NZFF

I've had my son and his wife staying for a few days, they are visiting NZ from Colombia for a month, today they moved on to stay a while with his brother. Hopefully I'll see them again over New Year, but they will be spending Xmas with his mum who lives in Hokitika.
They gave me a kilo of Colombian coffee, so I'm set for a while. This is very different from what we drink here, it's a lot less roasted, so you get all the flavours -- here we tend to go for a high roast, which is strong but bitter.
They funded the trip through sales of his video footage to stock libraries. He has a huge number of Colombian videos now, a lot include drone footage. He brought his 'mini' drone with him, in the hope of getting some good footage here, to test how they sell as stock. They are talking about coming to live in NZ, which would be amazing, but I'm trying not to get too excited in case it doesn't happen.
The drone is freakily good, a tiny little thing, a really stable platform for the 4K camera. I watched him fly it over Caroline Bay, sending it over a kilometre away, and then bringing it back to the exact spot it left from.
Thomas's English isn't as great as it used to be, he normally only speaks Spanish now. I find it funny when he has to search for an English word... His wife's English is a lot better, and she is native Colombian!

The drones are amazing platforms.
4k from such a tiny little camera, and totally stable.
Mine is spending Christmas back home in Taiwan due to a camera correlation error.
Rummaging through the Cupboard that is the Repository of Things Too Precious to Throw Away, I found my Sony digital tape movie camera. HD (but only 720p) and a whopping 3 Mpixel still camera.
I think the phone before this phone had a higher spec...

I found shooting from a drone opens different avenues of thought to photography.
You should post a link to your son's sample work if you have one.

Enjoy the coffee, surely the best in the world?

Cheers, Charl. He does have a lot of videos on Vimeo, but here's his show reel which is almost all drone footage.
The sound is a bit 'buzzy'. No, wait, that's just me, too much coffee!!
I must admit I'd never really been interested in drone photography until I saw this thing in action, it does open up a huge new world.

Edit: oops, the video is embedded, but it is best seen full-screen on the vimeo site -- don't know how to link that, but I'll try...
Here's his Vimeo profile page, the showreel is the 'Beautiful Colombia!'

That is spectacular Rob ... and the flying as well .
Do i need a drone ? ... no , maybe a job first

Rob , was that the son I met when I had the Bob Dylan tickets? lived just around the corner from me at the time.

Marty, one of the things about drones here in NZ is that the rules are tight, and might get tighter -- still, I'd love to get out in the lakes, coastlines and native bush. This is the drone he had with him, although he owns a larger one -- he now much prefers the little one, and I can see why. They are on their way through to the lakes next week, so I hope it works out for him. They are planning to visit Milford Sound, but I suspect that the airport rules out any drone flying.

Mavic Pro -- have a look through the features, it is a magic little box. You can see what the camera sees on a very nice screen, with lots of handy info, warnings etc. To start a flight, Thomas just tells it to go to a set altitude, where it'll just sit and wait as solid as a rock. It can find its own way home, and has plenty of sensors to stop it hitting things -- in fact it can see obstacles and fly around them. One thing I noticed was that the seagulls hate it, and divebombed it until in got out of their territory.

The son you met was Joshua, he lives in Geraldine now and works close to Timaru. He and his wife have two boys, and a girl on the way in a couple of months. Thomas and Maira are thinking of returning to NZ to start a family, and I'm hoping that by spending some time with the boys, they'll be totally hooked:) You never know, I might end up with half a dozen grandchildren...

Speaking of drone photography, just noticed this lovely shot by Andy Underwood on Stuff:
Weather photo of the week

toprob wrote:... the showreel is the 'Beautiful Colombia!'[/url]

Super work... I just love where videography takes us today, supplementing the normal footage with time expansion/compression, and now, the third dimension.
Some of the most amazing shots are Top-Down.

I have the Mavic and it's a gem.
We drone users have a real responsibility not to be idiots and interfere with others in any way - it will get us binned.
Fortunately most countries are coming to the party and spelling out what you can do where.

https://www.airshare.co.nz/maps

Yes, that was something which I've been talking to my son about, as some stage the idiots will start overstaying their welcome, and it'll be more and more difficult to fly legitimately. Thanks for the link, that's very useful stuff.
Sort of related -- there's a current post on Avsim, showing a 3D-printed Spitfire in action, including a guy with a drone controlled via a VR headmounted thingie, which acts as a air-to-air camera. Although the Spitfire is definitely the star of the show! Now I want a drone AND a 3D printer....

Two things that cannot be compromised on ......... coffee and wine.
Our next door neighbour is a freelance cameraman and he used a drone to film the opening scenes to the TV serial "800 words". I think it is Muriwai beach he is flying down.

