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Drone Types

So being that there are so many different types of these drones out there so many manufacturers so many different types people are um the biggest question I guess for anybody starting now it's like what should I start with? And my question is what do you want to do with it? You know? And I always suggest that people start start with something a simple as you possibly can the smaller ones the little quad copters they've got they come in a lot of different sizes and shapes ah, a lot of different brands they are drunk parrot some of these little guys little hopes and I'm going to kind of go through a line of him here that we have with us today those air great to start with because you can really learn to fly and that's one thing that people skip a lot getting into this they'll buy it they go oh, I can afford that um and they'll buy it they fly at a couple times they get up and down and I start feeling comfortable and they start well, let me get around that tree and they misjudge it and th...

ey go into the tree um or just aren't paying attention than something happened, so we're going to get in all of those things s o what I always suggest don't get more gear than you can afford to lose or replace or fix um if you go right out and you buy five thousand dollars set up and you're flying it for the first time or the first dozen times and then you crash it do you have the capability of covering that loss so that's why I say start small start simple uh and don't get more than you can afford to break um learn about your gear is your isn't it that's how I've come along I mean I've got this phantom and I caught the book you know, uh that's like okay, how do I take this to the next level? Well, yeah, it was like waiting and waiting and waiting for them to come out with a gimbal so I'd have smoother videos I'm all about the video and then it would be you know, just just one step after another it just gets more and more and more so prepare to have this be a very contagious uh think uh and be patient with yourself none of us learned to drive a car in ten minutes very few people do, so this is the same thing you're flying something you've gotta learn to fly it's it's not just about getting your camera in the air and you're instantly going to get great shots because a lot of these air very forgiving there are there is a lot of forgiveness in these compared to fly in a regular rotor a helicopter but it doesn't mean that they're totally fail safe there's not safeguards like collision avoidance and crash and avoidance and stupidity avoidance yeah, that whole comes that's all stuff we gotta work out from from here and from here so it's really important that we take our time with these things uh said that the quads the little the little claws are uh easiest to fly and that doesn't mean that they just come out of the box and you're flying yes that they're built that way yes, they can be but that doesn't mean that they just automatically fly you still have to learn um they come in ready to fly like, uh most of these come ready to fly the three d robotics iris that we've got in our contest. That's that's ready to fly? Uh the dj phantom the parent drone um a lot of those air you take him on the box, you charge him up, read a few instructions and you could go out and fly but you still have to practice. You really have teo really have to put in the time to learn how to control these things. Uh, some of these can really be upgraded I've got a, uh one of my phantoms that I've got here the dslr prose they're on the list as well the gear list dslr prose has the cans film edition which they've taken a uh deejay phantom and they've just put a lot of stuff on it to make it really awesome so it flies well it's easier to fly it you can send it on autonomous missions there's a lot of gear that's been added to it to make it a more usable tool again if you can get away with using a gopro in in a production situation there's a lot of these even the quad quad copters and the smaller multi rotors that you can use to get that camera in positions that you can't any other way and it's just the only limitation is the camera itself and there's times likewise flying downtown san francisco there on that construction site there's a little bit windy in between those buildings and I didn't want to touch a building didn't want touch a crane didn't want touch anything you know I just wanted it to to be ableto maneuver around there's not a lot of space on that one little square block there ah so I didn't want to take a big copter out there and have a chance of it you know being carried away or or bump into something so these little guys are great for being maneuverable and still giving you a good quality production um the multi rotors and the hex copters eyes one of you'd match I believe you said you haven't uh if somebody has an f f I fifty right you gotta go pro on that yes. Okay, so um that's that's kind of the entry level into hex copters it's a great great device he can put a three access gamble on it. It's really nice. Uh this down here is in s eight hundred my friend barry blanchard who's snuck in the back back there he that's hiss actually, I caught that in air and then that's the um uh why six from three d robotics that's mine I actually shot that while I was flying because it hovered so well I could go away I grabbed my camera and take pictures of all its hovering there so there's a lot of different multi rotors