AERIAL FILMMAKER DRONENEWS
New anamorphic lenses for drones, winners announced in aerial photography competition and new safety measures for drone disasters WORDS KINGSLEY SINGLETON
It’s very rare, but still the drone operator’s worst nightmare: a catastrophic failure that sends your aircraft and any payload crashing to Earth. But now an effective means of safety is being offered by ParaZero with its SafeAir parachutes. The units are available for various DJI models, including the popular models like the M200 Series, Phantom 4, Mavic Pro and Mavic 2 series. In terms of price you’re looking at £289 for the Mavic version and £2,599 for the M200. The systemmonitors the drone’s avionics for anomalies, and if a critical fault is detected, it cuts power to the aircraft’s engines and automatically deploys the parachute as the drone falls, protecting people on the ground and damage to the aircraft, too. parazero.com CHUTES FOR SHOOTS
Gowiderwith yourMavic
Moment, best known for producing neat add-on camera lenses for smartphones, has just announced that it’s making anamorphic lenses for DJI’s Mavic 2 Pro andMavic 2 Zoomdrones. Launched on Kickstarter, theMoment Air quickly smashed its $100,000 target and backers will get the lens for £159/$199, rather than the RRP of £239/$300. Like adding an ND filter to your Mavic 2, theMoment Air anamorphic lens simply clips to the gimbal using a two-part lock and balancemounting system. The lens sits on one side with a counterweight on the other, and it’s claimed to not impede the gimbal at all in shape or weight. In fact, Moment claims its design uses aerospace grade composites andmetals to keep weight to an absoluteminimum. The anamorphic lens is a 1.33x design, so should produce a cinematic looking
2:40:1 ratio 4K footage from theMavics once it’s processed, equating to shooting with a wider focal length in the horizontal direction and a longer focal length in the vertical. The lens is claimed to use “cinema quality glass… and a unique set of coatings to deliver a horizontal flare associated with vintage anamorphics.” And if you’re put off by the squeezed look of unprocessed anamorphic, Moment is in discussion with DJI about automatically processing footage within the drone’s app. If you add a different lens design you’re going to need different filters; Moment is also producing sets of NDs and a circular polariser for its anamorphic lens, which will come in sets of six, fromND4 to ND64 plus the polariser. These can be bought as part of the Kickstarter, too. shopmoment.com Check out this year’s Drone Awards for a superb selection of aerial filmmaking. Run by Art Photo Travel Association, the competition is now in its second year and winners of the 2019 contest were recently announced, including stills and videos. Check out the competition
“It automatically deploys the parachute as the drone falls”
website to see the winner, ‘Bolivia by Motorbike and Drone’ by Alex Chacon, and some amazing highly commended and commended entries, all nomore than five minutes long and very pretty indeed. droneawards.photo
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PRO MOVIEMAKER AUTUMN 2019
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