I've been checking out the drone site linked by Charl, mainly thinking about whether it would be worthwhile having a drone for developing little airfields. Of course I couldn't do it myself (unless I get qualified) but it seems possible to work under supervision of a qualified pilot. So I'd contact the aerodrome, once I'd organised a supervising pilot, and do a quick flight from just above roof levels. This would be a great angle for what I need texture-wise, cutting out a lot of rubbish which gets in the way -- like trees, bushes and aircraft...

The selling point would be that I could give the footage to the airfield if it was of use to them. I could do an entire airfield in 20 minutes, which would get me out the way quickly. The only thing I'm not at all sure about is whether this would be acceptable to enough aerodromes, otherwise I'd be wasting my money. I really need to do some research.

My main inspiration was Tim Whittaker's Hastings Aerodrome video:

https://youtu.be/s9RkUqBlCpk

Good idea, that...
It's all in the planning, and best to story board the flight so everyone knows what to expect on the day.
Which has to be windless and rainless!
Best lightly overcast, too.
The local flying club can usually deliver a supervising pilot at ~$70/hour.

Go on, you know you want - no, Need- a drone.

Charl ... stop it I dont need a drone ..... but I think I want one .
If Rob decides its the thing to do ....maybe he and I might joint venture.

I'll just leave it on the list for the moment, at least until I've released NZCH, and then I'll review the situation:)
Still, they do have 1001 uses... including drone racing...

oooooo Springfield is a clear drone zone ... kewl! Might spring for one when we move out there next Feb.

Ok, I have been doing some research, which was probably not a great idea at the moment. One thing which really works for me is DroneMate, a NZ company which offers aerial mapping, including 3D, via drone. Their Youtube video shows the golf course on Best Island, Nelson, as a 3D model.
This is freakily good, I know a guy on FSDeveloper created an airfield this way, so I've always been keen to see what was involved. So many possibilities....

...and back to Coffee.... ....

Its a funny old do, but no-one likes my Coffee... ....

Its the cheapest I can find....

...like my Tea and my Vino.

Most/all of the time, it's just something to drink when I'm feeling a bit thirsty...

Its just a fluid to wet my Tonsils!

Cheap and wet is all I need!

Paul..... ... ... ...!

toprob wrote:Ok, I have been doing some research, which was probably not a great idea at the moment. One thing which really works for me is DroneMate, a NZ company which offers aerial mapping, including 3D, via drone. Their Youtube video shows the golf course on Best Island, Nelson, as a 3D model.
This is freakily good, I know a guy on FSDeveloper created an airfield this way, so I've always been keen to see what was involved. So many possibilities....

Wow some of that drone mapping is spectacular (and so easy). I would like to see how this would look in the sim (if it is able able to be formatted in some way that is compatible with FS).

Fozzer wrote:...and back to Coffee.... ....

Its a funny old do, but no-one likes my Coffee... ....

I'm very much the same, except for coffee. Every birthday/Xmas my daughter sends me a 'care' package, and a few years ago it included a single-serve stovetop espresso maker -- I've been hooked ever since. This year the package included coffee, chocolate, a xmas pudding, and a bottle of honey mead -- enough alcohol in a small bottle to put me under through boxing day...
With wine though, I like to get some change from my 10 bucks. Same with beer, one of my sons thinks I'm a real philistine, as I don't like all the flash craft beers. At the moment I'm loving my Speights Summer Ale, which is more a sugary drink than a beer... (Disclaimer: this is not an advertisement!)

cowpatz wrote:Wow some of that drone mapping is spectacular (and so easy). I would like to see how this would look in the sim (if it is able able to be formatted in some way that is compatible with FS).

This would take some thought, you'd really want the data to be higher resolution than the normal FS mesh/resampled ground can cope with, but it would make a great 3D model. This is more the sort of thing which Aerofly does, though. I would certainly love to see small scale areas -- like an airfield -- with even the trees mapped in 3D, like the golf course in the video. They don't look like real trees up close, but better than the default from a distance, because they are 'fuller'. However I can recall a 3D mapped model of a pumpkin I created, and put into the sim -- it had more geometry than the entire terminal at Nelson. So this sort of thing requires some optimisation.

Lately I've had Google Earth open while working on NZCH -- the GE version is fully 3D lidar mapped, I think, so you really get a look at the shape of everything. Albeit a bit blobby in parts, this used to drive Ian mad, he never wanted to see this sort of stuff in the sim.

Aerofly does seem to sit well with drone-level survey.
The hard part as ever will be to decide what to leave out so the sim doesn't die under load!
So far I haven't heard any performance complaints but it must surely have its limits too.

Like everything else, drones are in a fast-moving technoworld...
Soon as my Mavic comes back from Xmas in Taiwan I will try this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhSvIfBKlX8

And dragging it back to coffee ... again ...

Just died and been to coffee heaven ... two most excellent coffee establishments, one out at Bush Inn (Black & White Coffee Cartel) who do a central american (twin) bean blend, and Three Lllamas (out at Woodend) who do a Peruvian blend. NZ$60 a kg ... (about 2-3 weeks worth), but well worth the expense.