aerial, kunanyi, Landscape, Photography

Flying high

Well here’s a surprise! I haven’t flown my drone for over two years and have been contemplating selling it. Yesterday I fired it up to see how many flights I’ve done, decided to charge up the batteries, update all the firmware … and today, well, today was awesome, so I went for a fly!

With a few early errands and a couple of hours to spare before work, I threw the drone in the car. I nervously headed to a quiet patch of bush near Ridgeway, got comfortable with the sticks and drained three batteries 😀

These images are unedited, except for slight cropping and size reduction, from the DJI Mavic Air 12MP jpeg files. It also takes RAW, but I wanted to show what images are like “out of the box”, though I did have a combined ND/PL Pro filter fitted to the lens. I used manual settings: aperture f2.8, exposure 1/100 sec, ISO 100, exposure bias -0.3 steps.

Above is a panorama stitched on-board the Air. Unedited, it shows some stepping from exposure differences – or from the polarised filter as it turned which could easily fixed in post editing. It did mess up stitching the trees in the foreground.

Hobart and the upper reaches of the River Derwent to the right.

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TasView (Tone)

Tone Bacon - Tasmanian photographer. tasview.com

11 thoughts on “Flying high”

    1. Hi John, thanks. The dam is part of Hobart’s drinking water supply so I expect the netting is to do with that.
      Still torn on keeping the drone, this one is great, but less regulations for commercial use with the sub 250g Mini 2 with similar camera.

      Liked by 1 person

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      1. I see, each country and state may have it’s own regulations for drones. I had a DJI drone a couple years ago but sold it because of all the regulations. I don’t want to be in legal trouble for trying to have fun!

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Yep, exactly! Almost half of Tassie is covered by National Parks managed areas where you can no longer fly and most Councils here have cracked down on their reserves which limits the really nice places to fly where there are actually few people. I was lucky to get into the hobby early before all the regulations but a few bad eggs and negative media spoilt it for everyone. That’s the main reason I’m hesitant to fly now, even if it’s a “perception” that you have done the wrong thing, you can cop a caning on social media. No more flying on the mountain, which was one of my favourite places, well away from the tower and carpark 😦

        Liked by 1 person

      3. Oh man, that’s so ridiculous! As you said, a few rotten apples spoil the bunch for the lot of us! That’s why I sold my DJI. I’m interested to know if you sell your drone. Have a great weekend, Tone. 😎🍻

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