- So you just got your drone,
you take it up and then this happens.
(drone whirring)
(drone crashing)
In this video,
I want to go through some of the biggest mistakes
new pilots make when they're out flying,
and I'm not doing this alone,
I have my buddy Aldryn with me
with the channel FlytPath,
and we're gonna go through 12 different mistakes
that you want to avoid when you're out flying.
(upbeat music)
Now, mistake number one
is letting your battery drain too low
to get to the point where
it's gonna auto return to home
and there's nothing you can do.
So on a DJI drone,
it's automatically set to
return to home at a certain point,
and you can override this,
but if you keep overriding the setting,
eventually it's gonna get to the point
where it's almost completely out of juice
and it will just take off
and move towards that home point
because it's trying to land,
and if you're too far away, well,
it's just going to fall out of the sky.
So one of the things you want to do
is manage your battery life
and make sure that you have
enough battery to come back
and enough battery
in case something major happens
where it has to sit there
and hover for a little bit. The last thing you want to do
is fly into your buddy's truck.
Mistake number two is flying
too low to the ground in sport mode.
So when you're flying a drone in sport mode,
the drone itself is actually tilted pretty far,
and it's gonna be moving fast.
So when you're flying super low to the ground
and you have this tilt happening,
well, there's a chance that your propellers
might actually hit the ground.
And you could see from this footage,
I was flying super low to the ground,
and I got lucky
because when I pulled the drone back,
my propellors looked like this.
All the tips had been chewed off,
and that's because with the tilt
of the drone and the speed,
it was hitting the ground just slightly
where it was destroying the propellers.
So when you're flying a drone super fast,
just make sure you have enough clearance
between the ground and the drone
so that you don't end up
taking off your propellers
and then having a catastrophic crash.
- Now, one of the mistakes I've run into recently
is taking my drone out into the field
and I will actually forget
to clear out the internal storage on my drone.
A lot of new drones these days
are coming out with internal storage,
whether it's 8 gig or 16, or 64, so a lot of them do have
that internal storage on there
so it's not necessarily
writing to the memory card,
it is writing to that
built-in storage on the drone.
Now, of course, it's always recommended
to bring an extra memory card with you,
but sometimes you kind of depend
on that internal storage to bail you out,
and the problem is, if it's full
while you're in the field, most of the time you have
to plug that into a computer and a lot of times you're not
gonna bring your laptop, your computer out there,
you normally just have your drone with you.
So the one thing you want to do
before you head out the door,
make sure that internal storage is downloaded
and cleared out on your drone.
Now, with all the new drones right now
with higher resolutions,
so many different options for you to choose from,
the one mistake I made when I was out there
was not specifying the resolution that I wanted
before I took off for each flight.
Now, what exactly does that mean?
Well, this one right here, this is the Mavic 3,
and this one actually shoots at 5.1K
and up to 50 frames a second.
And not just that, it also has 4K at 120,
which I was also testing out.
But the thing was, when I got back to my computer
and I downloaded my files,
I didn't realize I forgot to switch
back and forth for certain shots,
and then I had to go back out and re-shoot
because I shot a bunch of video
that I didn't want at 120,
I actually wanted at 5.1 at 30.
So one of the mistakes I made
was not double-checking my video resolution,
making sure I had the right settings
before I get up and fly for a particular shot.
- Now, the next mistake is not checking your drone
before you head out to go fly
and checking your firmware.
So drones will have updates,
and sometimes your drone will force an update
before it's allowed to take off.
And this is something that you want to avoid
before you get into a situation
where you don't have cell connection
or you don't have wifi connection.
So for example, I was up in Alaska
and I was working with the DJI Mavic 3,
it's pre-release,
I was working with pre-release software,
and I actually made the mistake
of going out to this epic glacier
where there was no cell service, no wifi,
and I tried to take the drone off
and it just wouldn't connect.
And this all would have been avoided
if I didn't rush out the door
and actually check the firmware
when I was sitting at my hotel room.
We spent all day getting to this point,
and unfortunately,
we weren't able to fly the Mavic 3.
As soon as we got back into cell service,
it connected, it did the update that it needed to do,
and then I could start flying again.
But this is way after we left
where we had this awesome scene to shoot.
So before you leave, always check your drone,
always check that your batteries are charged,
that your propellers are good,
that your controller is charged,
that you have a memory card,
and check the firmware to make sure
that there's no issues
and that you can take off and start flying
when you get out to these epic landscapes.
- You have to ensure you have a safe flight,
the one thing you want to look at is how many satellites
are connected to your drone.
You take off,
you're always gonna want to listen
for that home point that has been set.
What I've seen a bunch of times
is people will start up their drone
either inside their house or inside their car
and then put it right outside and then take off.
