A couple of months ago, I was at a house party when my friend let me try his drone. Though drones were something I’d been aware of for a while, the ability to guide this toy of his through the skies of Hatboro was a watershed moment for me. It felt like something straight out of the future.
With the control sticks in my hand, I could feel the weight of this $1000 toy hovering gracefully through the sky. But more than the weight of this near-weightless hovercraft, I felt a primal anxiety settling in the pit of my stomach. I felt the disappointment and anger my friend would feel when I’d sheepishly and inevitably inform him, “I crashed your drone.”
But he trusted me. And though I didn’t yet trust myself, I watched the drone sway back and forth across the sky with a terrifying immediacy. It responded to each press or flick instantaneously. Tilting a control stick to the left would send the drone hurtling 20 meters to the left. Tilting a different stick upward would cause the drone to ascend to absolutely dizzying heights. With beads of sweat trickling down my forehead and the beginnings of vertigo setting in, I felt like a pilot with the weight of an entire battle on my back.
I watched the drone’s video feed playback in real-time on the controller’s monitor. It was equal parts mesmerizing and petrifying. I could hardly believe my eyes as my slightest hand motions translated instantly into this jaw-dropping little movie I was now capturing.
In the feverishly long ten minutes that I spent playing with his futuristic floating contraption, I was delighted that I managed not to crash it. And in those short minutes, I had an epiphany. I realized what I needed to do — I had to buy a drone of my own.
After a few short weeks and no shortage of back and forth, I pull the trigger and buy the flying camera that I hope will show me the skies of my hometown. Once it arrives, though, I allow it to sit in an intimidating Pandora’s box in my bedroom for a few days before deciding to finally open it. But on one sweltering July afternoon, and with a great deal of trepidation, I slowly and meticulously unbox my expensive new toy.
With the drone unboxed and sitting on the shady side of my back porch, beside a controller with enough buttons and features to intimidate even the most tech-savvy of millennials, I embark on a couple of hours of video tutorial-watching.
With an afternoon’s worth of YouTubes half-digested, I drive over to a local arboretum. I don’t have much faith yet in my ability to launch this drone from my own backyard, and the growing list of warnings I’ve gotten from Youtubers about everything that can go wrong on a first flight hasn’t exactly filled me with confidence.
Once I arrive at the large, open field ready and eager to launch my miniature aircraft on its maiden voyage, and with 90 degree Pennsylvania heat wearing down my patience, I’m greeted with an impudent little error prompt. “Damnit,” I say aloud.
I need to update the device, and to update the device, I need internet.
Fortunately, I remember that I live in a time of flying drones and smartphones; so I simply turn my iPhone into a Wi-Fi hotspot.
I move to a marginally less sweltering spot of the park as the update goes through and, after another ten minutes, I’m ready for flight. I launch my drone into the air and as it begins to soar across the field I light up like a child at play. It doesn’t even matter that I’ve forgotten to remove the gimbal cover and my footage is shaking more than a hummingbird on crack… I’m flying above the park I’ve been going to since I was only a child!
Of course, I’m not actually flying. But the recording on the screen is so impossibly clear that I might as well be. Even with the camera shaking erratically multiple times per second, it’s clear that this drone is one of the wisest investments I’ve ever made. The image on my screen comes through in a high dynamic range, and the footage it records is an impressively smooth 60 frames per second. Shockingly, it records in 4K. But to even see the 1080p preview play back on the screen before me is already enough to leave me in awe.
Once I figure out there’s a gimbal cover that I need to remove, I’m suddenly taking footage that’s far more cinematic than I have any right to be capturing just yet. Though I haven’t yet found a great way of publishing that content to Medium, some of the images I’ve chronicled so far have been staggering. That many of my favorites I’ve included here are mere screenshots of videos that I’ve taken is a true testament to the power of this camera.
One of the greatest features of this drone is the ability to see sunsets in areas where they’re typically concealed by towering greenery. But once I’ve allowed the drone to ascend beyond the tree lines, it’s clear that there are very few sunsets that aren’t worth capturing.
This image was taken after a rainstorm above the grounds of my dad’s former Jr. High school. There was a second rainbow not seen directly above this first one, but I wasn’t able to adjust my image settings quickly enough to get it to appear very clearly here.
This picture I shot on what seemed like one of the clearest days of the summer so far. One of the more interesting aspects of drone-flying has been the ability to gain a clearer insight into air quality. Many days so far in which I’ve tried to capture the Philadelphia skyline, the smog has been nearly impossible to miss. Above a certain altitude, I can see the quality of the air for miles and miles around.
This picture, too, is one of the clearest images that I’ve gotten yet of the city’s skyline. It was taken a little bit closer to the city, though, so it made for a slightly better viewing angle. The video footage I recorded of the approaching storm, too, was by far some of the most impressive I’d achieved yet. In it, you can visibly see the rain beginning to soak different parts of the city as the churning mass of ominous clouds slowly blankets them.
I continued recording as the storm approached us. In spite of the torrential downpour that began, though, my drone effortlessly returned to the point I’d launched it from with little more than a “high winds warning.”
I’ve been simply blown away by the DJI Mini 3 Pro in the short time that I’ve spent with it. It’s the most excited that I’ve ever felt about photography. It’s opened the door, not just to a greater appreciation for the thought behind every shot, but to the skies I’ve never been able to see. To view my own town from this vantage point has been a privilege that it’s hard to put a price tag on. It’s felt more like an investment in an experience than just a purchase of some new equipment.
But more than anything, my drone has given me a renewed jolt of passion in a hobby that I never fully committed to. It’s inspired me to start parsing between all of the nuance and camera jargon that for so long has left the world of photography feeling abstruse and inaccessible to me.