2024 May 18 and May 26: High Creek canyon flight east. 4k 3840x2160 30fps 40 megabit.
Benson Marina 1080p-30fps-16megabit
Quaking Aspens in northern Utah. The video starts at Sunrise Campground near Garden City, Utah, at about 7000 feet elevation. Next we go a few miles northwest to Swan Flats road and find some nice stands of aspen. A week later I return to record some more of the aspens.
Try again; better exposure. Alas, the Zoom H4N wasn't actually recording audio but the camera audio is pretty good.
2020 June 4: Birds, Woods and Water
9 min, 1080p, 30 frames per second, 16 megabit stream.
A walking video using Nikon D850 camera, Ronin-S gimbal, and Tamron 17-35mm wideangle lens up Logan Canyon near Tony Grove. Sound
recorded on a Zoom H4N stereo portable recorder.
A walking video using Nikon D850 camera, Ronin-S gimbal, and Tamron 17-35mm wideangle lens.
Ronin S gimbal and Nikon D850 using its built-in timelapse movie function 1 frame per second.
2020 Feb 29: Timelapse (30x speedup) driving from Barstow, CA to Payson, UT
1080p 30fps 16 megabit/sec stream, 1823 Megabytes.
Wonderful long views of Mojave desert and Utah mountains. Improved gimbal parameters. Also I was experimenting with finding the highway speed where the centerline striping synchronizes with
the camera frame rate (about 82 mph)
2020 Feb 29: Timelapse (4x speedup) driving through Virgin River Gorge
1080p 30fps 16 megabit/sec stream.
The portion of the road trip through the Virgin River Gorge at a slower 4x speedup
accompanied by the group "Leahy" playing "B Minor".
1080p 30fps 30 megabit/sec stream.
1080p 30fps 16 megabit. 16 minutes. 1.9 gigabytes. Ambience/Environmental. Three segments of High Creek. Audio recorded with Zoom H4N recorder.
2019 June 5: High Creek
1080p 30fps 16 megabit. 6 minutes. 723 megabytes. Ambience/Environmental. Small, fast river flowing over fallen trees. Audio recorded
with Zoom H4N recorder.
1080p 30fps 16 megabit. 13 minutes 52 sec. Alan Hovhaness "Hymn to Glacier Peak" excerpts for musical accompaniment.
1080p 30fps 30megabits/sec. 3 min 30 sec. DJI Phantom 3 Pro and Nikon D850.
Pat Malan's drone flight of MG climbing a little hill then following two ATV's. 1080p 30fps 30megabits/sec. DJI Phantom 4
Flights 1 2 and 3 with music. 1080p 30fps 24megabit. DJI Phantom 3 Pro and DJI Phantom 4 (Pat's). Environment: Temp about 75 F, wind calm, visibility 30 miles or so.
San Rafael Wedge Overlook flight 1. Point-of-Interest orbiting the overlook. 1080p 30fps 30megabit DJI Phantom 3 Pro at 4k.
San Rafael Wedge Overlook flights 2 and 3. A flight west upstream of the San Rafael river then a flight east downstream. 1080p 30fps 30megabit DJI Phantom 3 Pro at 4k.
Cedar Mountain flight from the San Rafael Swell overlook
San Rafael Swell geology Buckhorn Wash, Buckhorn Campground area, Wedge Overlook east and west. 2.7 gig, it might not load.
Monitored radio 122.8 MHz for aircraft activity. One aircraft announced landing intention at Huntington while we were at the overlook. Wind mostly calm, some fresh breeze from the south gusting to 10 mph occasionally. Visibility excellent probably 60 miles.
Muley Point and Goosenecks.. Goosenecks State Park
requires a Special Use Permit, available on the spot if you have the FAA UAS Remote Pilot License, which I did, and so I obtained the permit. Music is "Legend of the River" by
Audionautix (Creative Commons License).
Butler Wash Cliff Dwelling. West from
Blanding, Utah on the eastern flank of Comb Ridge.
Comb Ridge. West from
Blanding, Utah and initially flying north(ish). This is my first attempt to solve the problem of smoothness which benefits from 60 frames per second,
and speedup, flying takes too long. So I drop the raw video recorded at 30 fps onto a timeline set to 60 fps. Then I speed up the video 2 times and
export the whole thing at 60 frames per second. The effect is to achieve 60 fps and doubling of flight speed without dropping frames. This was exported
at 30 megabits per second and ought to have been higher.
White Canyon. Southeast from Hite, Utah.
This one is also double-speed video while flying, originally recorded at 30 fps and rendered to video at 60 fps and 50 megabits/sec. So it is smooth and maintains
quality but at 50 megabits it probably won't "stream" to your computer; you'll need to save the file and then play it.
Phantom 3 Pro. 1080p 30fps from 4k. 30 megabits mp4. Manual exposure. DS-30 strobe.
Location: Peter Sinks west from Garden City, Utah. Scout Troop 10 from Salt Lake City was camping in the mountains using an Imp Snocat for transport. Music: "Jumpin Boogie Woogie" by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)
Phantom 3 Pro. 1080p 30fps from 4k. 30 megabits mp4. Manual exposure. DS-30 strobe.
Location: A place called "Five Mile Pass" southwest from Cedar Fort, Utah.
Phantom 3 Pro. 1080p 30fps from 4k. 30 megabits mp4. Manual exposure.
Attached a DS-30 strobe for long range visibility. Three flights launched from southwest parking (solar panel covered parking), southeast parking, and west parking nearest the stadium.
Phantom 3 Pro. 1080p 30fps from 4k. 30 megabits mp4. Manual exposure.
