How Pushing the Limits Opened Up a New World of Drone Photography to Me
Since flying a Phantom 3 for the first time in 2015, drone photography has been one of my favorite ways of capturing images. There’s a unique perspective on the world that comes into view when you get a camera in the sky. Shapes form below you would have never known were present. The planet’s surface becomes abstract. It’s a unique way of seeing the world.
The Mavic Air 2 was my drone of choice for years. I flew it all over the world, and got countless hours with it in the sky. As with any piece of introductory camera gear, it provided me with a great basis for learning how to fly while also capturing pictures. But as my experience developed, the limitations of the Mavic Air 2 started to show.
The Problem
As my confidence as a drone photographer developed, I started to test what my drone was capable of. I flew it further, got the battery lower and lower before returning home, and flew in more extreme environments.
Pushing the limits of photography equipment is important, because it lets you know what a piece of gear is truly capable of. If you only use an action camera to take photos of your dog at home, you have no idea how deep you can free dive with it when you’re in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
The unfortunate side of knowing your gear’s limitations, is when you start to run into said limitations regularly. And for me, that’s exactly what happened with the Mavic Air 2.
Every time I would shoot, the same thing would happen. I would return home from shooting my most recent set of images, load them into Lightroom, and would be met with the same ugly face: noise. Anytime I would get my drone in the sky around sunset, noise would be introduced the moment darkness would enter the frame. Even images that I thought were perfectly exposed and captured at 100 ISO would still find a way to introduce noise.
Overtime, this limitation developed into a consistent frustration. I couldn’t use my drone to capture the images I wanted! So after four years of ownership, I determined it was time to finally upgrade.
Reducing the Noise
Early in 2022, I made the leap and picked up the Mavic 3. Looking at photos after my first flight, it was immediately clear my noise issue was no more. The larger sensor of the Mavic 3 was holding up its end of the bargain, and even in the shadows of images I was no longer seeing the issues that had come to plague my Mavic Air 2 experience. I was overjoyed, but it wasn’t until I decided to stress test the Mavic 3’s capabilities did I experience something that would transform my drone photography forever.
Up above the Arctic Circle in Norway, I took to the skies once again. Flying up above Manshausen Island, the question that always lies present with my photography gear came to mind.
If sunset always looks good, what about blue hour?
It felt greedy to ask that question. Blue hour, the hour following sunset when light takes a particularly blue hue, is a different beast than sunset. Inherently, there is significantly less light than sunset. Never the less, I gave it a shot, and as the sun dipped behind the horizon I kept my drone airborne.
The results of that shooting session are some of my favorite images I have ever captured with my drone. Not only was noise not a problem, but the scenes I was able to capture left me captivated. Deep blues contrasted by the warm lights of the lamps throughout the island. I was hooked.
A Whole New World
A year and a half later, blue hour has become the primary time I get my drone in the air. No matter the location, I find myself waiting for the sun to dip low before I take off.
This experience has reinforced to me the need to push the limits of our equipment as photographers. Cameras, lenses, lights, they’re all expensive. But they’re expensive pieces of equipment because they’re capable, and often times we don’t discover the true capabilities of them unless we push the limits.
So with all of the gear you have, stress test it. Take your camera out in unfavorable conditions and see how it reacts. You never know, you may discover your calling.
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