Sunday, May 31, 2015

Staying Busy

The sun finally came out...yesterday!  And then, not so much today.  Oh well.

The park was packed solid for the Memorial Day holiday weekend and forty mile Long Beach Peninsula yard/garage sale.   We joined the bargain hunting pack on Sunday and picked up a few pieces that needed a new home.  Most of our purchases were items for our friends, but Juanita found an antique quilt that was in pretty rough shape and needs a lot of TLC.   I managed to leave everything in the yard or garage.

Fedex arrived on Wednesday with a nice new flying machine to add to my ever growing fleet (this is Juanita, the editor:  "ever growing fleet"...I don't think so!) of quadcopters.  I have already made five flights with the DJI Phantom 3 Professional, which is an amazingly stable platform for both videos and still photos.

My previous Phantom 2 Vision is stabilized by up to only 12 GPS satellites, whereas the new quad can access more than 20 at times.  That, in addition to a new visual/sonar near ground positioning system, makes for an almost tripod like aerial stability.  The short video below shows some of that solid performance at the beginning, which appears to be a still photo.





Because two additional batteries are on back order, I am flying on only one, and dropping it to a break in level of 50% at that.  As soon as additional batteries arrive in a week or two, I'll expand my range and  get some interesting views in the local area.

I also took a few still photos with the new camera.  The first one is a fun dronie at our little space at Andersen's RV Park and the second consists of five shots bracketed and processed into a single HDR photo.  The new camera is able to capture single, multiple, bracketed, time lapse and long exposure photos and will require a lot of practice to get things right.



Dronie!



Five shot HDR


Good long time friends Mike and Charlie Harris visited with us briefly earlier this week.  We haven't seen these two good people for many years after meeting them originally in early 2007.  After trading stories in our rolling home for a while, we adjourned for a great lunch at the Lost Roo restaurant in Long Beach.  Good company, great food...we couldn't ask for more.

Yesterday we drove down to Ilwaco for the weekly farmers market.  There was very little produce available, but we loaded up on other stuff...again mostly for friends and family.





At the marketplace in Ilwaco...the Lady Washington was in port.


Despite the almost constant overcast, we are enjoying our visit to Long Beach.  The upcoming July 4 holiday is still ahead before we head south, and we are looking forward to more fun activities on the Washington coast.



4 comments:

  1. I want one. What was your reason for selecting the 4K camera over the 1080 HD camera? Everything else seems the same between the pro & advanced q-copters.

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    1. Tom...I chose the 4K because there is more information in the video stream when I downres to 1080P...makes for a somewhat sharper image. You do need a powerful computer to do the processing however, and taking the video in 4K 30fps in bright sunlight can cause problems with jello or rolling shutter effects unless you can keep the shutter speed down with an ND filter. I have not received my filters yet and will stick with 1080P video until they arrive.

      Otherwise the only difference between the Pro and the Advanced is the charger, which is a bit more powerful on the Pro.

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  2. The good farmer's market is the Sunday one in Astoria. We found lots of good stuff there. Maybe we will all go when we see you later in the month?
    You are going to have to store your quadcopters on the roof soon just to have room and to hide them from Juanita.

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  3. We'll check that out with you when you get here. We found some excellent sweet corn at a little produce shop in LB on Saturday and Juanita picked up fantastic strawberries from a stand in Warranton near Costco yesterday. Ilwaco market a real disappointment for produce but had all the usual hand made stuff and about 5 photography booths...must be the easiest thing to sell at weekend markets I guess.

    Hey, do you have room for a few quads? Haha!

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