Over The River, Through The Woods // DJI Mavic Pro!

These are some of the shots I got over my Christmas holiday with my Mavic Pro. I am definitely learning more about this little drone, and about what it can and cannot do well. It can certainly fly well, and for the most part capture great images. However, as you will see in a few shots, it needs contrast. And light.
This is an edit that has been fairly frustrating for me, because in the still shots I had, the landscape was sharp and had good contrast, and in the thumbnails for the videos, they looked fantastic. However, as I looked more and more at the footage, I noticed more imperfections. For example, in a few shots where there are large clusters of trees, it is just mush. I think this is because the lower bit rate keeps it from being able to keep all those details, so if there isn't a lot of contrast and brightness, it just lumps things like branches all in together. That's frustrating. Take the first image in this video, for example. If you look at the tips of the trees that poke out over the horizon, they are crisp, sharp, and contrasty. But in the same shot, the trees on the bottom of the frame are very soft. Like, weirdly soft. If I didn't know better, I would think there was something on my lens, but I know that's not the case. Also, in some of the shots of the field of tall grass/wheat, there is macro blocking in the bright areas near the sun. I wonder if this drone just works better for man-made things that have sharp, definite angles, and not necessarily for organic things that have less predictable detail.
So, what I've decided to do is look past the pixels and try to take in each image as a whole palette. In that regard, I like this video. Just watch it on a phone or a small screen and it'll shine! Haha. I'm definitely still keeping the Mavic, but I'm going to be more careful about how/when I use it.
Music is "Revelation" by James Joshua Otto. Used under Creative Commons License.