I recently returned from Kenya shooting and just edited together some behind the scenes of some aerial footage shot with a Quad rotor.

QUAD SAFARI on Vimeo

I really enjoyed it and particularly loved the aerial shots of the animals - did they react at all to the quadcopter or just ignore it? Great choice of music too.

Thanks

For the most part the animals ignored it, at first the birds were startled and flocks of them took off but they flew towards it. I just kept it in a hover and they flew past it.

I was shooting a documentary and didn't have the opportunity to shoot aerial as much as I would have liked.

What can you tell me about your aerial setup? This stuff looks awesome.

What can you tell me about your aerial setup? This stuff looks awesome.

Are you familiar with multirotors?

This is a basic VIC420 [Hoverthings] frame, with an OpenPilot CC controller, Avroto motors w/9" SF props, a Rusty's floating camera mount and landing gear.

I was originally going to take a Hexacopter with a Hoverfly Pro controller, camera gimbal and FPV gear but I decided that everything associated with the multirotor had to fit into one pelican case so I went with the much simplified and smaller quad. I'm really glad I did.

I was there to shoot a documentary and the aerial footage was an adjunct to that, if it was going to be a more integral part I might have opted for the bigger and more complicated setup but I'm pretty happy with what I got out of this setup.

Although I did get a Sony NEX5n a couple of weeks before leaving I decided to fly the Sony HX9V which does shoot 1080 60P but its more of a consumer point and shoot. I did a couple of shots with the NEX5n but with the batteries I had it was a little too heavy for this setup.

This is probably about as basic an AP setup that you can use that will lift more than a GoPro and is pretty stable. Also, it was fairly breezy and the elevation of the farm with the corn in it was about 7500 feet and it flew incredibly smoothly.

Let me know if you want to know anything specific.