Photography – Page 8 – A Darker View

Learning to Fly

Learning to fly the Mavic Air has been a pleasure, and actually much easier than I feared.

Droning Over the Badlands — Flying a Mavic Air over the badlands of recent Hualālai lava flows

The purchase of a drone was a bit of leap, one I had been considering for quite some time. When you realize where I will be over the next month the time was now.

Our annual boating trip into the wilds of Alaska and British Columbia offers stunning photographic opportunities for a drone. Not that the island of Hawaii does not offer a great place to learn.

Now or never! So I put down the money and bought the aircraft.

With drone in hand I need to learn to fly it. I need practice to achieve the level of competency I feel is required. I have had a month to practice, a month I have made good use of. Regularly flying and logging quite a few discharged batteries each week.

I am taking learning to fly seriously.

To watch a thousand dollar drone disappear into the sky takes a leap of faith. Faith in the technology and faith in your own skill to pilot the drone back to the launch site. Any number of times I have piloted it far enough away that the drone itself is lost to view, even though I have a clear view of where it is. It is always reassuring to hear the buzzing grow louder and have this little aircraft reappear as it returns.

Continue reading “Learning to Fly”

Reactions to the Drone

When you take a drone out of the case and begin preparations for flight in a public place it is inevitable that you attract a little attention.

Flying with an Audience — Flying the Mavic with a small audience

The worry? Will that attention be negative?

The news has been filled with negative reactions to drones. To be expected of course, drones are a new technology bound to attract attention, and the media tend to write about something only when it goes bad. If it bleeds, it leads reporting.

The result has been quite a few reports of negative reaction in public to a drone. Reports of spying or snooping into private property have become common. There has certainly been some hysteria surrounding drones, some justified, quite a bit completely unjustified.

Continue reading “Reactions to the Drone”

Learning to Drone

OK, flying for a few weeks now with the Mavic Air, my first drone. Fortunately my training area is slightly scenic, just stopping off on the way to work in the morning and burning through a couple batteries.

The video is really an experiment and a learning exercise. With a bunch of video clips from the flights I needed to see what works, and what does not when it comes to editing. No better way to do that than attempt to assemble this material into a video.

What am I doing wrong? Quite a bit, I did not edit all of the flaws away in the video, you will see them. Definitely need to relax and use a bit more finesse on the controls to produce smooth panning motions. I have been experimenting with cinematic mode and slowing the gimbal down.

Why did I buy a drone? I really consider it as a camera that flies, not as an aircraft that happens to have a camera. The drone is a way to give my photography freedom of the air and to gain a new perspective.

Learning to Drone from Andrew Cooper on Vimeo.

The Mavic Air

OK, so I bought a drone.

Flying the DJI Mavic Air in the saddle at the base of Mauna Kea

I have been flying the aircraft for over a month now, logging hours of flight time, and discharging plenty of batteries. I have practiced launch and recovery, navigation, hand catching the drone, and taken some great photos.

Describing the Mavic Air is simple… Impressive.

This is not a review, I am making no effort to list through all of the features and faults of the aircraft. What follows is more my impressions of the drone, a few things I have encountered while learning to use it.

The issue here is that I am completely new to flying a drone, the Mavic Air my first real drone, not considering the cheap $20 toy quadcopter I played with a bit to learn. I have had to learn everything from scratch. It also means I come at this little aircraft with fresh eyes having nothing to compare it with.

Continue reading “The Mavic Air”

Where can you fly a drone in Hawaii?

For a new drone pilot, learning the rules can be a bit daunting.

Hawaiʻi is a state that is incredibly attractive to a drone pilot. The scenery, from reefs and beaches, to the soaring volcanoes, just begs to be flown over and photographed from the air.

I am determined to fly responsibly, that means going through all of the various rules. The rules are not simple! They are a patchwork of regulations from federal, state, and local authorities. How do you make sense of it all?

Below is the results of my research on the subject. More than a few hours of reading state and federal websites. The process of writing this post was in itself a means of educating myself. Hopefully others will find this useful. If you know of anything I have missed, drop me a line to let me know.

This post is focused on the Island of Hawaii, home for me. But much of what is discussed here applies to all of the islands.

To Fly

While humans are unequipped to fly naturally we have always envied other creatures the freedom of the air. The dream of flight has inspired men to create ways of overcoming gravity with ever more creative machines and technological tricks. We can fly, at least with a little help.

