Quantifying the Pilot vs Photographer Distinction

[Chaosrider]

How much of your total flying activity is spent flying, and how much is spent in post-flight editing? Using an hour of flight time as the metric.

 

[old man mavic]

@Chaosrider ,could you please add a (none) choice ,for people like me who dont do any editing
so you get a balanced poll
thanks OMM

 

[Chaosrider]

@Chaosrider ,could you please add a (none) choice ,for people like me who dont do any editing
so you get a balanced poll
thanks OMM

That would be "Less than half an hour".

Which was my vote!

I see editing as an occasionally necessary evil. But I'm in it for the flying. If you're in it for the art, you'll be on the other end of the spectrum.

Which is fine all around! To each his own!

I'm just curious how the distribution falls out on this list.

Thx.

 

[FLDave]

That would be "Less than half an hour".

Which was my vote!

I see editing as an occasionally necessary evil. But I'm in it for the flying. If you're in it for the art, you'll be on the other end of the spectrum.

Which is fine all around! To each his own!

I'm just curious how the distribution falls out on this list.

Thx.

While zero would numerically be less than half an hour it is vastly different as zero is for those who do no editing and 1 minute is for those who do some editing. Zero is a different class than the 1 minute to 30 minute group.

 

[Phantomrain.org]

When I first started I spent hour on average but now its down to 15 minute per 1 hour footage on the Pictures .

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain. Land on the Water

 

[vindibona1]

I think two distinctions are missing in the poll: Photography vs Video. And flying time vs filming time while flying.
In general, in regard to filming, I think a 3:1 ratio might be close. It all depends on the experience of the editor, the program and the hardware. Photography is a different thing, but has some nuances on its own. are you shooting in raw and just color correcting/grading. Or, are you doing full blown retouching?

I'm still relatively new at video editing, so I'm still learning the nuances of editing and Davinci Resolve as I go along and probably didn't sequence my shoots so I can be efficient. Photography? I can look at the raw images really quickly and only bother with the ones worth bothering with. Full retouching depends on how I will use the image, but most of my aerial images don't need a lot; and I've been doing this a long time so would like to think I'm pretty fast at retouching.

 

[BigAl07]

I'd guess a few years ago editing "Images" was 3/1 edit/flight. Now it's really more like 1/5 due to more efficient editing, composing my images better where-as less editing, and more recently getting a powerful computer that greatly decreases processing time. We shoot mostly in 5-shot or 3-shot AEB and combining the images takes some time to combine all those images into singles. Now with new software, much stronger processing power, and planning my shots better our edits are now very minimal. I spend more time uploading the final images than I do editing them when we edit.

 

[old man mavic]

well unfortunately i will decline to vote on this occasion ,as the criteria do not have a box that fits my experience

 

[lensimages]

As a retired pro photographer I find that the images produced , from all my DJI drones, I shoot in Raw , need very little , stills only, processing. Card into computer photoshop automatically improves the images to an almost exceptable state and need very little tweaking, just resizing, cheers Len

 

[Dale D]

How much of your total flying activity is spent flying, and how much is spent in post-flight editing? Using an hour of flight time as the metric.

In my case, the drone is to supplement my photography 100%. Usually do a multi-media presentation, which might include drone video, drone stills, video from timelapses (created with a DSLR), and video from Osmo's (Action,Pocket,OM4). For a typical shoot, that can amount to 5 or 6 sources or asset folders. All selected stills sources are edited in Photoshop, and all videos are edited in Premiere. A 3 minute video usually takes me about 6 hours of editing, and my recent two full length videos (Africa Sept.2021 and Chile April 2022) took 30 days.

This does not include pilots who use their drone for a living (real estate, mapping, inspections, etc).

So, what I am saying is that each of us comes from a different cohort, and therefore, it is really impossible to run a non-controlled analysis such as this. The poll is therefore a moot point.

Dale
Miami

 

[Chaosrider]

While zero would numerically be less than half an hour it is vastly different as zero is for those who do no editing and 1 minute is for those who do some editing. Zero is a different class than the 1 minute to 30 minute group.

Bowing to popular demand, I added "No Editing" to the poll.

Now I wish I knew how to change the order of the choices so that "No editing" would be positioned properly at the top.

