Perhaps I’ll coin the verb ‘to skidrone’. I packed my drone in its hardshell backpack and whizzed around the beautiful Dolomites in the Trentino region of Italy. The village is ‘Madonna di Campiglio‘ and the pistes are superb. Click here if you can’t see the embedded video above.
For the techies:
- I used an ND filter to significantly lower the amount of bright light entering the lens. This allowed slower shutter speeds although there’s still some detectable stutter in the whiter scenes.
- I shot in LOG mode and then transcoded the resultant files using DJI’s app . This allowed me to implement some basic color grading in Adobe Premiere and retain significant picture detail and saturation.
- I manually corrected exposure most of the time during the flight as the drone was tricked by the bright light and tended to under-expose.
- I captured in 4K (UHD: 4096x2160p), PAL, 25fps and saved the output format in MOV. I’m using a SanDisk Extreme PRO 64GB UHS-I/U3 Micro SDXC Memory Card in the drone as it gives me speeds of up to 95MB which is useful.
- Most of the time the wind was around 20mph however the DJI Phantom 3 Professional’s stabilisation system worked brilliantly and there’s almost no camera shake.
- Both my iPad and drone batteries depleted faster than in warmer climates. The temperature was generally hovering around -8 degrees celsius. I’m attaching one of my flight-paths below.
- For those of you who haven’t yet tried to ski and drone – do it, it’s great fun! As usual follow the basic safety guidelines and also check whether there’s any specific legislation on UAV use in the country you’re in.
- Music is by the brilliant J Scott Rakozy from Provo, United States.
Ski boots and drone. All set to go.
Flight path from one of the takes
The kit: Phantom 3 Professional and hardshell backpack
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