Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Hyperlapse has become increasingly popular over the last couple of years, especially as gimbals and drones capable of shooting such sequences have become more prolific. But one area where we haven’t seen a lot of hyperlapse is on the water.
Well, Daniel Riley over at rctestflight realised his autonomous boats were slow and accurate enough that they just might work for something like this. So, he refined his design, stuck a gimbal and a camera on top, and the results are pretty awesome.
One of the greatest impacts of “drones” coming into our lives is the impact it has on photojournalism. Drones can go places that photographers just can’t go by foot.
Here is a story that illustrates this perfectly (though its only relation to photography is the drone involved). According to ABC, a couple of teenagers – Chris Harris and a friend – were staying at their family’s vacation home by a lake, and when evening came, they tied their boat to a buoy and went about their business.
The following day they noticed a bunched of people untying their boat from the buoy and tying it to a speed boat, and starting to sail away. Two things happened in parallel: the called 911, and got a DJI Phantom 4 in the air to follow the boats. Chris had the drone following the alleged thieves for quite a while, going as fast 50 MPH for some of the chase, and of course recording it at stunning 4K. after a while Chris lost track and the done came back home.
When photographer and retoucher Erik Johansson decides to create an image, he certainly makes an effort to push the boat out, quite literally in this case.
In a project that took several months to complete, Erik used 17 square meters of mirror to help produce this extraordinary scene, and while there’s certainly a lot of post and retouching going on here, it was a lot of work in the camera, too!
The DJI Phantom has a failsafe mode that will automatically land the drone if the remote controller’s battery runs out of juice. This is a smart feature, but not very helpful when flying over water.
In such a situation your options are to watch your drone go belly up or make a run for it, or in Tom Leogrande’s case, race a quarter mile for it.
Watch as the drone, capturing footage for a fishing TV show, gets saved and avoids becoming fish bait.
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