First Flight

Yesterday, I did my first test flight with the DJI Inspire 1. I have a little bit of experience flying DJI Phantoms, so I had a baseline of Quad knowledge and some expectations of what I would find. Wow, was I ever underestimating the Inspire. It is freaking awesome. It is such a well finished product. Everything you need is included and ready to go right out of the box. I invited my former studio partner, John McNally to come out and witness the historic event. I think he was pretty impressed with the Inspire's capabilities and the quality of imagery that it can produce. The gimbal is amazing. Even in aggressive flight maneuvers it holds the image rock steady. There were times when I was hovering that we both thought that the video signal had frozen because the display on my iPad looked like a still shot! The auto take off, auto land and come home functions are brilliantly executed. It's pretty cool to have the Quad so far out t hat you can just see a speck in the sky and push the go home button to bring it back. Each time it landed almost exactly on the same little spot of grass that it took off from. The sound is impressive too. A Phantom sounds like a noisy swarm of angry bees. I was expecting the Inspire to be even louder with it's bigger props and more powerful motors but it is surprisingly quiet and has a sort of a SciFi sound. I think the reduced sound level may be due to the carbon fiber props that are stiffer and therefore don't vibrate as much. I'm not going to post any of the sample video I shot. Not because it isn't impressively crisp, but because I don't believe in sharing test footage shot in a park of backyard. 90% of the Quad footage posted online is in that category. I prefer to share things filmed in locations worthy of the effort. So you will just have to wait a bit until I start hitting my marks around the globe. But here is a still that John shot of me and my baby while checking things out:

Goodbye Bali, Hello World

I've officially started my long journey. I'm now in Sunny Oregon (yes, you heard right, it's sunny in January in Oregon). I'm reasonably recovered from my jet lag and fully engaged in preparations for the next leg of my trip. This stopover in Oregon is mostly about dropping stuff off and picking stuff up. I will be traveling as light as I possibly can because I will be traveling in quite a few remote areas where you don't want to schlep a lot of gear around. So I'm limiting myself to a Panasonic GH4 for stills and 4K video, and my new DJI Inspire 1 for aerials. I'll be trying to put as much emphasis on aerials as I can. I will be shooting with the Inspire 1 anywhere it is practical. Quite a few of the destinations on this trip have been chosen for their potential for interesting Aerial footage.

Bali to Bangkok, the long way.

Though it's still a week until I hit the road on the first portion of my 2015 travels, I thought I'd start things out with a short video showing the route of the trip. I'm starting in Bali and finishing up in Bangkok, which is normally only about a 3 hour flight, but I'm going the long way around so I won't get there until May! The trip route video is here on the site in on the videos page, and also on my Vimeo Channel. You can see the video on my Vimeo channel here: https://vimeo.com/117373441

Welcome to iQuad.photos

I will be traveling extensively in 2015. I have two complete laps of the globe planned. These trips will have a slightly different emphasis than usual. Normally I'm filming nature and wildlife, and I plan on doing quite a bit of that on these journeys, but I also plan on shooting quite a bit of aerial footage wherever practical. When I started considering this trip back in early fall of 2014, I thought that I would be shooting with a Phantom 2 and a GoPro Hero 4 Black. Then DJI introduced the Inspire 1 and it has everything a good aerial photography platform should have. So I put one on order, and it has arrived at my Son's house in Oregon. Since a considerable portion of the media I capture on this project will be aerial, I decided that it was time for a fresh new website to go along with it. I promise to keep a regular journal of my travels updated wherever I have sufficient internet access.

This blog will also automatically post to my iQuad Journal on at: http://iquadjournal.iquad.photos.blogspot.com

It should also post directly to my google+ account, so there are plenty of ways to see what is going on. The best place to look, however, will be right here at iQuad.photos since there will also be occasional postings of finished videos and photos.