TY! The XSP has a good camera, one of the best for a drone under $1000.Great footage I have hidden areas like that where I live I want to shoot but I’m afraid of Murphy’s law and something going wrong loosing my drone somewhere I can’t get to either physically or legally, I’m currently thinking of switching to Autel from Dji (I’m here to do little research on Autel products) I am so far impressed with what I see coming from the Autel Drones! Keep up the good work and fly safe!![]()
You bring-up a really good point. I had to get over loosing the XSP. No pain, no gain. Either I take chances, or I miss a lot. Look at some of the videos posted here. Many overfly areas that are irretrievably rugged, wet, or both. You can take every precaution (scout area for hazards, use a 10” tablet on full brightness to see where you’re going when the XSP is out of line-of-sight, extreme battery management, practice flights, flight plans with emergency LZ’s, setting the return home altitude to reflect the immediate surroundings, etc, etc). If you do all of that, the only way you’ll go down is flying into something or sudden battery failure (which is rare, but happened to me once). Autel replaced the XSP after reviewing the flight log., I had about 15-20 sec to clear a waterfall, I didn’t quite make it...
I’ve made many dumb mistakes, but the Autel survived them all. I finally started to approach the XSP as just another photographic tool. Maybe b/c I’ve been paid to perform photograph/video most of my adult life, I had to learn to not baby cameras. To use them like a builder uses construction tools. I beat the ever-lovin’ crap out of cameras, I’ve never had one fail (ok, a Titan IV rocket melted one, but I put it too close).
The XSP is amazingly durable. It’s survived numerous crashes from me doing stupid things trying to get a unique shot. I guess my bottom line is, take every reasonable precaution, and go for it. I accept (grudgingly) every time I take off, the XSP could be lost. BTW, Twice I hired a “tree guy” friend to retrieve the XSP from high up in trees, or off a cliff — always from me flying solely through the camera vision it a forested area. Risky, but it occasionally must be done. Now, I scout the area thoroughly from a higher altitude (through the camera) and cautiously go lower until I loose my nerve! Go for it!