Last week ahead of an event I bought a DJI Mini 3 drone. I thought I’d do some photography of the event with it, but I wound up not bringing it with me, which was just as well since running the PA always takes more attention than I expect.

On a weekly basis I produce a video newsletter. There’s no expectation that it be very well done, but I love to play around with it every weekend, and I added some drone establishing shots. It’s taken me about a week to get to the point where I don’t crash it, which is just as well since there is already some superficial damage to the vehicle from my early impatient efforts to fly it.

I’m still getting the hang of camera control, but I was thrilled with the second of these videos. The drone has a feature called return-to-home so that it comes back to the spot from which it took off (roughly). As it was landing, it caught these cyclists in the distance and landed just as the rode by. I think it’s a cool shot, even if the camera re-centred (I presume as part of the landing routing) at an inopportune time.

So far I’ve identified these weekly videos as one use for it, but I know there will be more!