DRONE STUFF

@ Jason I just heard about doing that. It's intriguing. BTW - If anyone goes to buy a drone from Amazon you will get a popup offering "Drop and spill" insurance from SquareTrade. I contacted SquareTrade and got a response from them saying that they do NOT cover drones.

Had super low clouds floating around us yesterday so I pulled out the Phantom 4. I am loving this little machine. (wish the preview was better. It seems to really fall apart with footage from the phantom 4 even though the actual footage looks great)

Got to love Drones and low clouds and fog. I was able to grab this cool clip earlier this year when we had some low "Ice fog".

@vision3media

That is an awesome shot.

I am very interested in the Phantom 4, but there are two things that worry me:
- The non retractable legs. I have seen footage where legs show up, extremely annoying (but apparently only at high speed), also because of the legs, tha camera cannot rotate at 360 degrees, apparently has a very narrow angle of work; so, suppose you want to follow a train in parallel, how you do it? flying sideways? Not too hard?
- The fact that besides the controller, it also need a smartphone or tablet, which means even more batteries to worry about

Me too, I hate it when every device need a smartphone, even make a cup of coffee. That is crazy..

So do you want a high definition screen built into the controller? I'm sure that is entirely possible if ya want to pay an extra $500. I've been flying quads since version 1 of the Phantom and remote control aircraft and gliders for over 40 years. Why do you need a camera that rotates 360 degree. The quad rotates. Yes going fast the props also can send a shadow onto the camera. I dunno but for less than $1,500 it's a pretty sophisticated toy.

I like the idea of a smart phone or tablet. Depending on the situation a small 3 inch screen is great ... in others a 10 inch tablet is perfect. An integrated screen is what you get, no option to upgrade easily.

Flying sideways is just as easy as flying forward or backward. The quad doesn't really care which way it flys. Ya really need to go fly one and you will see your issues are very minor or really non-existent. Good luck.

@ vittoriocaramazza If you want retractable landing gear and a camera that will rotate 360° then $3800 plus and get a Inspire 1.

Rekindle is spot on .. you can rotate the camera as easy if you rotate the drone .... hard part is learning to fly and that is also the fun part ... flying forward fast is a limiting factor with Phantoms, but not as bad with the later models supposedly, but still, ... 360 degree panning not so useful unless you have a two operator system ... which is a pain as you have to learn to work together.

Thanks guys, you have perfectly cleared my doubts.
@ jason The Inspire is great,but there is a huge problem: it is way too big to carry around and gets noticed much more.
As an alternative to the P4 I was thinking to the new Yuneec Typhoon H: smaller, camera rotates 360 degrees and camera control integrated in the commander, no need of a smartphone or tablet.
But the Typhoon is not apparently available yet and probably the camera is not as good