For my fourth test with the new Phantom 3 Professional, I wanted to fly around some obstacles. Up to this point in my testing, I’ve mostly flown in wide open areas where the only thing I really had to pay attention to was what was happening with the quad. The problem here is that wide open flat places don’t make terribly interesting subjects for photos or videos. My goal with shooting aerial images isn’t just to take a picture or video from up high. It’s to get a unique view of something that is interesting on its own. To do this, I decided to test in a beautiful park in midtown Oklahoma City called Edgemere.

Flying around obstacles provides several unique challenges. The most obvious one is maintaining visual contact with the Phantom. The law requires that I can see my quad at all times while flying, but my Superman powers are rusty and I don’t see well through trees. That meant I had to be able to move a little bit while I was flying to achieve certain shots I wanted to get. Walking and piloting a fast moving quadcopter will humble you really quickly.

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Early this year, I started flying small rc quadcopters for fun. I learned on micros, then moved to minis. I spent a lot of hours in the evening (and even during breaks at the office) flying as much as a could. I bought a fleet of batteries for my favorite quad so I could spend as much time in the air as possible. I even got to rebuild a friend’s bigger quadcopter after a catastrophic crash, teaching me a lot about the parts that make up these birds. I crashed a lot too, but could very clearly see progress in my control and skills over time.

I learned a lot of what I know about RC flying the same way I learn most new things: I went to YouTube. It didn’t take much time learning on YouTube to figure out that there are several different worlds within RC quadcopters: FPV racing (small, very fast quads flown while wearing goggles that show you real time footage from an onboard camera for a first person view), Game of Drones (think Battle Bots with quadcopters), and finally aerial photography. I studied Photographic Arts in college, and though I don’t shoot nearly as much as I did then, I still have a passion for photography. It seemed like it might be time to see about combining my new hobby of flying with my old one of photography. Read More →