Relax

[Shrimpfarmer]

I shot this today using my Phantom P2. It was shot in 2.7K Protune, slowed down by 50%, stabilised and the sound replaced with some birdsong. It was all done as a test but when I watched it back I thought who would imagine that it was captured with a buzzy little quad hanging out there over a lake. Phantoms are really cool.

[_Paz_]

Yeah! Phantoms are really cool! And this is very peaceful.

This one could have been named either... Follow the Leader... or There's one in every crowd.

I noticed your birdsong behind some of the music in your Ancient Hunting Grounds video. It is nice and adds a lot to the feeling of being there. Your choice of music in that one was great too.

I also watched your Day at the Beach and another, the name escapes me at the moment. I've enjoyed them all.

The rotor blades seemed to show more often in your older videos. Do you aim the camera down just a bit to avoid seeing them?

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

Ken. I would be very interested in hearing a little more about how you learned to fly the heli - how long did it take, how you started etc.

PS. Whatever happened to "The Emerald Dagger"?

[Shrimpfarmer]

All very good names Paz

The rotor blades appear whenever your flying forwards at anything above a gentle walking pace. Unless your just letting it drift forwards with the wind. The solution sometimes is to go slow and speed up in post if required, or to turn around and fly backwards. Then you can go as fast as you like and the props will not appear. The least popular solution is to tilt the camera down but then the fisheye is magnified.

There are replacement lens you can buy for the Gopro which are flat. I will switch to one of them but as they are expensive I will wait until the next Gopro is released and fit one to that.

I got into the hobby when I bought a small coaxial helicopter toy for flying indoors. I taught myself to fly that. Then I built a kit helicopter called a Raptor 50. That was a very dangerous machine so I paid for lessons. I learn't to fly that safely in all conditions and so I had no doubts I could fly a quad copter.

To be honest John virtually anyone could fly a Phantom because the advance in technology has made it much much easier. Push the left stick up or down to climb or descend. Push the right stick forwards backwards left and right and the quad follows. Inside the quad is a clever chip called NAZA. It automatically makes millions of tiny corrections to keep the quad level and at whatever altitude you set. It takes information from its onboard GPS to hover over the same spot if you are not touching the controls. That allows you to concentrate on framing the shot.

As for the Emerald Dagger ..... well thats just life. Sometimes we start things and we don't finish them. I hope your not waiting for it JOhn because its never going to come

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

As for the Emerald Dagger ..... well thats just life. Sometimes we start things and we don't finish them. I hope your not waiting for it JOhn because its never going to come

Then it'll have to be renamed "The Unsolved Mystery of the Emerald Dagger"

As for the Raptor - for me it seems to be yet another item destined for the Christmas wish list where it will rank alongside the other male desirables like the Ferrari, the blower Bentley, the Sunseeker......

Talk about providing lots of choice for Mrs Twosheds to consider (grin) but, at least if she considers it (VERY unlikely), I can soften the blow by telling her that the GoPro that is also on the list is no longer required.

[Dave McElderry]

It makes sense that the ability to pack so much computing power into such small spaces has translated into devices like this. One of these days the cost will be so low that auto-correcting smart control systems will be in kid's toys too. Such a cool little machine. I'm really being entertained.

[Shrimpfarmer]

It makes sense that the ability to pack so much computing power into such small spaces has translated into devices like this. One of these days the cost will be so low that auto-correcting smart control systems will be in kid's toys too. Such a cool little machine. I'm really being entertained.

Well I hope your right because I want it in my zimmer frame when the time comes.

[Dave McElderry]

Well I hope your right because I want it in my zimmer frame when the time comes.

Why not? If they think it's necessary to put Facebook capability in refrigerators, I'm certainly expecting that your zimmer frame will have advanced microchip controls! When it comes time let me know and we'll order two of them. Maybe they'll give us a discount.

[momoffduty]

Nice flying! The protune looks good. I haven't tried it yet. It is hard to edit?

[Shrimpfarmer]

Not at all. You have to adjust everything to your desired look though as straight out of the camera it looks very soft and pale. I much prefer using protune as its much more flexible. More work yes but once your familiar with the workflow its very easy.

I use Final Cut Pro X on a mac. On that system my workflow is as follows

Throw everything onto the timeline.
Roughly cut out the rubbish
Change the order of clips
Add a music track
Cut to the music
Stabilise if required
Add transitions
Correct colour & exposure
Sharpen
Add titles & credits
Export.

I find doing it this way saves a lot of rendering.

[momoffduty]

Thanks Ken for you workflow. I guessed that Protune would need some color correction, but didn't think about the sharpening. How much are you sharpening? Is it about the same as you would on a raw file?

[Shrimpfarmer]

All I can say on that is that in Final Cut Pro X I add the sharpen effect which is in the blur menu. It defaults to 2.5 but I up that to 3.5 If I forget to apply it to a clip then its quite noticeable so its a reasonable amount.