade to the Mavic Air next month.

This one is my next video where I try to stop turning the drone and use different techniques. Let me know what you think and anything you’d change to improve it too. Main area for me is learning to expose my image properly.