The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
Even seals and sea lions need to take a break in their travels so these folks stopped in at the Terrible Tilly Sealtel 6. Unfortunately the light isn’t left on as its been inactive for many years. The travelers don’t seem to mind.
Technical Details
DJI Mini Pro 3
ISO 110, 1/50 @ f1.7, CPL
Height approximately 90 meters, Distance from controller 4015 meters.
Oh man that’s a lot of seal poop! I’ve been near colonies of elephant seals and you can smell them before you see them. Glad your nose was far from this scene. Great viewpoint though and one I’d never quite imagine if you hadn’t flown over and gotten this. They sure are at home and I don’t blame them - the seas look tiring after a while.
Truly an amazing capture Bill – literally impossible without a drone. I really love the exposure quality as well. I haven’t tried drones, but there is an issue with drones frightening wildlife. Some reports are quite disturbing – in one case in Southern California, a drone swept over and frightened a colony of nesting terns and they abandoned hundreds of eggs. Here, you were obviously high enough to not alarm the seals and make them scramble into the ocean. My eye wants you to be closer and show me more detail. So the question is, have drone cameras advanced to the point where they can hover at a respectful distance and capture telephoto images? Or must drone photographers either stay back, or risk intruding on the creatures that we all love to shoot? I’d also like to know if drone images of distant wildlife have enough megapixels to allow substantial cropping?
James: I’m pretty much a novice at drone photography but I’ll give you my insights based on this first extensive use of my drone. The camera on the Mini 3 Pro is a fixed focal length fixed aperture relatively wide angle. It can produce a 48MP RAW file so lots of cropping is possible. I’m very impressed with the image quality of the RAW images. There are much more sophisticated models that have variable apertures and genuine optical zooms and much bigger price tags. They are also much larger and louder than the Mini Pros. The digital zoom feature on mine is OK but when shooting stills I prefer to use the RAW capture mode which does not support zooming.
I hear you regarding the potential for wildlife disturbance and think that is a major reason drones are not allowed in national parks and, as disappointing as that is for me, I understand and grudgingly support the ban. I was less concerned with the seals than I was the birds so I generally stayed 90-100 meters altitude. There were a couple of places on the coast that had drone bans at certain times of the year because of the birds issues. Fortunately for me I didn’t run afoul of them. One really nice feature of the Mini 3 Pro and the newer Mini 4 Pro is that it is remarkably quiet. Even in still air it’s hard to hear once its 30-40 meters away.
All in all I love what this little flying camera can do. I’ve loved the Oregon coast pretty much my whole life and have wanted to get some images from the ocean side of some of my favorite spots. I did make a stupid rookie mistake while flying near Shore Acres and crashed. Fortunately I have what they call Fly Away coverage so a replacement is on the way but I missed some opportunities later in the trip. Oh well, good reason to go back.
Thanks Bill. I have a buddy who stitches panoramas from shots taken by his drone, so I shouldn’t be surprised at the resolution you enjoy. You are on a great path – I can’t really think of anything else in photography that expands access to subjects like a drone. Just to be able to get up 10 or 15 feet or so can completely rearrange the elements of a landscape composition. How many shots do I have where the foreground and middle ground crowd the background? Too many. There is an auto junkyard behind a high wall along highway 395 that looks like a great subject. Every time I drive by, I wish I had a 10 foot stepladder. But all I need to do is learn how to drone!
