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The phantom 3 from dji brings quite a lot of new features and improvments across but from my own phantom 2 experience I want to tell you what I need and see if the phantom 3 delivers on that.
Indoor Aerial filming
The phantom 2 would be incredibly hard to get steady meaningful indoor shots as the motion of the drone is going to be more random due to there being no GPS available indors - doh of course not !
The phantom 3 has the same underside camera/sensor recognition system so that it can feedback motion from the floor detail into the brain of the drone and correct - I would be keen to know if this also works outside to augment the GPS or if that is then just ignored.
Camera Control - the biggie for me
A big issue for me is not having access to any video camera controls while in the air - we do have tilt control for the gimbal in the phantom 2 of course but now the phatom 3 brings in start and stop recording (how many times I have landed to realise that I wasnt recording I am ebarassed to say !) and there are some exposure contros I believe too. The software allows some further custom Tx (Transmitter) inputs for you to assign in the software. I am not quite sure what you would use these for yet.
Well you may not catch me taking a ride in this just yet as I dont think for a moment that the multirotor is proven in flight as much as a helicopter but this is a fantastic stepping stone from concept to reality. Thanks to the fastcodesign guys for inspiring me to write this early in the week. Here is the full suite of images
This image found on the google group Aerial Photography and Videography [as we love this kind of good press for drones] and now the coming reality showcased already at the german air show AERO Friedrichshafen 2014 seen here..
I count around 14 motos and no doubt you can fly on fewer. So long as there is quite a bit of redundancy then this should be as safe as a helicopter both share the same principals of aeronautics.
I think personal transport systems are one of the more exciting things to come. Get me off the darn roads.
Also see below for the answer to the Question : What is the gopro hero 4 black 4k video like ?
I run a Phantom 2 from DJI FPV system which is capable of full 4k professional aerial footage both photographs and video. This inspire takes things to a different level in areas that you may or may not need. I shall explore the inspire further but for now the phantom 2 has everything I need and travels well also.
What is the big advantage to the inspire ? Well for me it is the almost full control of the camera while flying. So you can tune the exposure for example or frame rate or resolution, yes it does support 4k up to 25fps so seems to be on a par with the hero 4 black from gopro. But this is adding a lot of cost to the hobbyist and I feel pushes this into the company realm. We will have to see how the production inspires turn out and maybe see what a second generation inspire brings. But in closing it is what dji do best they marry the apps and peripheral stuff to the multirotor model - its how they weave it altogether its what apple would be making if they did quad copters. I am very very happy with mine.
Answering the question on how good is the video of the gopro 4 black edition shooting at 4k in reality?
Here is a still made from 4k video with the gopro hero 4 black edition. (the image seen needs to be downloaded or inspected at the full file size it has been reduced in size to fit this blog post.)
In fact its not true 4k but UHDTV with a slightly smaller resolution of 3840 x 2160 (this was my first shock)- you may need to right click to get the image in a new browser tab to see the full size version - or download it and inspect it more closely. I do have to say that you can zoom in and take a crop at a quarter and still see a sharp image. I might be with a lot of people saying that technology has gone beyond what we can natively appreciate ! I think the value of the slow motion 1080p for action sports is worth looking at otherwise 4k might be of use for projecting a large image perhaps. Not sure..
The Parrot AR 2 Drone Review
The Parrot ar2 drone has a very active social community where you can get games and augmented reality apps that allow you to have fun with the drone in a new age toy kind of way. Its one of the positives about this model - its not a cheap toy and you can get spares and this particular one uses your ipad or android over wifi to control it. You wont get the same kind of range as a true RC model but its worth exploring this as the ultimate shock toy for your boy !
They (Quads) can right themselves after any kind of loss of control and can be programmed to return to you too. Its this kind of reason that quads also get boring quickly a the human likes a challenge. Enter the park flyer that is fixed wing. The hardest to fly are helicopters of the non twin rotor design that you can fly very easily - the second rotor counteracts the the first and stabilises aong with the gyro the helicpoter for easier flying.
Fixed wing planes are those that have a wing that doesnt move so spitfires, biplanes and cessnas all fit the bill here. A helicopter's wing is its rotor which moves and so is not included in this category. While on the subject of helicopters you get two kinds of toys - most cheap ones are the twin rotor ones that have two main rotors turning in opposite direction. This is not normal but gives a much easier to fly experience.
Quads are for other kids of fun. they offer different kinds of fun like programming waypoints (for some more advanced kinds) or offer built in cameras for filming. Some also have a camera that offers FPV that is First Person View so you can see where the model is flying. This can be broadcast to your tablet or smartphone.