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Anafi in extremely high winds

Krusty Geeza

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I had the opportunity to photograph & capture some drone footage of a local unused quarantine station on Friday. Unfortunately the 50-60 KPH buffeting winds were too much for this tiny bird, so my footage is unusable, but, I now have better ideas of flight paths & photography from up on high! So it's not wasted effort or time at all.

Update:
This is not a whinge about the Anafi in any way, shape or form, it is a sharing that she has a limit & reached it under this circumstance. I have in the past captured perfectly usable footage under 35-40 KPH winds.

 
Last edited:
Hi,

footage doesn't seem that wrong IMHO, nothing that a good stabilisation filter wouldn't solve. Even with larger drones flying above 10 m/s wind speed can be challenging.
 
Hi,

footage doesn't seem that wrong IMHO, nothing that a good stabilisation filter wouldn't solve. Even with larger drones flying above 10 m/s wind speed can be challenging.
Just taking the first 30 seconds for example, you seriously can't see the shivering effect present there that is never going to be able to be compensated for, regardless of what type of digital stabilisation is applied in post-production? If you are watching on a mobile phone, maybe look at it on a larger screen.
 
As a rule of thumb, my settings on UAV forecast (the app) are set to warn at 10 m/s. I know that even with large machines (M600 and such) it can be "challenging" to get a good flight above that. For the Anafi I would go even a little less.
 
As a rule of thumb, my settings on UAV forecast (the app) are set to warn at 10 m/s. I know that even with large machines (M600 and such) it can be "challenging" to get a good flight above that. For the Anafi I would go even a little less.
10 m/s is 36 KPH, which is around the mark I have found that I am able to still capture good quality footage with the Anafi, even with its EIS on the horizontal plane that so many DJI fanboy's complain about.
 
I actually wish I had have taken some photo's or video of her in the air on this day, she really had to lean into the wind quite severely & hence why the leg appears a few times in the frame. There were also times where she literally couldn't fly forwards, while in Film mode, but, once switched to Sports mode, she kept going with no issues.
 
I agree that the Anafi on steady winds, even higher than 10m/s, behaves extremely well, it's the gusts that make it dance a little, and I'm sure that the gimbal has bounced on the roll limits on some flights. On that video you showed, you would have to add the turbulence caused by that brick chimney. I guess you didn't move away from it and zoomed the camera?
 
I agree that the Anafi on steady winds, even higher than 10m/s, behaves extremely well, it's the gusts that make it dance a little, and I'm sure that the gimbal has bounced on the roll limits on some flights. On that video you showed, you would have to add the turbulence caused by that brick chimney. I guess you didn't move away from it and zoomed the camera?
I don't know that the turbulence from the chimney stack would have had any adverse effect with this footage I shared. I didn't deliberately park her downwind from it & she was always a good distance from it.

Personally, I don't use the zoom facility of the Anafi. I did a lot of testing of that a little while back & found it to degrade the footage too much to be usable. Better results are achieved with zooming in post-production if I ever want to achieve that look, which I really can't think of when I would ever want to use it, in all honesty.
 
Given the wind speed, the little drone did **** well, I expected it to be worse than it was.... agree you cannot use it as footage, but good show from the little Anafi :)
 
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You might be amazed what virtualdub's deshakerI can do for you, looking frames ahead and in the past to fill missing gaps.
I think its the best deshaker (and its free), but it does require some experience to set it up properly.

On the otherhand slight shivering is also what creates the "illusion" of depth, it's why bird of prey shake their head so they can better estimate the depth. Its just as natural as when you walk, you could put a camera on wheels for a smooth glide, or just walk with the camera without a gimbal, and shock absorbing hardware.. So you know someone was walking. Just telling its not always that bad to see that, its kinda natural.
 
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You might be amazed what virtualdub's deshakerI can do for you, looking frames ahead and in the past to fill missing gaps.
I think its the best deshaker (and its free), but it does require some experience to set it up properly.

On the otherhand slight shivering is also what creates the "illusion" of depth, it's why bird of prey shake their head so they can better estimate the depth. Its just as natural as when you walk, you could put a camera on wheels for a smooth glide, or just walk with the camera without a gimbal, and shock absorbing hardware.. So you know someone was walking. Just telling its not always that bad to see that, its kinda natural.
Thanks for mentioning the deshaker tool, Peter, I'll look into it for possible usage on more stable video. This footage, where the poor Anafi was being moved around more than a metre at a time by the gusts is beyond that sort of help because of the resulting perspective changes.

I've done the walking experiment, using a hand-held gimbal for my mobile phone & then without. Stabilizing software is useless when you bounce as you walk! A gimbal helps to lessen that at capture, but even a gimbal can't overcome someone walking with a bounce as they are moving up & down with each step, & therefore the camera may also be moving up & down with each step too. It's not something that any software can correct, as your point of view is repeatedly going up & down slightly, so therefore the perceived line of sight & perspective of everything is changing too with each step taken. That is impossible to correct after capture! Only walking intentionally to hold the camera at a certain smooth height will achieve smooth footage or minimise this. I like a little bounce to show that you are in fact walking, as you mentioned; many don't, preferring the floating look.

Depth perception requires two eyes to work effectively, it's a whole different thing to image stabilisation, but still very interesting in how different animals perceive depth due to their differently located eyes that look in different directions. Most birds, having eyes that can only slightly look forwards, have to look through each eye repeatedly to achieve any real sense of depth as their eyes look more sideways rather than straight ahead like ours, or dogs or cats.
 
I had the opportunity to photograph & capture some drone footage of a local unused quarantine station on Friday. Unfortunately the 50-60 KPH buffeting winds were too much for this tiny bird, so my footage is unusable, but, I now have better ideas of flight paths & photography from up on high! So it's not wasted effort or time at all.

Update:
This is not a whinge about the Anafi in any way, shape or form, it is a sharing that she has a limit & reached it under this circumstance. I have in the past captured perfectly usable footage under 35-40 KPH winds.


Yes small French agile Miss Anafi can succeed in a lot of wind. If she vill drifte in the wind, be sure to get as far down to the ground as possible.

Didn't you see this warning Alex ?

1778

Regards, Leif.
 
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Yes small French agile Miss Anafi can succeed in a lot of wind. If she vill drifte in the wind, be sure to get as far down to the ground as possible.

Didn't you see this warning Alex ?

View attachment 1778

Regards, Leif.
You know what, Leif, because it wasn't as annoying as the DJI warnings that cover your screen all the time, I possibly don't recall seeing it! ;)
 
Alex,
Have you run the .json file for the flight through the ShowAnafiLog software? It would be interesting to know what the maximum roll and pitch angles were during the flight.
I'd be interested in seeing that, how do I get it? I don't have myself logged in to MyAnafi in FF6 any more. The card was reformatted this morning when I went for a walk with my Boof (dog) & Ms Anafi the 2nd.
 
If anyone would be so kind as to run the only accessible .json file of my multiple flights that this thread is about through the ShowAnafiLog software on my behalf, particularly for looking at maximum roll & pitch angles, I would be ever so grateful for the effort.

I am on Mac's here & have a Linux laptop, but the file for this software keeps giving me a fatal error message, so I can't even unzip it, not that I would know what to do with it after that! I have never had to load any software on that machine, it was bought purely as a cheap & reliable $60 laptop, for transferring images to participants of my Mindful Photography groups with as we drive to our destinations each week.

The .json file can be downloaded from DropBox.
 

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