For the longest time I resisted getting a drone, mainly because I primarily shoot photos and I was concerned on the quality of the photos coming from drones. I had a lot of debates with myself but at the end of the day I came to the realization that as much as I love my 5D Mark III, it can’t fly. So after years of deliberation I finally picked one up about a year ago. I didn’t want to break the bank so rather than go with one of the larger drones I decided on the Mavic air, which at the time sold for about $800. After a year of shooting I’ve found out the strengths and weaknesses of this budget drone. Here I will go over a few tips, tricks, and things to avoid when trying to get the best photos out of a budget drone like the Mavic Air.

               The first thing I realized when taking out my Air for one of my first flights was the limitation of bumping up the ISO. Usually on my 5d I can get away with 1600 in good lighting without having enough noise to really ruin a photo. With my Mavic Air I realized that limit was really no more than 100. I tried shooting at ISO 400 during one of the first sunsets I tried capturing with it and the noise was unbearable. The only way I was able to salvage my shots from that evening was because I had shot a bunch of 5 shot sequences and I was able to stack the 5 shots to minimize the noise. This is a technique that I had learned from trying to get a clean foreground for Astro-Photography but I had to refresh my memory on how to do it. Luckily I was able to find an article on FStoppers explaining exactly how to do it, which I will link below. 

Fstoppers Photo Stack Tutorial

This works fine for still landscapes, though there is a better way to accomplish this which I will cover later, but for waves (which I happened to be shooting) it give a speed blur sort of effect. Unfortunately for this I have not found a way around yet, so wave photography in low light maybe something you want to avoid if noise really bothers you.

               The one place where this drone shines is for landscape photography due to its small size for hiking and due to it having AEB mode. AEB mode stands for Auto Exposure Bracketing and in this mode you can set it to 3 or 5 shots and it will take a sequence of shots. If you choose 5 shots, which I would recommend, it will take 1 shot at your current settings and 2 shots that are over exposed and 2 shots that are under exposed. For me AEB mode made this drone worth its money. You can minimize noise quite a bit along with getting significantly more dynamic range in your shots, allowing you to push you darks and lights further than in standard single shot. This method is also extremely easy to utilize as Lightroom has a feature for just this. After you have taken your 5 shots you will open them in Lightroom select the 5 you want to edit, right-click them and select “Merge to HDR” and that’s it. Lightroom will then generate a new DNG file with more dynamic range from the merged photos. You can also use this technique for a panorama which I often do to get the most out of my photos. I will usually shoot a vertical panorama made of 10 shots total (2 sets of 5 bracketed AEB shots) but I have merged as many as 30 photos into one shot. To use this method for a panorama it is the same process as the before except this time you will click “Merge to HDR Panorama” after you have selected all the files for your shot. This technique is similar to the sequence stacking technique in that it really only works for mostly stationary subjects. This will be fine for a sunset over the ocean but not great for fast moving objects such as a car or in my case a wave/surfer.

             Although you cannot use either of the previous techniques for shooting action, you can still score great action photos with the Mavic Air. In order to score great action shots you just need to be a bit more selective with the conditions of when you are shooting. Unfortunately sunrise and sunset are not the best times to shoot, at least until the sun has risen and is throwing a decent amount of light on your subject. For me, golden hour had still worked great but it has been a bit more difficult to get decent action shots pre-sunrise or post-sunset when the clouds often get the most color. The main tip I would give for shooting action (at least for what I shoot which is waves/surfing) would be not to use the sequence shooting mode. This is just my personal preference but I have found using the 5 shot sequence mode tends to get 5 shots with very little difference in timing just to then take around 20 seconds to buffer. I originally was only shooting sequences and found myself very frustrated after shooting a sequence of the first wave in a set and then missing all the other waves in the set while I waited for the shots to buffer. Single shots will still take a few seconds to buffer and you may only be able to get one shot every 5 seconds but for me that seemed to work way better than being locked out of shooting anything for about 20 seconds. Timing is key when shooting action photos from a drone like the Mavic Air, it may be annoying at times but eventually you will learn to nail the timing on what you are shooting with only one shot. I feel in the end it made me a better photographer getting away from the spray and pray technique.

             All in all most of the issues I have can be avoided by shelling out $1500 or more for a higher end drone. For me, I was not willing to spend that much for my first drone mainly because of the concern of crashing and having to replace it. After a year of owning the Mavic Air I have managed to keep it great condition with no crashes. Although I may upgrade in the future, I would still likely keep the Air as it is a great travel drone and easily fits in my backpack with all my other gear.