WARNING: CONTENTS OF THIS VIDEO MAY BE OFFENSIVE TO SOME, ESPECIALLY PHOTOGRAPHERS WHO HAVE FELT THE PAIN OF GEAR LOSS.
In the days before my trip to Iceland, I had the chance to play with the DJI Phantom, an affordable, out-of-the-box quadcopter for budding aerial videographers. As I establish in that test flight post, the footage you yield from the DJI Phantom + GoPro combo may not be pro quality, but it’s perfectly serviceable for BTS material, AND it gives a person the opportunity to cut their teeth on a rig that comes in under a grand (or just slightly over, if you include the camera).
Ever the hacks, we tried to circumvent the GoPro limitation and mount a Sony RX 100 II, for three reasons:
1. The RX 100 II has image stabilizations (many commented on the shakiness of the GoPro footage on our first test flight).
2. It has a nice sensor and shoots RAW images.
3. Built-in Wifi. Our plan was to use the iPad Mini with the Sony app and control the camera shutter from the ground.
Seem pretty reasonable, right?
When you watch the video, know this: It brings us no joy to lose expensive gear, ever. I don’t encourage people to go out and perform needless hacks and unsanctioned upgrades, especially if you’re not insured, like we were. In our case we had a legit interest in yielding some higher end footage with a DJI Phantom we had invested in.
Couple UPDATE points… any assumption that i was just goofing around at tourist site just plyaing with my camera couldn’t be further from the truth. we had chartered the entire site for the shoot, been out on boats there at the site earlier – were working with the management there, paying high fees to be there with permits for very specific objectives. We also sought to potentially recover the unit out of concern for the environment but were discouraged from pursuing that option because of danger to divers due to swift current, big tides and huge floating chunks of dangerous ice.
Thanks again for going on this journey – and others – with me. And I hope you don’t mind my sharing all the stuff – even things like this that suck.
I truly appreciate this send. I’ve been looking every one of greater than on behalf of this! Thank goodness I found it on Bing. You have ended my day! Thx again
Hi Chase, just a quick tip for any sort of wifi related problems .. wich is this one I think .. try to install one of the many wififrequency scanner apps (there are some pretty good ones .. some hard search but they are out there .. so you can check for some free frequencys when operating multiple devices …
yeah but what about the fashion fail? those one piece snow suits and the crazy hats?… π
So, what would you do differently if you wanted to try it again?
wow, you’ve got a nice insurance company here, would you mind recommending it to us?
I’m in the market to get insurance for my gear and to know that you’ll be reimbursed after that… even with this footage published π
I’d love to throw and destroy my stuff in an epic manner every once in a while to get whatever the latest in the market is π
Very interested to know the insurance company if they pay up after this video is posted online!