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UltravioletPhotography

UV With A Drone [Part 3]


eye4invisible

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eye4invisible

Friday was another flyday!

 

Continuing on from Cadmium's post (https://www.ultravio...v-with-a-drone/) and my first flight with the UV filter (https://www.ultravio...a-drone-part-2/) I managed to get some more favourable flight conditions this past weekend.

 

What's odd is that my focusing seemed better in the first video (

) but was off for most of this recent flight, and the gimbal was struggling in the first flight, but not this time.

 

One day, I am going to find a happy medium. The difference this time is that I took off with the gimbal facing straight down. You can see from the treetops that I had a moderate breeze in both flights, so I think pointing the gimbal down during take-off seemed to help stablise it, as I was able to move it up and down without an issue once I was up in the air.

 

This time, I encoded the video at 1080p, so that you can see the degree of focusing issues. Again, I put a Lumetri monochrome filter on the main part of the video:

 

There's a very short segment at the end (without the Lumetri filter) where I was experimenting with the drone's built-in "Quick Shot" modes (one of those modes is called a "Dronie" which is a selfie with a drone). It's supposed to move away from the subject, climbing to a preset altitude, but I had many problems where it lost the lock on me. I had the same problem when attempting to do the "Helix" Quck Shot of the playground (not shown in this video). Not sure if the software uses colour to recognise the locked object, or if it's purely driven by contrast, but it also failed when I put the Kolari Vision 850nm IR filter on too. Might be down to a lack of sharp focus this time around. The Quick Shots only seem to work in the visible light range. Anyhow, for what it's worth, I included the Dronie attempt right at the end of the video.

 

I still think this filter has potential, but I definitely need to play with it some more. Perhaps increase the ISO and lower the shutter speed a little.

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Andy, I watched the entire video. Interesting. No idea why the focus is not good this time, looked good in the previous video.

In this video, it focuses on the building, where it is looking right through the building, but then it goes out of focus again. Is that you manually focusing it, or some kind of auto focus attempt?

See, right here:

It is amazing how fast it climbs up to such a height! I had to hold onto my chair! :wink:

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eye4invisible

What are the cause(s) of the focus issues? Do you know?

I'm not quite sure. This drone is still new to me, so I'm hoping I can dig around the camera settings and perhaps set the focus manually to infinity, so that it's not constantly hunting and losing what focus it had.

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eye4invisible

Andy, I watched the entire video. Interesting. No idea why the focus is not good this time, looked good in the previous video.

In this video, it focuses on the building, where it is looking right through the building, but then it goes out of focus again. Is that you manually focusing it, or some kind of auto focus attempt?

See, right here:

It is amazing how fast it climbs up to such a height! I had to hold onto my chair! :wink:

Yes, that's me trying to get the camera's autofocus to trigger (pressing the focus point on my cell phone screen). It works for a second or two, then reverts back to an OOF image. Need to see if I can somehow manually focus to infinity and leave it there. When it does focus correctly, the image is quite good, I think (especially when I've added the monochrome Lumetri filter).

 

The initial take-off (in auto mode) will elevate the drone to ~4ft AMSL. Pushing the left stick forward will then elevate the drone even more. Stick sensitivity can be set in the controller's phone app. so you can push the stick only half forward for a slower rate of ascension.

 

This was shot at a park near me. I like the path that ends just like a mini runway :grin:

 

Here's the drone rocking/modelling your filter:

post-116-0-63124500-1595291578.jpg

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Andy, That looks awesome! I would not want that thing following me around. :wink:

Looking at it, how come the gimbal needs to be pointing down before take off?

I can't imagine why it was focused in the other video but not in this one.

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eye4invisible

Andy, That looks awesome! I would not want that thing following me around. :wink:

Looking at it, how come the gimbal needs to be pointing down before take off?

I can't imagine why it was focused in the other video but not in this one.

It doesn't have to be, but I found that it seemed to be more stable when I had it pointing down at take-off. The breeze was comparable to the 1st flight, so I think that helped with the stability issue. Perhaps it caused a focusing issue in the process? I'm really not sure.

 

Maybe 3rd time's a charm? I'll let you know the next opportunity I get.

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