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First off - I don’t work for DJI and am in no way sponsored or rewarded for this post or the content.
That said, WOW this is an awesome piece of kit and super easy to get used to, I opted for the FlyMore Combo and have already bought 2-additional batteries, I love the perspective that the arial view provides, one battery is not going to be enough for you that is for sure.
I am new to flying drones so this isn’t going to be overly new or useful to any experienced drone pilots out there, but anyone new to flying a drone or reading these forums to help they decide if they should take the plunge might hopefully find this of interest and use.
I opted for the second control option, here the left stick controls height, ascending and descending and rotates the drone left and right without changing its position. The Go Fly app really is so easy to use and intuitive.
I did try the first option but found that the controls as per option 2-seemed the easiest to get used to. Its maybe a personal thing, but it seems logical that the left stick (as you look forward) controls height and rotates the craft whilst the right moves the drone forwards, backwards and left and right.
I set my return to home height high, 90M and used the auto takeoff. There are heaps of videos on YouTube as to what are the best camera settings so I won’t go into those here, I also am a still photographer rather than video, but may well in time as I get more used to it use the Mavic to shoot video too.
Possibly the most nerve wracking aspect of the first flight was removing the camera lens cover to use a ND filter, the gimble is so fluid in its movement and you have to use a little bit of force, more than it seems logical or sensible to do in relation to sophisticated electronic equipment, that said as I have swapped these over and around ti seems to have become easier to do.
My first point I would share is not to panic and to take your time, let the drone lift and get some height, keep it in view and to start with stick the controller in T-Tripod mode, this slows it down and just gives you more time to understand how you are affecting the flying of the drone with your control movements, if you get concerned or lose sight of it, just hit the auto return to home, the befit of setting this altitude high initially is that it then just hovers way above you free of anything to crash into.
In fact, taking your time is possibly the best advice I can give, I was playing with the quick shots and the drone was circling me when I noticed it was about to fly sidewards (the Mavic Air 2 doesn’t have side sensors and this has been referenced a few times on YourTube videos) but as soon as you touch your phone you stop any autopilot movements, the drone stops and I was then able to work my way out of the first spread of branches.
It is incredibly responsive, one of the concerns I had was around positioning and holding position in order to frame my shots, this isn’t a concern, it holds position incredibly well and is very easy to position for your shot.
Once you have positioned the lens for the shote you can then pretty much, aperture aside use most of the functions of your DSLR to assist you in capturing the image, again take your time and just focus on image, let the drone hold its position and don’t feel the need to fly it.
As a photographer there are a few moans but then hopefully a firmware update will address these, you cant shoot just RAW, you have to shoot JPEG and RAW, this isn’t a huge issue but does slow the system down somewhat when shooting burst or Pano’s due to the processing required to develop the JPEG images.
On Pano’s there doesn’t seem to be a way to process these as RAW files in Lightroom or Photoshop, the system processes the images and produces a JPEG image, you can still take this into PS and go into Camera RAW settings, but you are losing a lot of the dynamic range of course.
I’d prefer the option to shoot exclusively in RAW from a processing advantage point as well as speed of processing perspective
I’ve ordered a Freewell filter kit as the one in the FlyMore Combo pack doesn’t have a polariser, I shoot a lot of water and this would be essential I would suggest, certainly on my first look at the images it would be beneficial.
It seems (at least so far) easier to use the view on the controller than to manually keep sight of the drone, that way you can focus on the lens view as you would when photographing generally - I have customised the function button to realign the gimble and this is already proving to be really useful, if it is off centre it centres it, if it is central it drops it to take overhead shots.
I was photographing surfers at Bells Beach this weekend and had it around 10-20 metres above them, it is so quiet only a couple of them spotted it, presumably after hearing it.
Take your time and don’t feel a need to fly the drone out of trouble, if you get concerned or are worried about anything ascend and take the time to regather your thoughts and composure, same goes for shooting, take your time and experiment with the settings. Don’t feel rushed or the need to try and fly and photograph, get the drone into position and then revert back into photography mode.
I’d say get a couple more batteries if you could and a filter set, or at least a polariser.
This really is an incredible machine, I love it and only wished I had been quicker to take the plunge and buy a drone.
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lvl.2
Captain
