While you were sleeping

I've been away from photography for a few years. I use to own a Nikon d90 and had a blast primarily with landscape photography. At one point I even toyed with the idea of kite aerial photography. I bought all the hardware to attach to a kite and had a Canon point and shoot camera that I was going to use. Only owning stunt kites, I never got around to buying a kite suitable for flying a camera.

A started thinking about purchasing a drone around 2015. The thing that held me back was the flux of drone laws in the US. Finally, in 2016, the FAA defined some rules for the hobbyist as well as Part 107 for commercial drone operations. Now it became clear what the guidelines are.

I still hesitated though, you see I live about 1\4 mile from a municipal airport. The new regulations state that a drone pilot must "Provide prior notification to the airport and air traffic control tower if one is present when flying within 5 miles of an airport." A bunch of research and coming to the conclusion that a simple call to air traffic control was easy enough. I also feel that I will travel some. Maybe head out to western MA or up to Maine along the coast. One of the nice things about New England is the abundance of scenery a short distance away.

At first, I started to look at the DJI Phantom. I didn't really want to spend the money they were asking for a Phantom so I started to look at the Mavic pro which was around half the price. Then DJI announced the Mavic 2 pro and zoom.

I fell in love with the Mavic 2 pro. It has a Hasselblad 20MP camera with a 1" CMOS sensor. The aperture is adjustable from f2.8 to f11 and has a 10bit Dlog-M color profile. The price is similar to the Phantom 4 pro, but with the some of the newer features, I felt this was the drone for me. When I saw that Affirm was offering financing, it made the decision easier.

I think the biggest feature for me is the size and how portable it is. It can easily fit in a backpack while I go out on a hike. Flying this drone is like flying a Cadillac compare to the racing drone I bought from a Kickstarter campaign. The fact that the Mavic hoovers when I let go of the sticks on the remote control is a welcomed feature compared to the racing drones I tried out.

I love the soft glow in the trees in this photo, nothing like an early morning sun. I'm looking forward to the fall foliage here in New England. I hope to capture some great photo's with my new drone.