And now: “More FUN with Way Points!”
The technology in modern drones is in a word: “Staggering”.
Several of my mentors have told me “You don’t know know how good you’ve got it, coming into this when you did” and the more I do this the more I realize that they’re absolutely correct.
6 way radar, D-Log (RAW) video, the ability to pan and tilt the incredible Hasselblad camera r-e-a-l-l-y s-l- o-w among other things, and finally, Way Points.
Way Points allow us to ‘leave a trail of breadcrumbs in the sky’ that the bird will then faithfully follow, over and over, as many times as we wish. They include all flight data and camera settings including pan, tilt, exposure, shutter, etc, along with the actual position, altitude, and speed, pitch and yaw of the bird itself.
Staggering.
They allow you to pre program and then save a sequence of shots in the case of stills, or to set up a cinematographic video path which allows you to focus on the camera and it’s movements, rather than having to actually pilot the bird while doing compelling video which, as I’m still an intermediate pilot, I find is darn near impossible.
There’s simply too much going on to do it all manually, and even if you could, you’re not going to duplicate it exactly over and over.
I have been working on a move at The Sphere and elsewhere (Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis and soon Allegiant Stadium here in Vegas) that I’m calling ‘The Cammy’. It’s a somewhat technical sequence involving approaching a structure or object, flying up over the top of it, looking down at it, rotating around 180, and then ‘retreating’ away from that object while flying backward, all while keeping the object in the center of the frame. You CAN do this manually with practice, but why bother when Way Points can do it for you? You just have to set them up, run the sequence a few times, maybe do it again with some modifications, and then you can save that file in your controller for future missions.
It’s black magic voodoo I tells ya!
This then is my first time really nailing what I’ve been seeing in my head and I can’t wait to go back over here tonight and get the ‘Dead and Co’ graphics on the Sphere with the city all lit up in the background.
Good clean fun and I am blessed beyond measure.
#Sphere #Lasvegas #thestrrip #dtlv #camerongrant #thehighpoints