AV News: Dronedazzle - Drone Gear

Description: Welcome to our final edition of Dronedazzle 2018, your flying and buying guide this holiday season. If your someone special already had a drone, here are a few recommendations from two of our inhouse pilots and producers. Ryan McHugh and Andrew Achter are Part 107 certified pilots with degrees in Digital Media and Production, and Marketing and Graphic Design, respectively. They’ve worked on some of our biggest projects and know a thing or two about drones and production. First up, our self-described camera-tech nerd, Ryan’s recommendations, “One thing you can get for your drone is Lume Cubes. Lume Cubes by themselves are just really high-powered LED lights that are battery powered, but there are a couple of attachments you can buy in order to mount them on your drones. Phantom drones and Inspire drones all have mounts.” Ryan and other pilots have used the lights to illuminate the drone itself, illuminate a subject, or for long-exposure photography. However, Lume Cubes have a practical use as well, “Another use you can use Lume Cubes for is anti-collision lighting. That’s for when you’re flying at night so other aircraft can see you. It’s the same kind of lighting that airplanes and helicopters have – they have those blinking lights to help see them at night – that’s anti-collision lighting. Lume Cubes can help with that as well.” Lights start at around $70. Found for under $30 – Ryan has a stocking stuffer item worth checking out: ND Filters. “ND Filters are great because they help cut back the exposure of the image you’re looking at. So, really good for bright sunny days and especially good for drones like the Spark or the Mavic Air because you don’t have aperture control with those cameras. With ND Filters you can kind of mitigate that on your exposure by using those,” Ryan said. Ryan’s final recommendation is a little pricier, but he says it’s a perfect and easy gift for professionals who fly an Inspire, “Someone that’s using drones for professional cinematography might be able to use a DJI Inspire upgrade. Out of the box it can shoot in an H264 video format, but you have the option to upgrade that. It’s a little bit of money, but with the upgrade you’re able to shoot in ProRes and CinemaDNG Raw which allows for a lot of flexibility in post-production with color and everything else.” Next up, Andrew’s selections. A bit of a travel-junkie, Andrew’s first recommendation is prefect for your adventuring pilot, “I realized after I got the DJI Mavic Air that it was really compact, but I also wanted to be able to put my other camera gear in the same bag so I didn’t have to carry multiple bags. This bag has a camera insert so it allows me to fit several camera lenses, as well as a drone, remote, batteries, and it’s just been really convenient to fit everything into one bag.” Andrew says the name of the company isn’t his favorite, but he’s tried out other options and really likes their bags and the removable camera insert “The CIA,” since it can attach to the outside of the backpack – giving you more space inside the bag. The CIA retails for just under $80, backpacks start at $100. If your drone pilot is editing her videos on a basic software, like iMovie, consider getting her a year’s subscription to Adobe Premiere. Andrew says there are a ton of reasons to use Premiere over free software, but three features really help with editing drone videos, “One thing Premiere Pro allows you to do that you can’t quite accomplish on iMovie is speed ramping. It basically allows you to speed up beginings and ends of clips so that you can transition in between. And its just kind of a cool style to add to videos that you get when you are using a more professional program. Another great thing is color correction. This allows you to make your videos look more professional because it can really key in on what look you want your video to have. A lot of beginners don’t really focus on this and it’s not really as necessary, but it’s nice to have your own style and look to your videos. Image stabilization is definitely big for drones. You do obviously have the built-in gimbal, but there’s a lot of times where the wind will add a little camera shake or will jerk the camera so you’re not flying super smooth and you can literally just drag this warp stabilization preset and it fixes that pretty well.” You can head to Adobe Creative Cloud’s website to learn about prices and packages. For his final selection, Andrew thought of a fun, inexpensive gift that your resident prankster or creative pilot might want in his stocking, “There’s remote control droppers you can attach to a wide array of drones. It’s just a really cool add on to any drone you might have because you can deliver things with whichever drone you have. You can fly from somewhere around 180 feet away and let go via Bluetooth. You can attach like water balloons, a box of cookies, or whatever it may be and it’s just kind of a fun little toy you can add on to whatever other uses you have for your drone.” We’ve used our own dropper a time or two, or three. They’re available from multiple online retailers for under $30. From FPV, to starter drones, professional gear to fun toys and drone attachments, we hope you’ve enjoyed our Dronedazzle series this holiday season. Happy Holidays, everyone! Have fun flying. - Kendall Mark