 

[Chaosrider]

I think two distinctions are missing in the poll: Photography vs Video. And flying time vs filming time while flying.
In general, in regard to filming, I think a 3:1 ratio might be close. It all depends on the experience of the editor, the program and the hardware. Photography is a different thing, but has some nuances on its own. are you shooting in raw and just color correcting/grading. Or, are you doing full blown retouching?

I'm still relatively new at video editing, so I'm still learning the nuances of editing and Davinci Resolve as I go along and probably didn't sequence my shoots so I can be efficient. Photography? I can look at the raw images really quickly and only bother with the ones worth bothering with. Full retouching depends on how I will use the image, but most of my aerial images don't need a lot; and I've been doing this a long time so would like to think I'm pretty fast at retouching.

There's always a trade-off between being concise, and being complete. I usually lean toward concise!

 

[Chaosrider]

well unfortunately i will decline to vote on this occasion ,as the criteria do not have a box that fits my experience

There is now!

 

[Eagle Eye 62]

I personally focus so much on video, I forget to take photos. I need to keep that in mind, buy depending on what you are trying to accomplish, editing usually takes more time in my opinion.

 

[Dale D]

Bowing to popular demand, I added "No Editing" to the poll.

Now I wish I knew how to change the order of the choices so that "No editing" would be positioned properly at the top.

you should have an "EDIT" button. After you have edited, hit "SAVE."

 

[vindibona1]

There's always a trade-off between being concise, and being complete. I usually lean toward concise!

View attachment 148715

You are right about the trade-off. I usually, initially go with the very detailed, seeing which items are important, then throwing away everything that isn't necessary to boil down to the concise. That that provides for me it an in-depth knowledge of a subject. It is difficult to present the "consise" when you don't know that the questioner's background details are. All of this is much easier to do in back and forth CONVERSATION in a phone conversation. Makes it much easier to convey only the relevant information.

FWIW I'm on meds right now that make me a veritable chatty Cathy. Anything and everything right now can take me off on a tangent.

 

[Dave Maine]

Unmentionned so far is logistics. For video, shooting the shots you need in sequence generally means increased overall flight time, and more battery. My workflow prioritizes getting all the shots needed in as efficient manner as possible around battery usage, and using a NLE to sequence them as desired.

You learn a lot about what works and what doesn't when you spend time looking and editing. The guidelines for feature films and other projects is shooting 10X the footage needed for the final piece, and by definition requires a lot of editing time.

 

[old man mavic]

Bowing to popular demand, I added "No Editing" to the poll.

Now I wish I knew how to change the order of the choices so that "No editing" would be positioned properly at the top.

@Chaosrider i have done the alteration to the poll list hope it is ok

 

[Chaosrider]

In my case, the drone is to supplement my photography 100%. Usually do a multi-media presentation, which might include drone video, drone stills, video from timelapses (created with a DSLR), and video from Osmo's (Action,Pocket,OM4). For a typical shoot, that can amount to 5 or 6 sources or asset folders. All selected stills sources are edited in Photoshop, and all videos are edited in Premiere. A 3 minute video usually takes me about 6 hours of editing, and my recent two full length videos (Africa Sept.2021 and Chile April 2022) took 30 days.

This does not include pilots who use their drone for a living (real estate, mapping, inspections, etc).

So, what I am saying is that each of us comes from a different cohort, and therefore, it is really impossible to run a non-controlled analysis such as this. The poll is therefore a moot point.

Dale
Miami

Oh, not at all!

Imprecise does not equal useless!

 

[Dale D]

Oh, not at all!

Imprecise does not equal useless!

In my case, it is extremely imprecise. I do two kinds of flying. Short projects- let's say a half or full day of shooting-driving around my city , stopping and filming, etc. Each stop is different- 10 minutes, one minute, etc. I have no clue as to how many actual flying minutes.

My 2nd kind of flying is while on a trip somewhere. This would consist of intermittent stops, short and long flights, over a 2 week period of time. Again, I have no clue as to the exact number of minutes of actual flying.

So in my case, the poll cannot be accurately answered. I have no idea the total minutes of flying as to the minutes editing. The poll is an exercise in the impossible.

If you put me up against a wall with a firing squad with the threat of death if not answering, I would have to say my ratio of flying time to editing time to be 10%.

Dale