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A drone operator’s attempt to capture stunning aerial shots of the Download rock festival from above has led to a substantial fine of nearly £1,500 ($1890).
Daniel Cesare, found himself in hot water after flying his drone near Donington Park, Leicestershire, where the festival took place. This location is adjacent to East Midlands Airport, within the designated “flight restriction zone.”
Zero Zero is the company that brought us the Hover Camera way back in 2016. Well, they’re now they’re back with the new HoverAir X1 (buy here). It’s a selfie drone that lets you get footage of yourself without a drone operator.
The HoverAir X1 is not like your regular drone, though. It’s designed purely for filming yourself. The flying equivalent of a smartphone camera. It will follow you, orbit around you, or do one of several other moves to spice up your holiday videos and vlogs.
American drone manufacturer Skydio is calling it quits on the consumer drone market, according to a new announcement from the company. Skydio says that they’ve made the “very difficult decision” to bow out to focus on enterprise clients.
Skydio has often been held up as a true competitor to DJI, which dominates the worldwide drone market. It seems an odd move with DJI products being banned throughout the USA in many government agencies and other organisations.
DJI has posted an announcement to its forums after a number of users have reported downloading fake apps from the Google Play Store. The apps are said to present both potential security risks and scams that take your money.
According to one report, a user downloaded a fake DJI Fly app from the Google Play Store where he was to be charged $40 after a free “3-day trial”. Fortunately, Google refunded, but the risks are still out there for others.
DJI has announced the DJI Air 3 drone (buy here). The successor to the popular DJI Air 2S (buy here), the Air 3 sports dual cameras – hence all their marketing – including a wide-angle and a 3x telephoto.
The new drone also sees the addition of waypoints. This lets you plan and automate your drone flights or repeat movements. It also gets a whopping 46-minute battery life and is the first in the series to get omnidirectional obstacle sensing.
It looks like the time of the DJI Phantom is almost at its conclusion. DJI has officially ended support for the DJI Phantom 4 as of July 15th and the DJI Phantom 4 Pro Obsidian Edition from July 1st.
DJI ended support for the Phantom 2 and Phantom 3 4K drones in September 30th, 2022. With support for the two Phantom 4 models being over, this leaves only the DJI Phantom 4 Pro V2 (buy here) on DJI’s official lineup, although most retailers show it as being out of stock.
Is it safe to go back into the water? New York beach officials are trying to answer that question this summer with the help of a fleet of drones. The drones fly above the water, looking for sharks that might be a danger to beachgoers.
Long Island has allegedly had five bites already this summer, and the park director is determined to keep people safe. Just this last week, a drone spotted a group of around 50 sand sharks just off the coast, according to reports.
Last week, DJI introduced a new v1.10.4 update for the DJI Fly smartphone app for use with its drones. Its release brought a more realistic, human-style voice for various alerts and notifications. While it also fixed and optimised various other little things, this was the big change in the app. This is why we didn’t cover the release here on DIYP, because who cares about a voice change, right?
Well, it seems that the v1.10.4 update also brought about a big issue for drone users in the EU. DJI typically allows users to change their maximum altitude from 50m to 500m. This allows them to adjust their height limit based on elevations in terrain as they fly. The recent app update, however, limited their maximum altitude to 120 metres (~400ft) above the takeoff point.
The winner of the Siena Drone Photo Awards 2023 has been announced. This contest focuses on aerial photography and is part of the renowned Siena Awards Festival of visual arts. This year, the overall winner is Or Adar, a talented photographer from Israel, with his incredible shot of protests titled Must Resist.
There are times when YouTube presents us with something so insane and cool that we not only go, “Wow!” but also, “How has it taken this long for somebody to do this?”. This is one such video. The creation of Australian film photographer Jason De Freitas – whom we’ve featured here on DIYP before – this is an FPV drone with a Super 8 film camera strapped to the top of it.
Making the two things work together involved a little CAD and 3D printing to create a mount and a servo to trigger the record button. It also meant using actual movie film, developing and scanning it – which is not cheap. But the results are so worth it.
Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.
Alex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe
Dave Williams is an accomplished travel photographer, writer, and best-selling author from the UK. He is also a photography educator and published Aurora expert. Dave has traveled extensively in recent years, capturing stunning images from around the world in a modified van. His work has been featured in various publications and he has worked with notable brands such as Skoda, EE, Boeing, Huawei, Microsoft, BMW, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, ESPN, NBC, and many others.
John Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.
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