Before you can take advantage of an outstanding drone data platform, ‘how you capture the photos’ is also an important factor. To improve the accuracy of data analysis, there are several things a service user should check. For example, you need to plan and verify in advance—such as how many meters above the ground you will fly, how often (every how many meters) you will capture images, and how much overlap the photos should have—before you start shooting.
But first! Before all those concerns, the very first question is ‘Which drone should I choose?’, right? So today we’ll go over the drones that are well suited for aerial photography. Let’s take a look at the graph below.
The graphs above are statistics from 2018. As the left graph shows, the company that holds most of the drone market is China’s DJI. The graph on the right shows the sales share of DJI’s products. As a rough estimate, three out of every five drones flying around the world are DJI products, and among them one is a Phantom series and another is a Mavic. First, let’s look at the latest model, the Phantom 4 Pro V2.0.
The Phantom 4 Pro V2.0 is used by many broadcasting stations as a drone for broadcast filming. It weighs 1,375 g and can shoot 4K/60fps video and 20-megapixel photos. Its maximum flight time is 30 minutes, and even when the operator and the drone are 7 km apart it can still transmit video, with a maximum flight range of 14 km. Its maximum speed is 72 km/h—that is, it can travel 20 m per second. (About the same speed as a car!)
The second is the Mavic 2 Pro. Compared with the Phantom models, this one is defined by its portability. Being able to fold the drone up for storage is really convenient, isn’t it? Thanks to its light weight of 907 g, it can fly for about 31 minutes, and its maximum flight range is as much as 18 km. It can shoot 4K/30fps video and 20-megapixel photos, and it differs only very slightly from the Phantom in finer specs such as ascent/descent speed and obstacle detection.
There are also products from other drone makers such as Yuneec and 3D Robotics, but in terms of performance they are not much different from the Phantom 4 and Mavic described above. Isn’t the reason DJI came to dominate most of the world’s drone market that it has built not only excellent hardware performance but also well-developed software? Because of this widespread adoption, the drone data platform Carta primarily provides data analysis services to users of DJI drones, and even offers a drone flight training service.
That wraps up our look at which drones are available for photography. Thank you for reading. In the next post, we’ll explore what the latest smart construction technologies are, along with real-world use cases.
