Tag: mavic

Editing with Thom and an Old Master

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Determined not to leave it as long as last time – however long that was – I fired up the Adobe Lightroom editing whatchamacallit and looked through the photos that had been taken this weekend. Not all mine, I hasten to add. The Boy Wonder had his clicking fingers out and was snapping away and even Mrs 6000 got involved on occasion.

And that editing? Accompanied by a bubble or two of Oude Meester VSOB and the new Radiohead offering*. Magical.
But still, only about a 15% (if that) success rate on the photos.
Meh.

But that does mean that they are (mostly) the best 15% (yes, that’s how bad I am/we are). So you should go and enjoy them here.

You’ll find a huge leaning towards photos taken with the Mavic. And some repeats of photos previously taken with the Mavic. No apologies here, sweetcakes. I’m still blown away by what this little machine can do, each and every time I fly it. And I’m still learning how to get the best out of the camera (and the editing software, for that matter). Practice makes perfect.

Bear with me, and just know that I’m having so. much. fun. on the journey.

 

* Start at No Surprises and play through to the end of the new stuff. Arguably the best 14 track run in… forever.  

Photo gemors

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Gemors being Afrikaans for a mess. Because that’s what I can like to be in with my photos right now.

The photos from last weekend still aren’t done. I just haven’t had chance. When I did have chance, I was away taking more photos in a place with no computer. And now I’m all mixed up, because some of the photos from this weekend are done. That’s because there are far fewer of them, so I just grabbed a couple (well, five) of the shipwreck ones and did a quick tidy up on them.

I took these with the Mavic this morning – the wreck is the Meisho Maru 38, and it lies on the coast halfway between L’Agulhas and Suiderstrand.
We’ve mentioned it here before, and we’ve mentioned why it has some of the name it has… well… it had, here.

But now my (usually very orderly) photostream on Flickr is all messed up.
I will edit those photos from last weekend and the rest of them from this weekend in the very near future.

UPDATE: You can start here!

Photos and the NDCA

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I have put a whole four photos up onto Flickr. [Author’s note: Actually, there should be another one. I wonder where it went?] You can see them here. We had some fun once the wind had dropped a bit on Monday evening, although my night shots aren’t really improving much.
Sadly, the wind didn’t drop enough for any Mavic fun.

And talking of the Mavic, there’s not going to be a lot more from me today because I’m spending my spare time filling in a FSS-GEN-FORM 081/14 form for the Namibian Directorate of Civil Aviation in the hope that I can take my little flying friend there next month.

They’ve been super helpful with their communication so far, but blimey, guv – they want quite a lot of information!

Poor start

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As I said, the plan was to be creative this long weekend, but it hasn’t started well. The fresh, open air of Agulhas is fantastic for flying the Mavic, but sadly, that fresh, open air is moving awfully fast right now (gusting to 60kph, nogal), and thus getting off the ground is a bit of a non-starter.

Equally, it’s even a bit breezy for long exposure photos. Not that the photons are getting blown around like the drone would be, but camera wobble is a problem. I was going to try somewhere a bit more sheltered last night, but the people renting the place next door decided that they needed to leave their outside light on all night because…  actually, I have no idea why. Anyway, those plans were also thwarted.

Flying is right off the menu. I might manage something on with the camera later, though. I’m not sure how right now, but I still have a few hours left to sort things out.

Watch (as ever) this space. It is, after all, the best space to watch.

No woman, no fly

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The Mavic learning curve continues.

My wife was away this weekend, and I had big plans to take the kids out for a quick flight. However, the weather was weird on Sunday. Cloudy one minute, sunny the next; calm one minute, dangerously gusty immediately thereafter.

Not flying weather.

Still, that did give me the opportunity to use that title.
Silver linings, ne?

The purpose of the planned flight was to practice some videoing. The photography thing is coming along nicely, albeit slowly. But I look at other people’s Mavic videos and I want to be able to do that too. I did try a 4K video a couple of weeks ago, but my settings were all wrong and I ended up with a pretty much completely unuseable, 2 minute long, 1.8GB file.

Some reading up and a couple of helpful Youtube videos later, I adjusted the video settings and took the risk of popping Florence (for it is she) up to 50m or so to test them out.
Good news. The quality was excellent: clear and sharp. And “only” 150MB for a 30 second flight. So basically 5MB per second. I’m not sharing it here because it (the content, at least) is rubbish, but that’s not the point. Suddenly, there are a whole lot of opportunities open to me – the world is my whelk.

There will come a time (possibly) when videoing in 4K resolution is necessary/possible (the Mavic can do it, but my PC simply can’t handle it). In the meantime, 2.7K is far more manageable, and – to an amateur like me, at least – appears basically just as good [professional videographers fall to the floor in laughter].

Watch this space, because great* things are coming.

* terms and conditions apply.