We hope you enjoy this compilation of the best drone photos that we have found!
What Is Drone Photography?
Have you ever seen a movie scene where the camera pans over stunning vistas, mountains or other landscapes?
Drone photography allows the user to capture the same kind of landmark footage, minus the special effects. Instead of getting a film crew, you just need a drone and time. A lot of time for practice.
Drone photography lets you capture images and audio/video that might not be possible for human photographers and videographers. That capacity is possible due to the drone’s ability to fly and tolerate harsh environments due to their size.
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Drone photography often enables an FPV or first-person-view that would normally be difficult to achieve.
There are lots of designs and sizes of drones, including rotor-based design, or even a fixed-wing drone with a propeller or a jet engine. Rotor-based drone are maneuverable but often lack the altitude and endurance of fixed-wing craft.
Consumer drones ranges from under $100 up to $1000. One recent drone uses a high-end camera, the iXU 180 which holds an 80 megapixel camera and is priced at $60,000.
Drones are equipped with face and object recognition, computer vision, and other tracking technologies.
These advanced drones can adapt to any environment and enable them to perform many tasks like taking a selfie, following the pilot and taking pictures or filming while they travel inside a moving vehicle.
Drone photography is also being used in surveillance and gather intelligence against enemy in war or for business competitive intelligence. Drone photography is also being used in journalism and law enforcement. Drone photography is also used artistically to capture those previously impossible shot.
As long as they are under 35kg, there are no special permits required by private citizens to use drones non-commercially. There are special certificates required for drones that are over 35kg, but most personal drones are under that limit.
For commercial purposes, the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) requires a certificate of authorization for the use of drones.
Drone Photography Tips
The first thing that you need to do before taking your drone out for a session is to check the UAV forecast. It provides you the most important information you need for the safety of both the pilot and the aircraft and other people or even buildings within the vicinity.
Most high-end drones are equipped with cameras which support RAW image formats, but if your drone is modular and it allows you to change its camera, make sure to get the one that will let you shoot in RAW format. It gives you more versatility during post-processing of the image.
The amount of detail and resolution that can be preserved includes a much more level of brightness which allows you to make greater exposure and adjustments in color without even making the photo look unnatural or posterized due to color banding that is very common in low-resolution JPEG images.
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It takes a lot of trial and error to achieve your desired composition, but when you’re using a camera with limited hours of battery life on it, it is not a problem. The composition is one of the most important aspects of an image.
It controls the arrangement of visual elements within the frame, the negative and positive balance, as well as the balance of colors within the image.
You may want to stick to the lowest ISO if possible. This means that you have to manually adjust the camera settings of your drone to keep the images properly exposed.
Some drones are equipped with an Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB) feature that helps you capture realistic photos with a high dynamic range in one go. It can also shoot the same photo at a different exposure and settings for several times, providing you with lots of options to work with.
Another tip you may want to consider is lean to improvise. Like, take advantage of gloomy skies to help you alter your image’s mood. Use unexpected lights to capture interesting shadows, and so on. Get creative and turn that situation into a photo opportunity.
You can also create higher resolution images with panoramic shots and experiment both aspect ratios. Use the camera lens filters and seek out symmetry, patterns, and lines. Play with lights and shadows and last but not the least, take a drone “selfie”
Why Drone Photography?
The majority of us as of had already seen some drone film and just thought ‘wow’. That is because you are seeing something you have never seen before.
This is all a result of the interest of drone photography, which has had a surge in popularity over the past couple of years. This is because of the accessibility of affordable drones, allowing beginner filmmakers to shoot helicopter-style film.
There is also the matter of social media’s craving for stunning pictures, especially in regard to showcasing travel goals and traveling itself. Cool area + drone = viral.
Drones entered the mainstream imagination in a far-fetched way. The unmanned aerial vehicles initially progressed toward becoming household names in the early nineties when they were being utilized, disputably, by the US military; “drone strikes” turned into a trendy expression in the press.
After 10 years drones were being mooted for a significantly more favorable reason: as a method for conveying Amazon orders “straight to your porch”.
Today, drones are giving social media users access to mesmerizing, swooping shots from the sky that provide new perspective during a period of an obsession with capturing and documenting the world.
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In many ways, drone photography follows in the shadow of the GoPro: extreme and compact cameras intended to be connected to a person to catch a top-notch perspective film.
GoPro cameras were immediately adopted by the action sports world and YouTube was overflowed with exciting first-person film putting the viewer in the shoes of everybody from surfers to base jumpers.
It’s no surprise that drones have been adopted by those recording outrageous outdoor pursuits – activities that have dependably been difficult and costly to film with conventional hardware.
The boom in drone footage isn’t simply determined by the experts: many drones are sold to a newbie photographer, hobbyists, and gadget fans, supplied everywhere from Argos to Amazon.
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