The great thing is that anyone can buy or fly a drone as long as they fly accordingly with the aviation authority regulations when they fly over people, through or over buildings, airports or public areas and etc.   However, when you are doing it for any commercial purposes, whether for a TV show or for a job, then you need to have a license.  Spending a bit of time on how to operate efficiently a camera and drone for aerial photography uav will make an average film into something very professional looking.

How To Do Aerial Photography

The first thing you have to do is learn how to fly the machine in such a way that you can put your camera in the position that you want it to get your shot.  Going around something still is the first thing you must be good at and the next thing is tracking moving objects.  Aerial work for actually capturing a good cinematic shot or a great piece of footage isn’t necessarily long range.  Just play with the horizon with the right kind of light.

A drone is just a way of transporting a camera.  With any camera, there’s a temptation of zooming in, zooming out, looking at one thing, looking at another just like what a human eye does.  The important thing with both the drone and camera is to do slow moves because you need to have longer than you need in order to have edit points so you need to hold the shot only a little vertical from left to right motion so it will look amazing.  Sometimes, it’s hard to remember when you are flying UAVs because you can do anything, but actually just a little motion from left to right, zoom in, and zoom out will make your video amazing, as others say “less is more”.

The most beautiful light comes during the first hour after sunrise and the last hour before sunset, also known as the golden hours.  You can get the most amazing footages during these golden hours.  The said beautiful light casts shadows and lights.  You get beautiful pinks, golds and beautiful colors so it’s worth the effort to get up early in the morning or stay out late afternoon to get those amazing aerial shots.

There’s a tip behind enclosing a nice capture, choosing the perfect viewpoint, and panning thru a seascape or landscape as you move your uav with camera along overhead.  In flying UAVs, you have to know what the requirement is.  Some people film 20 frames per second.  The higher the frame rate is when you are flying, the smoother your footage is going to be because your sensor is taking so many frames per second and so if you move your camera too swiftly, it’s going to snap a frame and if you are going too far before it snaps the next frame, then you are going to get a strobing effect in the footage.  So the higher the frame rate, like 60 frames per second, will pretty sure give you a smoother footage and allows you to go faster.

Fun With The Reveal Shots

One of the fun things to do with drones and the things they allow you to do is the reveal shots.  So you get a close up to something on the foreground and then you fly off and reveal something you got and you move over a hump or a tree, some woods, water bodies or landscapes and finally to reveal whatever the subject matter is.  It provides a beautiful start to any scene.

Learn how to add life to footage.  Having your subject matter at very close proximity to your camera and getting that movement as you pass by stuffs.  Using trees to reveal things is great.  Try to position your shot where you can pass the side of a building and reveal your subject matter to add dynamic life to the footage and make it a little bit more interesting.  If your focal point is far out and you have trees by you, then it gives you a sense of speed and that you are actually going somewhere.

The worst thing that can happen when you are out doing aerial photography uav is when you ran out of batteries, thus it is best to be equipped with enough batteries and memory cards.