Had a great time this weekend with a friend who has recently acquired a 3DR Iris+.
We took the UAVs to the local park and experimented with shooting pix of each other and taking some video as we played 'follow the leader'.
Had my Son as camera op on the Inspire and it was a whole new set of skills to practise in tracking a moving subject in 3 dimensions.

Maintaining vertical / horizontal separation whilst getting in close enough for a good shot was a bit challenging - we didn't want to hear a bang and see plastic and carbon fibre raining down from 60m up!

Also a great opportunity to fly and experience each other's UAV - very different in their flight responses.
Near the end of the day - we did a 'Top Gear' test with a drag race across the park and back - 3/4 through the Iris+ was well ahead and I realised I was still in GPS mode! Oh well, next time I'll have him!

nice... where are the videos?

I did put one together to share with my Iris + owning friend - but TBH as a stills shooter for many years, I am just on the start of a VERY steep learning curve with shooting / editing video and the results would not measure up to the standard of others here by a LONG way!

Well, here is the video of our flights at the park.
This is the first time I've ever done this sort of thing - no proper tools available yet, put together with boggo Windows movie maker.
Will be setting up the appropriate tools and training over the coming months and hiking that steep learning curve.

Awesome fun though!

How does your friend like the iris+.  Was the performance good and is it easy to maintain and fly as have heard that the software can be a bit overwhelming.

Thanks

He is very happy with it - It's certainly nowhere near as integrated a solution as the Inspire, but it has all the waypoint Nav, follow me and other functions working that we are all waiting for with the Inspire.

He had fitted a GoPro Hero 4 black, which was very impressive - I'm not a fan of the fish eye effect with it's lens though!

Farnk666 Posted at 2015-3-31 15:30
Well, here is the video of our flights at the park.
This is the first time I've ever done this sort  ...

My personal opinion (untrained and inexperienced) is that straight video from I1 is way better than the video from GoPro Hero 4. I guess after a lot of work in post, any of the 2 can reach pretty good quality for the expert eye, and at the same time, none of these cameras are as good as the professional filmmaker's choice(s). I have a few questions though after seeing this video:
- which filter was mounted on the I1? I have noticed some obvious sun spots when shooting against the sun direction (sun above the FOV) and was wondering if using the other filter would reduce this effect.
- is the GoPro Hero 4 producing a weird effect when tilting the camera caused by the fish-eye view? I have been flying a P2V+ for almost an year and fast tilts always looked like the horizon line was flexed. Haven't tried to remove the radial distortion of the fish-eye lens and I wonder if the weird effect disappears as well. What I don't understand is why the same effect is not seen when fast panning or yawing and only noticeable on vertical (fast-tilting the camera).
- which company to contact to obtain the distortion model of the camera on the I1... Sony or DJI? I have tried to measure the distortion parameters based on a radial model (Conrady coefficients) and I have a feeling that this camera has other types of distortions (surface model) due to the 3x3 CCD panels and possibly an internal correction algorithm before the images / video frames are compressed and / or saved on the media. Pix4D mapper application has a database of camera distortions and they use a radial (Conrady) model to correct the 12Mb pixels snapshots from the I1. I believe that their parameters are not very accurately computed and also they can only be applied on the 12 Mb snapshots, since the video frames at different resolutions (4K24P, 4K30K, 1080P60K,...) would have a different internal orientation, thus different correction coefficients are required.
Regards,
Bogdan

bornish@gmail.c Posted at 2015-4-1 13:51
My personal opinion (untrained and inexperienced) is that straight video from I1 is way better tha ...

Hey Bogdan,

It was the standard ND filter on the I1. Given it was later evening, I was pretty happy with the flare and artefacts - A big difference in exposure between ground and sky at that time. The video from both is as it came from the cameras - I don't have colour grading / management tools to hand right now.

Yep, the Go Pro lens is doing the wierd effect you refer to - One of the reasons I went with the Inspire is that I personally just don't like the fish eye effect. I know it can be sorted in post, but I don't have those skills (yet)

No Idea re the distortion model - haven't got to that stage in my personal journey yet. I am keen to have a play with Pix4d myself however!