(upbeat music)
- Are the Autel drones now fully complete?
There was an update that just happened
that gave you access to active tracking, log,
and of few other features.
And so now this drone has all of the features
that it was initially promised at the launch.
And I wanted to test a few of these
to see how well they implemented some of these features.
So we're gonna have a little chat with coffee and cameras.
I feel like that could be a series
but I just wanna talk about this drone.
So let's talk about the Active Track
in the Autel EVO Lite Plus.
So it's fairly simple.
You go to the track feature on the menu system,
you're gonna click the plus icon on a person
and then it will start tracking
and it will automatically
find a position behind that person.
Now, it doesn't track objects like a car,
it's only really gonna track a person.
And I was on a mountain bike
and it tracked me just fine
when I was riding a bike.
So this tracking could be useful
in a few different situations.
Now as a whole, the tracking works well.
So I just rode around,
I don't have a bike mount for this controller yet.
So, basically I was just handholding the controller
and doing the unsafe thing of riding one handed.
But the drone was able to follow me well
especially in this kind of setting
where it's big and open
and it just the distance,
it was able to follow me up and down hills.
So overall, yeah, the tracking works great
when it's locked on
and it's following you in this position.
But there are some issues,
and there's some weird things
about this tracking when you compare it to other drones.
So, first off, when you put it in the tracking mode
it punches in.
And so if you wanted to use the full width of the sensor,
which is only a 28 millimeter lens, what you can't track.
And so you're not gonna get the same type of footage
that you would get when you use a wide lens
on a different drone.
If you're using a DJI Drone
there's no crop when you go into the tracking mode.
And so when the drone is low to the ground
and tracking an object,
there feels like there's a lot of motion
because wider lenses close to the ground
show lots of motion.
Whereas on this drone, you're not gonna see as much motion
because you have a zoomed in lens.
And that's one issue for me
is you're always punching in on this camera
to be able to get this tracking to work.
Now, one of the other issues
is that the tracking is very limited,
it only tracks from behind you.
And so if you're in front of you,
what happens is when you turn on the tracking
it's gonna try to find position behind.
But if you're not moving yet,
I noticed that this drone kinda goes crazy.
And I've seen on Aldryn's channel, "Flyt Path,"
his drone actually crashed.
I almost had a few crashes when I was out testing this
but what I noticed was happening,
was as soon as the drone was in front of me
and I started the tracking
it would do this weird like dip
and swoosh and like go all over the place.
And then eventually it would come around
and then find me.
So, fly as high enough in the sky,
I noticed that it just kinda like danced all around,
it was kind of this crazy motion.
And then it would find me
and then it'd be fine.
But there was a couple times where it was lower
and I had to cancel the tracking
because it was going towards the ground.
And something about the way that it's tracking,
it just can't find the subject's position
and it dances around in the sky.
Now, one other thing with this tracking
is that you can change the elevation.
So, if you wanna go right above you and track
or if you wanna go down low,
you could just move up and down on the left joystick
if you have it set to the normal mode.
And the drone will go up or down
and you could track from in different positions.
So that works well,
but it is limited to only behind you.
You can't track to the sides, you can't track in front.
So it's just a very simplified tracking system,
and I don't know how much I would trust it
after seeing how much motion it had
when the tracking got off.
Now, one other thing that's kind of a bummer
with the tracking is there's no access to the log profile.
You can only use the stand color.
Now there's a few other updates
besides the tracking that came out with log profile.
Now this camera's an eight bit camera,
so you don't have as much latitude to color grade.
But when I pull it into my editing software
the log footage, isn't super flat, it's flat enough
that it pulls down the highlights and brings up the shadows,
but it's not like super compressed.
So working with an eight bit file is fine
to be able to do slight color grading
and be able to get a better look.
I've noticed that when comparing this
next to the standard or the HDR,
the color graded log footage looks much better.
Now, you have to make sure that you're shooting properly
and you're not having to push the footage too far.
But so far working with this log,
I actually like the look of this profile.
I need to test it in some more situations,
but general really just looking at these
in comparison between log, standard, HDR,
the log looks great.
Now, one thing that's frustrating about the log profile
is there is no color assist.
So when you're out flying,
you're always gonna be looking
at a flat image on your screen.
Now for the HDR I had higher hopes.
When you look at it side by side to the standard
it looks fairly similar.
Now, the last thing I wanna mention
is that they added a histogram.
So this was a feature they didn't have before.
So you could actually see your exposures on a graph
and it just works well.
Now, overall I hope drone companies stop releasing drones
without all the features in it.
Because it's really frustrating to get a drone
and then to say, hey, these features are coming someday.
And then when they show up
they're kinda like half baked.
Like the tracking in this works
but there's also these issues.
I feel like drone companies
are really pushing things out fast
to be able to get things to market,
but they end up hurting themselves
because they put out these drones
that have features that don't work properly.
Now, tracking is a great feature
but if you're out by yourself
and you wanna move your drone in the sky
and not use tracking.
Make sure you check out this video right here,
it goes through 10 different drone moves
that you can use when you're out flying as a solo creator.