Photographers have long been grumbling about the FAA's tight regulations for camera drone usage, and the actions of one operator over in Washington DC aren't going to help the cause. An anonymous DJI Phantom owner and government employee crashed his DJI Phantom quadcopter on the White House lawn yesterday morning, causing a lock down of the President's residence.
Here's another case to file under "It's a bad idea to fly camera drones too close to animals": James and Mira Raley of The Honey Badger recently tried to do a "quick flight" with their camera drone over a group of male lions. Unfortunately for them, they lost control during the flight, crashed the drone into a nearby tree, and watched helplessly as the lions pounced on the fallen "prey" with the camera still rolling.
If Patrick and Lee from Fstoppers and landscape/travel photographer Elia Locardi's goal was to get our hearts racing, they've succeeded in spades with the drone footage they just released from their time in Iceland.
Jim Grimaldi lives in West Seneca, NY, a suburb of Buffalo that was …
Photography drones are facing a perilous atmosphere of distrust and legal chaos. In these circumstances, even small mistakes can have big consequences. A shift in public sentiment against private drone usage could easily result in the application of restrictive regulations, or perhaps even conditional bans.
While filming a national skateboarding event in Detroit on Saturday, drone photographer Harry Arnold of Detroit Drone had his RC copter knocked out of the sky and broken by a punk rock bass player who decided to throw things at the UAV after finishing a song.
Just picked up a DJI Phantom but don't have the cash to drop on an expensive gimbal to keep your shots steady and level? Well, it turns out $10 will get you at least half-way there and keep the 'jello effect' and blur out of the videos and photos you plan to go out and capture.
Yesterday, the story of two DJI Phantom quadcopters endangering an NYPD helicopter made the rounds online. Initial reports claimed that the two 'drones' were flying right at the helicopter forcing the NYPD pilot to take evasive action before following the Phantoms back to their source and taking the RC pilots into custody.
The air traffic control recording and several statements from the pilots themselves, however, seem to run contrary to what the NYPD is claiming, making it look like the helicopter was never in danger and, in fact, chased down the pilots with no idea what to even charge them with.
Seeing as it's the day after July 4th, it seemed appropriate to share a different perspective on a fireworks show than most people are likely to see popping up in their News Feeds. Shot by videographer Jos Stinglingh in West Palm Beach, Florida using a DJI Phantom 2 and GoPro Hero 3 Silver edition, this captivating video puts you closer to the action than you might ever otherwise wish to get.
It looks like Photojojo aren't the only ones getting into the drone rental service. Student at the University of South Florida will soon be able to check out the controversial, camera-toting, remote-controlled flying machines straight from the campus library.
Slow-motion footage is cool. Camera copter footage is cool. Fireworks are cool. So what happens when you mash all of them together into one video? No worries, your head won't explode (mostly because the GoPro this was probably filmed on doesn't do so hot in super low light) but the resulting video is a mesmerizing two and a half minute experience.
Less than six months after releasing their second iteration of their Phantom Drone, DJI is back at it again with another, albeit somewhat smaller, update to what is likely the most-frequently featured quadcopter on PetaPixel.
When it comes to spectacular landscape photography, Iceland is one of the foremost destinations. Stunning vistas (not to mention the aurora borealis) seem to greet photographers in every direction and so they take to the skies to capture aerial footage or set up their tripods and dollies and let the intervalometer do its thing.
We ran across both approaches lately, shot by two different but equally talented groups, and instead of sharing each individually we thought we'd let one build on the other.
Drones (we're talking about the quadcopter kind, not the military kind) are pretty incredible devices... especially when you toss a camera on them. They tend to be a bit expensive though, starting at around $500 for a lower-level one and going all the way up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Because of this, the drone footage we usually see is done in a semi-safe environment, where the risk of losing it is minimal. YouTuber Shaun O'Callaghan, however, is a bit more brave -- if that's the right word here -- than the rest of us.
Silly but cool, that's the best way to describe the video above. Put together by the good folks at Corridor Digital, this is a POV video unlike any other, because the view you're getting is out of Superman's eyes as he flies around Los Angeles.
My earlier article shows you what you should do with a drone and a camera; this one will show you what you shouldn't do.
We started off the day with some good news for drone photographers (and Amazon), and so we thought we'd send you off into the weekend with some spectacular drone footage.
Niagara Falls is (or rather are) a sight to behold, and while capturing the falls from a boat or one of the overlooks is impressive enough, why not take to the air? That's what YouTube user questpact did, creating the video above using his DJI Phantom quad-copter and GoPro Hero 3.