Attached a DS-30 strobe for long range visibility. The first flight could not reach the top as it appears to be 500 meters above the surrounding Factory Bench. The second flight was made closer and from a foothill to gain some initial altitude and that succeeded to reach the top. No wind. Sunlight obscured by thin, high clouds. It is very quiet out there; I could hear the drone over a mile away.
Phantom 3 Pro. 1080p 30fps from 4k. 30 megabits mp4. Manual exposure.
Flights 3, 4 and 5 of the day. The first of these was at highway 24 near the turnoff to Factory Butte (Coal Mine Road) and the second is a few miles northeast of Hanksville. What wasn't obvious from the ground is that these pillars and "hoodoos" are made that way by harder, white capstones that protect the softer sandstone underneath. An interesting event happened; I was just turning around to make another pass to look at these capstones when Pat turned on his controller. Usually that doesn't have that much effect but his parabolic antennas were aimed at my controller and my controller disconnected from my drone. The drone dutifully returned to its launch site entirely by itself. Meanwhile the flashing DS-30 strobe helps maintain orientation awareness since I mounted it directionally; if I see it blinking then the drone is "tail-in".
Phantom 3 Pro. 1080p 30fps from 4k. 30 megabits mp4. Manual exposure.
Intention was to photograph autumn colors at this small stand of quaking aspens and flanking this small mountain ridge, a watershed divide. The vantage point a few hundred feet above the ridge makes it seem a lot higher above ground than was actually the case; I chose high ground for its vantage point. Actually, I didn't expect that Bear Lake would become visible or even Swan Flats.
Phantom 3 Pro. 1080p 30fps from 4k. 30 megabits mp4. Manual exposure.
I've wanted for a long time to get photos or video of the train crossing Cutler Reservoir at this bridge. It isn't all that exciting but it is as good as it gets around here. Anyway, the train usually comes down from Pocatello and crosses the water going west, but today it is going to Pocatello and crossed the water going east. I added some sound effects suitable to Dash-9 locomotives but these look more like AC4400's which wasn't apparent until I saw the shaded side. Basically the same but with alternating current inverters that drive brushless induction motors and thus have pretty much the same high torque benefit the drone motors also have because of absence of brushes.
Phantom 3 Pro. 1080p 30fps from 4k. 16 megabits mp4. Manual exposure. 680 megabytes.
Same file but 40 megabits per second, 1.7 gigabytes, no twice-per-second artifacts.
High altitude flight test. Guardsman Pass is in Big Cottonwood Canyon near Brighton Ski area and goes east over to Park City and Deer Valley. The altitude at the launch site is around 9700 feet. The drones worked well but cannot battle wind as effectively. Battery temperature on mine was 41 degrees C after a few minutes of flying so it appears not to have stressed the drones.
Exporting at 16 megabits per second produces a file that has noticeable twice-per-second artifacts. Exporting at 40 megabits eliminates this phenomenon but of course the resulting file is much larger and you'll almost certainly have to download it first then play it.
Music by David Anthony. Ambient recordings using a Zoom H4N recorder and shotgun microphone.
This is my first experiment hovering over a fast moving creek or small river using DJI Phantom 3 Pro. My intention was to fly along the river and record accompanying sound with a Zoom H4N recorder. This I did but hovering over water turned out to be difficult. It requires real flying. Everything is moving so the drone stabilization systems do not work particularly well. Flying in a line over ground is easy; over a turbulent river nearly impossible.
Short version, 2 min 38 sec, 320 megabytes river running only.
Longer version, 4 minutes, 480 megabytes includes flying above the canyon.
Wind Cave is a few miles east-northeast from Logan, Utah and exists in a layer of petrified mud that once was at the bottom of a shallow sea. This layer can be seen as a cliff throughout much of the area. On the south across from Wind Cave this formation is called the China Wall and has a footpath along its rim called Crimson Trail.
Same Movie but 16 megabits 423 megabytes.
Intention on this trip was to explore sandstone layering and weathering in particular the "capstone" or harder rock covering softer rock that permits these types of canyons to be formed. The quadcopter (drone) permits viewing and photographing the tops of these formations in a way that is economical, safe and easy. I am also interested in the way the San Rafael river flows through and interacts with this unique landscape.
Pat Malan explains Fiber Fix. I had planned on quite a bit more photography but the radiator hose blew out and I was very lucky to have Pat Malan with me and he had brought along something called "Fiber Fix" which is a fiber mesh and water-activated resin. That patched the hose enough to get back to civilization.
The first segment is flying southwest from Ricks Spring over Logan River. Climb up above a ridge where one can see the turnoff to Temple Fork. Turn around to northeast and climb a bit more while viewing the canyon and valley, with a rotation northward once more looking down-canyon. Then start a descent. The DJI Phantom 3 Pro descends faster if you are moving so I bring it down in a big zig-zag. The next segment is Paul Sorenson's 20 foot tall snowman just north from the Tony Grove turnoff. I fly around it twice with the Phantom drone. The third and final segment is the meadow near Beaver Mountain. I had supposed it was rather flat but this video shows that it is very much not flat. The drone encountered some odd behavior, probably some wind above ground. The air temperature in this "bowl" was about 15 degrees cooler than west of Beaver Mountain where is the giant snowman. This cooler, heavier air flows through that little canyon with the highway. On the ground there was no wind.
This is the snowman segment from the above video.
Flying above Bingham Creek and a snow covered golf course. Then we fly over the Ron Wood baseball diamonds.
For cold weather flying I tape the ventilation holes entirely or partially to keep the battery and electronics warm while flying.
