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DraganFlyer X4 UAV puts the camera where it needs to be, even when the floor is lava
It's been a while since we've heard from Draganfly, a name familiar to connoisseurs of unmanned aerial photography. The company's latest outing, the DraganFlyer X4, is a four-rotor UAV that measures only 30.5-inches across and since it ships with your choice of either a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX580, Watec WAT-902H2 Ultimate (for shooting in low light), FLIR Photon TAU (infrared), or the Highg Res 480 Board Camera (analog motion video with an 8GB DVR), we imagine that this thing ain't going to be cheap. That said, if you are a well-heeled creepy stalker, southern border vigilante, or even someone with legitimate military / industrial business, there are plenty of features to make it worth a second look, including: computerized stabilization, altitude hold (maintains its position in the air without user input), and an automatic landing feature that kicks in if the control link is lost. But most importantly for the airborne auteur, this guy sports a wireless video downlink that sends the viewfinder signal that can be displayed either on the device's handheld controller or a pair of video goggles, allowing real-time manipulation of zoom, tilt, and shutter settings. Get a closer look at the thing after the break.
Draganfly SAVS R/C helicopter does aerial photography "on the cheap"
The main problem with amateur film making is that no one is handing out million dollar checks to fund your latest art house masterpiece, meaning that your choice of shots is basically limited to what you can accomplish with a Handycam and a homemade fig rig. Aerial photography can be especially tricky, as renting a plane, helicopter, or crane to shoot those dramatic establishing shots is prohibitively expensive on a shoe-string budget -- so Draganfly Innovations has come to the rescue with an R/C helicopter for the everyman cinematographer. At $2,500, the company's Stabilized Aerial Video System (SAVS) is still no bargain, but it does give you everything you need for overhead filming in one pre-assembled package: gyroscopically-stabilized copter, anti-vibration video camera, and wireless video receiver from Diversity. Most appealing about this solution is the so-called Thermal Intelligence self-leveling feature, wherein on-board infrared sensors use temperature differences to distinguish the sky from the ground and allow the helicopter to automatically hover without any input from the controller. The 19-ounce Draganfly SAVS is portable enough for almost any application, but the trade-off here is battery life: the relatively tiny lithium-polymer batteries only allow a maximum 15-minute flight.
