10 Tips for New Drone Pilots from a Total Beginner / DJI Mini, Mini 2, Mini 3

earlier this week dji sent me the mini 2 why because i sent them a lot of money this is a sub 250 grand drone and here in canada you do not need a certificate a pilot certificate in order to fly this for recreational or commercial use if you're using it for commercial use you can still use this it used to be in canada there was a differentiation between recreational use and commercial use and for any commercial use you needed a pilot certification but you don't need that anymore that being said if you add anything to this drone at all weight wise like if you add a light and you want to fly at night that's going to take it over 250 grams and you will need a basic pilot certification from transport canada there are a lot of videos on youtube from professionals who have tips on like how to get more cinematic footage how to fly like a pro but in the under three hours that i've been flying what i have discovered what i've realized is um i'm not a pro i'm not even an advanced player so this video is gonna teach you how to fly your drone like a beginner let's get out to the [Music] field okay so that didn't go as planned um tip number zero always make sure you have your sd card with you i bought a 256 gigabyte microsd card which i thought you know it's great never gonna have to leave the drone um except to take the footage out and of course that's what i did and i forgot to put it back into the drone so what might be a good idea if you're new to this instead of buying a giant sd card uh would be to get two that are half of that or just get two giant sd cards whatever works for you get more than one sd card rookie mistake we're gonna make them that's what this whole video is about my first tip is to ignore all the videos on youtube that are trying to teach you how to fly your drone like a pro forget that idea we have to learn to master the basics so learn to fly first like a beginner then you will become a novice then advanced then an expert and then maybe a pro worry about getting your i don't know if i was going to say flight legs but that doesn't make any sense embrace the fact that you're new to this it's gonna take time and it's going to take a lot of practice practice practice practice so that's tip number two get out there get flying get the drone up in the air and figure out how to use this thing so i just tried doing some orbits around me really bad not good at all you have to practice if you want to get good at anything get out there practice deliberately try very specific moves practice doing those moves and those maneuvers you'll never be able to fly like a pro if you don't first learn how to fly like a beginner tip number three stay close but keep your distance so stay close to your drone but keep your distance away from other people go to a wide open area a park where you're allowed to fly drones a public golf course that you know may be closed or after hours go after hours when there aren't people playing golf these are really small it is so small so when when it's up in the air and being gray on a cloudy day this is very difficult to see also don't hover your drone at eye level spinning propeller blades and eyes do not go well together especially since this drone only has sensors on the bottom here these are not sensors these are vent intakes when you're taking off and landing make sure the wind is at your back and your drone is in front of you keep yourself between the wind and your drone so the wind is blowing this way if a gust comes along it's going to blow your drone away from you tip number four practice taking off and landing manually get yourself one of these this is a launch pad it's great when you're on tall grass sand dirt gravel whatever this puts a layer between your drone and the ground you don't want your propeller blades kicking up dirt getting in and gunking up your drone once you've mastered taking off and landing on the launch pad practice launching and landing on other surfaces as well when you are taking off and landing have the drone facing forward that way when you're on the control and you push left the drone goes left you push forward drone goes forward you and the drone then are sharing the same perspective if you're facing yourself and you're like whoa i need some i need it's a little close to me and and you push your stick forward the drone's actually going to come this way but luckily you're not going to have the drone at eye level so it's not going to hit you in the eye it's just gonna go over your head right because you're a smart beginner tip number five turn on all the grids turn them all on learn to fly with all the grids on when your gimbal is pointing straight forward and you have a single point perspective on two thirds and the crosshairs you know that spot right in the middle on your display is exactly where the drone is going to go if you're practicing flying around trees if you cannot guide the drone through those obstacles it's going to be a mess it's going to be a disaster when you start to film and shoot you'll already have the grids on and you'll be used to it and it'll help you line up your shots as well just turn them on keep them on easy peasy don't worry about anything number six and this is going to go directly against a lot of the expert advice you see on youtube practice flying at high altitudes why because there's not much up there also when you're at high altitudes it looks like you're going a lot slower than you are get the drone up and look at the ground and navigate from a bird's eye view perspective and getting yourself oriented the best place to do that is not at ground level it's up and above the obstacles that you might be worried about hitting also bonus tip get dji care immediately flying at altitude the higher up you are often the more wind there is the wind is just whipping along and you might get wind alert warnings uh in the app and then you might have to bring your drone down number seven learn to fly and control your drone over straight lines so if you're over train tracks or over a parking lot point the gimbal straight down learn to fly and get nice continuous shots that helps you practice being very fine with your moves and then use cine to keep your movements slow and really fine tuned all right tip number eight comes to us courtesy of my good friend kevin tom has been flying drones for a number of years and that is to get the drone uh flying in a pattern around a stationary object a tree trunk is great maybe a radio tower maybe use yourself but fly straight turn left straight turn left straight turn left and then go the opposite direction straight right straight right straight right straight right this helps us learn to orient ourselves in relationship to the drone if the drone is facing us and we push the stick left it's going to go to our right so we want to get used to how the drone is going to react in the space in front of us when we're looking at it once you've been able to nail squares move on to doing orbits single orbits with maintaining that perspective of that object in the middle of your frame and keep doing that orbit around and around that stationary object until you get good this really helps you learn to control your drone manually when you're doing this go slow put it in cine mode and really take your time then you can work your way up to other faster modes and speeds that is a very important skill for us to have thank you kevin for that excellent advice tip number nine comes from my personal experience and this clip [Music] so what i did wrong here was not only was i flying backwards and i couldn't see if there was anything behind the drone but i also immediately shot the drone up and i could have put it right into a tree so what i want to do and what i have been doing since i shot that clip earlier this week is every time i go out i'm practicing hitting the emergency pause button which is if you just tap the return to home button once so i'm flying around pause flying around pause flying around pause because i want to train myself for that to be my initial response i don't want to have a knee-jerk reaction and destroy my drone i want to be able to stop assess the situation and then figure out what to do my last piece of advice tip number 10 is to separate your imaging tasks into separate flights at least for now if you want to take some photos go up in a flight that is specifically for photos if you want to take video go up for a flight that is specifically for video focus on one thing at a time so that we can get used to dealing with that one thing at a time before we start trying to multitask on multiple flights i think we'll get past this one pretty quickly but i think it's a good place to start you know when we're brand new to this so let's not try to complicate our processes let's keep things simple and separate our imaging tasks into separate flights when i'm doing a flight specifically for video i actually hit the record button before i take off and i don't stop it until i've landed and that creates one long clip which i can then break up into sections and sub clips and subsequences so i don't have to worry about whether or not i've forgotten to hit record i've got a lot of space on my micro sd card that's in the drone so i don't have to worry about running out of space hit record let it run land stop the recording and that's it for this episode of studio builder thank you so much for tuning in if you like this and you found this to be helpful and useful please give it a thumbs up bonus tip number one don't fly backwards near ground level if you look at youtube and search for drone crashes most of the crashes are because people are flying backwards and they can't see where the drone is going and the drone can't see where it's going if it doesn't have the sensors or obstacle avoidance sensors tip number two bring some snacks you're gonna get hungry out there bring a drink bring some snacks and enjoy your day have fun that's it thanks so much for tuning in i'll catch you next time [Music]