I adventured out to Malmsbury Reservoir with the DJI Phantom drone hoping to take some pictures of the sunrise. The phantom was still in testing mode with a bunch of new gadgets so this was the best place to do my final checks and get the drone ready for production. It was one of those mornings where the air was crisp and the sunrise was warm. A perfect time to shoot video and photos. My initial goal was to point the camera into the sun and take some photos of the sunrise.
Location of Malmsbury Reservoir: Google Maps
Once I got the drone out of the box, added the GoPro and setup the gear for flight the sun was already rising above Malmsbury. So I did I final check press record on the GoPro and took off. While I was hurrying I accidentally chose the video option and not the photo option on the GoPro. Once I was airborne I had realised my mistake through the fat sharks so I ended up taking video for the 7 minute short flight.
Overall I was happy with the footage. I tried some different angles, got some sun flare on the lens looking into the sun (forgot to add the sun shade to the GoPro) and I just played around with the drone to make sure the gimbal and the new accessories were working correctly. The hundred or so kangaroos hanging around the reservoir didn’t mind as well. They seemed puzzled and confused seeing the drone hover above them.
The final video was compiled in 1080P and uploaded to you Youtube. You can view the video below. The only filter used in this video is the “Protune” setting on the GoPro camera. As you can see it makes a big difference to the overall video and brings out a warm and vibrant movie.
This footage was taken some time ago. Since then I’ve update the drone with more gadgets, accessories and got a little bit better with the video editing. Video editing takes hours and sometimes days to do. Due to time constraints I generally just chop and change video clips and add them to a video. With over 15GB of video footage this is only a snippet of what was captured.