UAV aerial photography operation tutorial

1. Slowly

The first tip is to fly slowly. Flying slowly creates a cinematic effect, giving the audience a high-level feeling as if it was shot with professional equipment and a helicopter. Flying slower can make the drone more controllable. Especially single-person operation of drones.

If it is not necessary, try to move the remote control stick as little as possible to make the movement of the drone progressive, so that the drone can slow down when accelerating and decelerating. Otherwise, the lens will have obvious frustration, increasing the chance of lens distortion and jelly effect.

Plan your route as much as possible. Before starting to shoot, it is best to spend some time to familiarize yourself with the environment of the shooting location, which will help you develop the best aerial photography route. Not only does this make shooting smoother, but it also uses the battery more efficiently. Otherwise, you may encounter an embarrassing situation where the drone battery is low when you need to reshoot. Remember, battery power is currently the biggest shortcoming of drones.

There are two ways to slow down the movement speed of the drone:

First: Increase the length of the rocker. As we all know, the control input of a drone is directly proportional to the change of the joystick angle. Increasing the length of the joystick can unconsciously increase the thread of finger movement. The same finger movement distance produces smaller angle changes, and the amount of input is also reduced.

The rocker is actually divided into two sections. First, twist the upper section counterclockwise to the appropriate length, and then twist the lower section counterclockwise until the upper section is locked.

The maximum length can be increased by 1.5, see the comparison before and after the growth below:

Second: Reduce the EXP value. The EXP value can be modified in the DJI GO flight control parameter settings. This option represents the exponential relationship between the actual push rod amount on the remote controller and the output logic stick amount.

Third: Reduce braking sensitivity. Reducing brake sensitivity will slow down the sudden response when braking, and the lens changes will be smoother. [Note] Reducing the braking sensitivity also increases the braking stroke, so be careful to maintain a safe braking distance when controlling the drone.

Fourth: Reduce the gimbal wheel movement speed parameter. Decrease the movement speed of the gimbal wheel according to the shooting needs. Personally, I think 40 is more suitable for most situations.

2. Multi-dimensional flight

The shooting of many movies is not a single shot of forward, backward, up, down, left and right, but mostly multi-dimensional angle shots. For example, add descending or rising while the drone is moving forward or backward, and add rotation during rising or falling. These movements require multiple practices to become familiar with and master.

3. Panning lens

At present, many aerial landscape clips are mainly shot from the front, which lacks freshness for the audience, so using panning lenses more often can give the audience a better understanding of the scene. How fresh. Just like when shooting, framing the scene below 0.5 meters or above 2 meters will be more shocking and easier to create a blur.

4. First sight lens

First sight lens is mostly used for fast-moving shots, such as chase shots, which will make people feel like they are in an aircraft. Most of this kind of lens has a fixed camera position, allowing the movement of the drone to be directly fed back into the lens, especially the tilting sensation caused by Yaw's movements. The 4k large screen effect is better.

5. Add a gimbal movement effect

Adding gimbal movement while flying at multiple angles can add more freshness and shock to the audience. For example, if you add a head-up shot while advancing and ascending, will it give you the feeling of the rising sun?

This is easier to accomplish with multiple dual-control or multi-control flying shots. Single control requires the use of fixed heading or fixed waypoint functions to simplify the control of the aircraft, and requires more practice.

6. Scene parallax effect

When shooting, you can fly over the obstacles of trees or buildings, so that the depth of field of the scene suddenly increases, to achieve a shocking feeling of huge contrast between the front and rear scenes. . When shooting, the focal length of the lens needs to be locked at infinity, so that the drone is very close to the obstruction, preferably with some blur. The drone rises at 45 degrees. When flying, the depth of field of the scene suddenly increases. Another method is to let the drone fly quickly close to the top of the tree. The lens will create a strong sense of oppression, and then slowly rise up the slope. At the same time, with the camera raising its head, the lens will give the audience a sense of sudden enlightenment.

7. Do not use a camera that rotates in place

A camera that rotates in place will give the audience a very abrupt and dizzy feeling. In addition, the drone will be affected by the wind to some extent at high altitudes, and it is impossible to reach a stationary state, especially when it is difficult to maintain a horizontal height, so rotating the lens in place will definitely be accompanied by up and down tremors.

8. Make full use of side light

All photography techniques on the ground can be used in aerial photography, especially in the use of light, making full use of the side lights of sunrise and sunset. The light effect makes it easier to produce sugar water tablets

9. Metering lock

During the aerial photography process, the altitude may change greatly, so the light will also change greatly. If the camera uses automatic metering, the exposure of the video will also change during scene changes, which may result in underexposure of the subject being photographed. In order to keep the exposure of the subject consistent during the shooting process, the metering must be locked.

The operation is as follows:

First let the subject enter the frame, click on the subject on the DJI GO APP screen to expose the subject correctly, click on the lock next to AE in the upper right corner of the screen, when the lock is locked, the exposure will be Locked. If you tap the screen again at this time, the metering will be invalid.

10. From point to surface

It gives you the shock of taking a shot to the end.