And they don't necessarily hear
that home point set because GPS
might not have already been set on the drone.
(drone whirring)
There it is.
Home point has been updated,
please check in on the mat.
So don't make that mistake
and just put the drone up in the air too quickly,
make sure you guys hear
the home point has been set,
that way, if anything does go wrong,
it'll ensure that you have a strong connection
if it has to go back into return to home.
- Now, the next mistake
is not getting variety of your shots.
So if you want to create interesting videos
that you want people to watch,
you don't want to just keep shooting
the same thing over and over.
You don't just want to put the drone up
and keep getting the same wide landscape shot
again and again and again.
So you want to create a variety of shots,
and if you can,
you want to tell a story in your shots.
And I did another video around the DJI Mavic 3,
that's how to get cinematic looking footage,
and a big aspect of that video is tell a story,
have a shot progression,
have something happening in your video.
And I'll include a link
down below in the description
to where you can check out that video.
- One of the things I see a lot
is people not utilizing the tools
that are actually in the app
to help you shoot and compose your shot
a little bit better.
I'm flying the Mavic
and it's using the DJI Fly app,
and all you have to do is on the top right,
you click on that
and click on the camera setting,
and if you scroll down,
you can use things like the histogram,
you can turn that on.
That way, you can see where your exposure is
as well as turning on and off the grid line.
So if you wanted to compose your shot
a little bit better,
you could turn on the thirds
as well if you want to see that center point.
That way, here on your screen now
you can compose your shot,
you could see exactly where your subject lies.
So if you wanted to move things around
on those third lines,
or if you wanted to make sure that your horizon
is perfectly centered and leveled,
use those grid lines,
which are inside of the app.
- Next mistake is shooting with an ND filter
when it's not needed.
So ND filters have a very specific purpose,
and you don't want to just put an ND filter
on your drone and fly and shoot everything.
You only want to use an ND filter
when you're trying to achieve motion blur.
Now, ND indie filters aren't needed all the time.
And most of the time, if the drone is high up in the sky,
you're never gonna notice this motion blur.
The only time that you really need
to use an ND filter
is when you're flying low and fast.
When you fly in that way,
you'll actually see motion blur in your frame.
And the issue is,
if you leave an ND filter on your drone,
it's gonna force you
to have your aperture wide open,
shoot at slower shutter speeds,
and potentially boost your ISO.
So if you're in a lower light situation,
you're gonna have more noise in your footage,
and if you're shooting photos,
well, you're gonna end up with blurry photos.
And so use your ND filter sparingly,
and make sure that you know why
the ND filter is on your done.
- After each flight and when you bring it back in,
the one thing you're gonna want to do
is inspect your drone of dust or dirt
and debris will kick up onto your drone
when you take off and some of that will stick to it,
so you just want to make sure
that when you bring your drone back in after each flight,
take a look at your lens,
see if you have anything on the body,
anything on the props
that might affect your flight.
Sometimes I'll just take out
my little air rocket or duster
and just clean off the lens.
Sometimes you'll get some dirt
or debris that's been kicked up
during landing or takeoff,
or while it's just out there up in the air.
- Now, number 11 is flying
without knowing the rules and regulations.
You don't want to just go somewhere
and put the drone up
without doing a little research first.
When I was in Alaska and in Utah,
we made sure to research
all the locations we were going
and make sure that we could fly a drone
in all of these locations.
And we were even able to fly
in Goblin Valley State Park
because they allow permits
and we went through the process
and got that permit.
Now, this permit wasn't super hard to get,
but understanding what the permit process is
before you actually get to a location
is super important.
And another thing is if you want
to make money from your drone,
or you just want to make sure that you know
all the rules and regulations,
I highly suggest you go
and get your Part 107 license.
- Now, depending on which drone you have,
some of them have obstacle avoidance,
360 obstacle avoidance
all the way around the Mavic 3.
And most recently,
I was out flying a different branded drone
and it also had obstacle avoidance on it
so I tried doing some intelligent
flight modes on it
and tried doing some follow me modes
and assumed that the obstacle avoidance
would automatically turn on.
Of course, that wasn't the case
and I was a little bit too late,
ended up clipping one of the branches on the tree
and crashed my drone
because I assumed that the obstacle avoidance
was automatically on.
So that's definitely a mistake
that I hopefully won't do again.
Whichever drone you use,
whether it's a DJI one or another brand,
and you are depending on something to work,
make sure it's actually turned on or off
in the app itself
before you get out there and fly
and hopefully not run into
the same issues that I did. - Now, make sure you head over
to Aldryn's channel FlytPath
and check out his videos.
And next, I highly suggest you check out
this video right here,
it goes through a bunch of different drone moves
that you can use when you're out flying
to get better looking footage.
I'll see you over there.