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.
One of the things I love most about this, Mr Jarvis, is your willingness to show the trial and error part of your venture.
Often, when we never see failure we have no sense of reality.
Knowing failure makes the accomplishments so much sweeter and a lot more fool proof…until the next time we try. Plus, it means you’re trying.
thanks Amy. that’s the goal of showing failure. super happy you picked up on that bit.
Chase,
Call us next time, will you? 🙂
-v
Wow, there is a lot of hate going on around here. It’s not like they did it using your money right? Thanks for having a go and then to put it out there to share with everyone.
The manual specifically says to turn off the wifi on the camera to not cause this! RTFM. Ths phantom and it’s cheap uneducated owners are gonna make it really hard for those of who have been doing this for years and try to do things right.
dear dumb ass – i’ve been working with drones since 2007. nothing that happened here was a mystery. jt was however a first crash. so if you’re trying to share with me your vast knowledge and experience – please do. hiding behind the name dumb ass isn’t helpful to anyone. please try to add value with a comment that’s attached to a real name – otherwise you’re out.
Always sad to see gear lost, but your willingness to risk for the sake of a good shot is absolutely awesome! Keep doing it! Next time though, do a bit if research maybe? 😉 I fly heli’s and also learned the hard way that a wifi enabled camera will interfere with the 2.4ghz receiver in the heli. If you’re ever interested in setting up FPV on a heli, tweet me @macinatic89. I’ll be glad to help!