Mauna Kea above the Morning Fog — Mauna Kea seen above morning fog

A drone allows the operator to fly, if indirectly through the lens of the camera. The drone makes it quite easy, a nominal cost and a little practice allows a drone pilot to access the air so easily. A few moments preparation and the little aircraft is a able to loft hundreds of feet above and over a mile away.

Flying the little Mavic Air has opened this means of flight to me, and I admit I have been quite captivated by the experience. I am late to the game I suppose, but this also means I am learning on a very capable piece of mature technology. The Mavic Air is a superbly designed machine that is quite forgiving to a new pilot.

My interest in the drone is really as an extension of my existing interest in photography. My motivation is to allow photos to be taken from a new perspective. Even now, with drones becoming fairly common, a view from the air adds a sense of excitement to an image.

Continue reading “To Fly”

Mauna Kea Above the Fog

4K Screen Backgrounds

I was just re-editing one of my photos for use as a background. In my life complicated by multiple computers, many of which are virtual, I use unique screen backgrounds to remind myself which computer I am on.

Hmmm? Maybe I should share a few.

These are sized for the newer 4K monitors at 3840 x 2160, which is the usual 16:9 aspect ratio now used for most monitors. The images should display well on full HD monitors as well. You can use these for personal use only, no commercial use or re-posting to other services!

Use the ‘full size’ link under the image to download it.

White-Margin Nudibranch (Glossodoris rufomarginata) on the Kona coast

The glow from a lava lake in Halemaʻumaʻu lights the clouds prior to the May 2018 eruptions

A Moonlit Hike to Lake Waiau

Sublime… One word in the English language that comes close… A frozen world of snow and ice, dark rock, illuminated by ethereal moonlight. A place more of the arctic than a tropical island. Recent storms have again created such a place on the summit of Mauna Kea. Just need to make a point to get out there and enjoy it.

Moonset Over Lake Waiau — A nearly full Moon setting over lake Waiau near the summit of Mauna Kea

The plan? Set the alarm clock for 2am, out of the house before 2:30am, arrive at the trailhead about 3:45am. I would take a walk with a camera, then drive back down to Hale Pōhaku for breakfast, then join the crew for a normal day working on the summit. A good plan, if somewhat exhausting. A plan that was executed exactly as originally envisioned.

It was the timing that was the factor here. A few things to come together to make this work… A good covering of snow, the summit road open to the public, and good weather with clear, starry skies. Clear skies have been in rare supply lately, a succession of winter storms bringing weeks of clouds.

The road being open to the public is also an important bit. While I could drive past the roadblock, the rangers know me, we are forbidden to engage in non-work activities on the summit if the road is closed to the public.

The needed factors came together this particular morning and I set the plan into action.

Continue reading “A Moonlit Hike to Lake Waiau”

Reminiscing on Ektachrome

Among some slides I recently digitized is a series of astrophotos featuring Orion. Taken in early 1986 this represents one of my early forays into astrophotography. While most of the images are troubled by bad tracking, at least two worked with round, if somewhat overexposed, stars. Judging by the field of view it was a 50mm lens which means it might be an f/1.8, the common nifty-fifty.

Ektachrome Orion — The constellation of Orion captured with Ektachrome film in 1986

The image was most likely taken with my father’s “borrowed” Canon AE-1 35mm camera riding on a small equatorial platform of my own construction. This platform consisted of two disks of acrylic and a small synchronous clock motor. I still have this platform… I wonder if it still runs?

A few thing are quickly revealed when looking at the image. Taken on Ektachrome film the image is heavy on the blue, with poor sensitivity in the deep red. The Orion Nebula shows very little color and less extant than I would expect. The image is also quite grainy, the film grain being quite obvious and distracting. I cleaned up the image a bit in Lightroom, but this is about as good as it gets.

The images was likely a fairly long exposure, perhaps 30 seconds to a couple minutes. I have no records to show how long, no EXIF information on a 35mm slide. The image would have been hand-timed with watch a manual shutter release cable.

Kodak has announced a resumption of Ektachrome production after ceasing all production in 2013. This appears to be in recognition of the remaining, but robust, niche community of film photographers and continued demand for film. First scheduled for 2017 this was delayed into 2018 due to the lack of availability of some materials necessary for production.

Even if the film again becomes available I doubt I will be grabbing a roll for astrophotos. I do have the cameras and lenses available to shoot film. Modern DLSR’s are vastly better at low light.