Gold butte in fpv

Last week I had the opportunity to film for Culture Trip with my FPV drones. Our mission was to film awesome footage of Gold Butte Nevada.

The places we were filming were rather remote. We traveled by Jeep to the trailheads where we then set off on foot. Hiking and climbing with drone gear is new to me but I was able to keep the load light with my Domke F-2. In there I had all of my 4s batteries, TBS Tango controller, spare propellers, tool pouch, spare GoPro Hero 6, and my Polar Pro ND filters.

Don’t let the Hero 7 case fool you, I’m still flying a Hero 6. The reason for this is the Hero 6 seems to work the most seamlessly with the stabilization software Reelsteady. This program does an amazing job of smoothing our flight footage and squaring off the otherwise barrel distorted GoPro footage.

To help make things look less like it was filmed by a GoPro I run Polar Pro polarizing ND filters. These allow for full manual control of the cameras settings. This means the cameras not jumping around in exposure during a clip and I can control the amount of motion blur by locking in the shutter speed.

I’m always learning with FPV. One critical aspect is getting clean video signal. This often requires particular planning to position myself in good “line-of-sight” to my quad while also keeping myself out of frame for the shot. The fundamental problem is if I fly to say the other side of a rock, I’ll loose video link. For this project I often found myself climbing atop a rock to get the required flight path the shot called for.

I still have a lot to learn in the world of drones and FPV. But I’m so thankful for opportunities like this project with Culture Trip. It’s exciting to fly new locations with awesome people and provide them with some cool footage in the process.