that are that gets you into that mid level they do provide smoother video because they are more stable even with a little bit of wind a little more stable ah bigger payload you can put smaller cameras on like barry's down there he's got ah sony any x on there and mine just still has to go pro but thinking about putting in a black magic pocket cam on eventually um and um so going on there's another category that a lot of people just don't even really think about or know about and that's the fixed wings um they cover territory like the multi rotors really can't make you go you go for several miles and get some amazing video get get a send it out on a plan or is taken photos it's just some amazing stuff we're going to get into that this afternoon uh and show you how how that's done er and hopefully our weather will be cleared up where we can actually fly one out here ah hybrids that's a new one category that's just coming up several companies they're starting to experiment with them there's one start up company that contacted me and that's bird's eye view and they've got this little uh hybrid uh it's a part multi roeder part plane and I'm going to show you some video from that um later this afternoon um here we go again agriculture any time you've got to cover acreage and you really and you really need to you know, fly a great distance, fly a great area and be able to program it to do that he's thes fixed wing or really great for that and we'll get into the missions that stuff okay the big guy so we're gonna be ending today's session uh with some of the big guys we got some s a s one thousand's uh and we'll be flying those they carry bigger cameras, they're bigger copters there more expensive, bigger crashes, bigger damage not a good place to start if you're just learning to fly I don't recommend it you'll see pictures and videos all over the internet uh, showing people that have crashed twenty thousand dollars worth of gear dropping a red cam uh, on the concrete or something, um, stuff happens, I mean, it's gonna happen, and even if you're an experienced flyer, sometimes things happen but it's avoiding that as much as you possibly can and that's part of our preparation um, they also if you're if you're in a serious shoot, you can have a two man control so somebody's flying with an f p v camera and then the camera that's attached there, the film making camera, another operator could be running sticks to run the gimbal they could move the gimbal all around independent of the flyer so that flyer can get into position they want the camera guy can follow along, and so you can use two different operators to run those things, which is pretty tricky. Okay, um, drones around the world, I didn't mean to keep going, but there we go. We're drones around the world uh, that is basically our community. I mean, you're getting into this, you're either in it already you belong to some facebook groups or linking groups or google plus groups, and you're out there talking it up in chatting about drones and and sharing all your pictures and everything, I think that is where we're really going to come together and like I mentioned at the top you know the dirty word of drone I think it's just a matter of us is changing what that means changing and that's through through our networks and through our, uh, sharing of our own x stories and images and then there's the drones to graham, the whole idea of shooting things with the drone is the point of view you can't get anywhere else you can't get that shot from with your feet on the ground unless you got sticks in your hand so uh that's a that's an area that you can go check out drones to graham ah and submit your own photos because it's a whole community of, uh of drone photography and video travel by drone I'm going to show you an example of that if you haven't flown or you like to fly um if your mom wants to see what you're up to, it is a great way to do it. If your mom wants to go visit italy uh she could go to travel by drone dot com and get some great aerial views this just a screen grab that I did ah from the website traveled by drone dot com and I went ahead and zoomed in on where we are today we're going to start in northern california and just clicking in and getting down teo treasure island come on, keep going there we go it's a little little slow there so there we are in treasure island and this is already live on drunks around this isn't my video so somebody else did this and they just posted it on there so you can go all around the world and watch these cool panos thes cool videos that people have shot so, um then going over to san francisco somebody's got a nice um sunrise shot here not me I don't do sunrises romeo does sunrises though he's a sunrise king and he's got a couple of shots there I think I go to another position here over by the bridge but this this map is going to get scattered with with plots as people start up up loading their their videos but this this ecuador travel they've got all these amazing panoramas and they're all three sixty spherical panoramas so there we go. Um unfortunately didn't run there, but you can you can go to ecuador travel google, search it and you'll see there's all these amazing panoramas and they've stitched them altogether so that while you're hovering you know, you know spinning around you'll see other little dots pop up you'll be able to click on him and go to that place and then be able to spin around and a lot of them are aerials, which is really nice