I was looking in a shop window at some drones, wondering what I would use it for if I had one.
Looking on MPB, it would be possible to get one fairly cheaply. The one that struck me was that the number of times that the battery had been charged was always low. It was almost as though they had been used a few times, and then the owners couldn’t think of anything to do with them.
Does anyone have one, and what do you use it for?
I lot of scenic locations I have been to recently ban them explicitly.
This of course should not prevent you from getting one, if the locations you want to film permit them, just look it up first.
As for why they go unused: I would guess because wide angle composition is generally the hardest. Yes, an aerial wide view is fascinating when you see it for the first time, but after a while the novelty wears off and you are basically doing landscape photography/videos, with all the challenges.
I was in Waterstones bookshop in Perth and they had a copy of Dronescapes. I flicked through it, but after a while it all seemed to get quite “samey”.
They also had a copy of Lego in Focus, this looked a lot more fun.
You can make great photos and videos with a drone. There is no doubt.
Anyway I hate drones. This has not much to do with the drones itself, it’s more that there are so many idiots around which are using them where ever they want to any extent they want, ignoring that others could be disturbed by this noisy flying objects.
I went to the Faroe Islands some years ago and we did a hike in the middle of nowhere. Which would have been beautiful if there wouldn’t have been this idiot which we already saw when we parked our car. He had a big rucksack with two drones and a lot of equipment. And instead of doing a walk to explore the nature. He used his drones instead.
He got on our nerves for nearly two hours. And we were really pissed that there was all the time a horribly buzzing drone around us so that we couldn’t enjoy this beautiful nature and the silence it usually brings with it.
It wouldn’t have been a problem if that had been just for ten or fifteen minutes, but we were accompanied by his drones on the first third of our hike.
And it can get even worse if you have such a flying object around your house, where you get actively filmed. A friend of me had to endure that for some time. It was a neighbour of her, and even so she told him a few times he should stop it, he ignored her. And he stopped only when he was convicted by court. He even ignored that the police visited him a few times.
Not just being filmed. In our last house, we had solar hot water heating. An idiot with a drone broke one of the tubes when he crashed into it.
I got a dji mini 2 pro a couple of years ago, and I am very disappointed with the image quality. I got it for photography, as I am not that much into video. I have seen a lot of great photos shot with this device online, but I was not even close to reproduce the (technical) quality of these, despite being in scenic locations, e.g. in Iceland (only using it where it is allowed, though). Either, my drone’s camera is broken, or it is my processing. Especially, the distortions, color shifts, and vignetting are horrible, but I am not able to solve these with the tools I am using. Maybe it becomes better by using a proprietary tool chain which implements all the dng spec processing that resolves these issues automatically, but I am not willing to do so. So be aware that the support from free/libre/open source software side might be limited. Therefore, I use it only for roof inspections of the house these days.
Edit: mini 2 pro, not 3.
Oh boy, these kind of people can get my blood boiling… like are you out of your mind?!
Useful to know
I had essentially given up on even thinking about buying one, this just goes to confirm the decision.
If it had a frisbee retrieval mode I would buy one 
Stephen Shore, the “new topographics” art photographer, published a drone-based book. Flicking through online, it looks more like aerial survey photos of human activities within the landscape and the occasional more traditional landscape shot that just gives a bit of height rather than the helicopter’s eye view you often see. I guess this is more interesting than straightforward countryside shots but then you may need to get permission in some cases.
My daughter has a Frisbee retrieval device, it is called “a dog”.
Maybe there are other ways to use a drone, to get just a bit of height, like the way large format photographers of old would stand on the back of a truck (or landscape photographers use a stepladder). Richard Misrach’s Border Cantos (not using a drone) has some of that feel.
Or his On the Beach, taken from a hotel balcony.
If it’s just for gaining some height someone here in the forum told, that he is using his tripod for this, I will test this out on my next holiday.
Yes, I keep meaning to try using the otherwise useless monopod that I bought for this.
For the odd frisbee stuck on the roof I would have thought a cat would be better, but if you have a really sure-footed dog, that could work too
Or a goat
That’s similar to how I think of dogs. It’s not the dogs themselves that I dislike, but their arrogant owners is what gets me. However nicely you tell them that they’re doing something wrong, they will often turn it against you.
Now that I think about it, that’s what happens in general, in any situation. Tell someone they’re doing something that’s not allowed and you’re suddenly the wrong one.
Yeah, but the cat would just sneer at your ineptitude.
Perhaps you can provide an example mage for a PlayRaw here.
