Commercial job question

[@JD]

Has anyone completed any commercial jobs taking your basic monthly site images, n,s,e,w? Any suggestions on getting exact locations repeated monthly? Does anyone have any experience using the evo2 pro for something like this? have you used waypoints to get consistent images regarding location and altitude, or just do it manually? Looking for some ideas and advice from those using the evo 2 pro.

 

[herein2021]

Has anyone completed any commercial jobs taking your basic monthly site images, n,s,e,w? Any suggestions on getting exact locations repeated monthly? Does anyone have any experience using the evo2 pro for something like this? have you used waypoints to get consistent images regarding location and altitude, or just do it manually? Looking for some ideas and advice from those using the evo 2 pro.

I have done it for construction jobs, a few lasting years. The way I do it really depends on how precise the customer wants it to be. Most customers are fine with approximations. Typically on my first trip to the site I document the camera angle and altitude and and stick with the critical shot list agreed to by the client. I have never had a client need exact precision for every visit. I have visited some sites for years where I just go by memory where I placed the drone the last time; also as the building gets taller I adjust as needed to keep the composition such as flying higher to show the rooftops of the other buildings in the site.

If I did ever have a client that needed absolute precision (for one thing I would charge more) but what I would do is document the altitude and camera angle and I would take an image at each drone location with the camera pointed straight down and the drone aimed in the direction where I will take the image, I would then do that for each location and put them on my laptop. For each subsequent trip I would fly the drone to the exact location shown in the images and align the camera with the image then tilt the camera up until it was at the documented camera angle.

But like I said, I've been filming construction progression drone photography since 2014 and have never had a client need each image to be shot from the exact same location.

It may be more efficient to try waypoints and all of that, but those types of jobs pay so little that being that precise and putting that additional effort into it isn't worth it to me especially when the client has not asked for it.

Elevation views are a different story and require exact precision and construction stakes but those pay a lot more and are usually no more than 3 trips.

 

[@JD]

I have done it for construction jobs, a few lasting years. The way I do it really depends on how precise the customer wants it to be. Most customers are fine with approximations. Typically on my first trip to the site I document the camera angle and altitude and and stick with the critical shot list agreed to by the client. I have never had a client need exact precision for every visit. I have visited some sites for years where I just go by memory where I placed the drone the last time; also as the building gets taller I adjust as needed to keep the composition such as flying higher to show the rooftops of the other buildings in the site.

If I did ever have a client that needed absolute precision (for one thing I would charge more) but what I would do is document the altitude and camera angle and I would take an image at each drone location with the camera pointed straight down and the drone aimed in the direction where I will take the image, I would then do that for each location and put them on my laptop. For each subsequent trip I would fly the drone to the exact location shown in the images and align the camera with the image then tilt the camera up until it was at the documented camera angle.

But like I said, I've been filming construction progression drone photography since 2014 and have never had a client need each image to be shot from the exact same location.

It may be more efficient to try waypoints and all of that, but those types of jobs pay so little that being that precise and putting that additional effort into it isn't worth it to me especially when the client has not asked for it.

Elevation views are a different story and require exact precision and construction stakes but those pay a lot more and are usually no more than 3 trips.

Thank you for your reply, the only somewhat precise desire is to have 4 shots facing north,south,east west, nothing complicated but wanted to hear what others have done, especially using autel products.

 

[herein2021]

Thank you for your reply, the only somewhat precise desire is to have 4 shots facing north,south,east west, nothing complicated but wanted to hear what others have done, especially using autel products.

It doesn't sound like you need more than a single point from which to shoot all of the directions. Personally if a client has that particular requirement I never shoot specific directions, I shoot a 360 pano and cut out the directions later. My idea of north and the customer's idea of north may be two different things, so by shooting a 360 pano I can easily precisely cut out the exact composition the client wants.

 

[AirStag]

I have been flying by memory mostly; usually lining up with certain landmarks at multiple altitudes. I would like to use mission recording mode so I get the same shots every time, but I shoot almost all my stills in AEB(3) mode and missions does not have an AEB option (yet?!). Also, because the site changes frequently I like to add close shots to some of the new changes, so missions would not work for that.

 

[gschulzuio]

Has anyone completed any commercial jobs taking your basic monthly site images, n,s,e,w? Any suggestions on getting exact locations repeated monthly? Does anyone have any experience using the evo2 pro for something like this? have you used waypoints to get consistent images regarding location and altitude, or just do it manually? Looking for some ideas and advice from those using the evo 2 pro.

Yes, I do this regularly with some projects on a weekly basis over long duration such as construction, others over multiple days such as for quick projects, promos, multi-day events, etc.

Another trick is to setup a wpt mission that positions your aircraft to a given location, alt, even a camera angle/gimbal position (use a POI), put in a wait/hold, then when aircraft arrives at that location, stop the mission, do what every you want, for example shot a pano (vert/port, landscape/horiz, sphere, etc), setup smart orbit, etc...

For non Autel, I use 3rd party tools such as DroneDeploy (DD) and Litchi, have also used Pix4d among others. With this, set your waypoints, set a point of interest (POI), have your waypoint actions refer to the POI. Have done the same with Autel Explorer missions, set up your waypoints, set your POI, set your wpt to use a specific POI, setup your camera action to do what needed. Works great and relatively easy for photo and video or both during same missions.

The only caveat with Autel explorer is that while you can make copies of your missions on the same device, you can not export those missions to a different device (phone, tablet) as a backup or for portability. However, you can use different aircraft (autel) to fly a mission from the same device.

 

[autelBill]

The drone has a mode that records a hand flown mission for later replay. Might be a useful part of your procedure.

 

[gschulzuio]

The drone has a mode that records a hand flown mission for later replay. Might be a useful part of your procedure.

Have not used this lately, has it improved, from what I recall last time tried it was limited in what could be recorded, and, how the resulting mission could be subsequently used.