[btiede]

I'd agree that drones, like the traditional toys you mention tend not to pose a safety risk unless they bump into you. Kites/frisbees/skateboards etc. typically don't carry cameras, however, whereas it's quite easy to equip a small drone with one. Isn't it conceivable that a small drone equipped with a camera could monitor a facility (prison/bank etc.) from above and uncover and exploit security flaws that exist in that facility? I'm interested in hearing your take on the issue of drone regulation though as I see from your profile you are far more qualified to discuss it than I am. Edited the 'many' to 'some' in my earlier post. Source is the NYT article I posted.

[bigiain]

I find the idea that drones with cameras are somehow a new surveillance risk for "bad guys" a) prevalent, and b) bemusing. Probably 40% of the population is currently carrying round an 8 or 12 (or more) megapixel camera all the time. Nobody would bat an eyelid if you stood across the street from a bank for 40mins with a iPhone pressed against your ear with the camera facing the bank, or if you left a phone in a windscreen mount in a parking lot facing a prison. Why would people wanting that bother learning how to use a drone?

For less than the price of a typical no-skill-required drone, you can go buy one of these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csp6asxf00o (search for "Nikon P900" for many many more examples)

I'm not even sure any of my drones would be capable of getting out to take the shots in the first 15-20 seconds of that video, then making it all the way back to where the camera is. And those people have infinitely less chance of noticing they're potentially being photographed than if I'm flying a drone close enough to take those same shots. (And no, drone stabilisation - even with high grade brushless camera gimbals - isn't _anything_ like steady enough to use in conjunction with optics like that. Raytheon and General Dynamics can probably get useable imgaery from 2000mm equivalent lenses on military grade drones, but it's _way_ outside hobbyist or even small commercial photography grade gear)

What makes a camera on a drone scary, but a $700 point-n-shoot not worth worrying about?

[btiede]

Thanks for your perspective on this.

|"Why would people wanting that bother learning how to use a drone?"

Good point. I suppose they might still gain some value from having the aerial view as opposed to setting up multiple shots from cameras/phones on the ground? Then again if, as you say, the shots from a small commercial aerial drone are not clear because of stability issues etc., then it is pointless to use one. Is drone camera stabilization getting better though, to the point where it would be very easy to capture a good, high quality image from a higher altitude even with a small drone in the near future and is that something regulators should take into consideration now? How do you think the drone industry should be regulated and what weight class(es) do you think it these regulations should cover?

[bigiain]

How much "extra data" do you suppose flying your own drone over, say, a prison might get you - compared to scoping it out on Google maps/earth? My guess (having looked at a lot of things I'm curious about fro above) is that it's a vanishingly small amount of extra information for significant learning curve and a not insignificant chance of discovery while launching/landing/flying the drone.

As to regulation? Hard question to answer, but I find it hard to believe treating everything from 1/2 a pound up to 55 pounds the same makes any sense - consider what two orders of magnitude in weight means for motor vehicles. 300lb worth of motorcycle is treated differently to 3000lb worth of car, and very differently again to 30,000lb worth of truck (or 30lb worth of bicycle).

I think there's an important difference between non-commercial and commercial use of drones - I know when I'm flying for fun, there are conditions and circumstances in which I choose not to fly, where it'd be way to easy to accept additional risk as an aerial photographer if it meant getting "the shot" and thereby earning the money.

I justify to myself that my small quads weigh less than a football, and I've got control over them so I'm significantly less likely to hit somebody accidentally. I've intentionally flown my quads into myself to see just how much it'd hurt, and while I'm comfortable saying "I wasn't injured" I'm 100% certain that the mother of a small child wouldn't see things the same way. It kinda hurts, but at least with the plastic props it doesn't break the skin. (I wouldn't do that with the carbon fibre props on, I'm too chicken for that...)

If _I_ were making the rules, I'd probably ignore anything under ~500g or 1lb, they're no more dangerous that a skateboard in my opinion, and far less likely to be used by creeps/crooks/terrorists than a cellphone camera. From maybe 500g up to somewhere around 2 or 3kg should be considered fundamentally different, but still in the category of "potentially dangerous toy if misused" - perhaps treated similarly to a gocart or a dirtbike - if you want to own and use one away from people, no problem, but if you want to ride your dirtbike around town it's gonna need lights/rego/insurance. Once you get up towards 5g or more, you're getting up to where I'd also like to see operators to have demonstrated some basic training/understanding of the risks and an acknowledgement that they understand and accept responsibility for them - I'm thinking along the lines of ham radio operators license here - you'd need to read some theory, sit an exam, but mostly you'd lose the "I didn't know it was dangerous" excuse.

That's almost certainly not "good enough" to work out properly in a lawyer-happy no-universal-healthcare society though. Which is sad (both for US based drone hobbyists, as well as those of us from elsewhere who's local laws are very likely to be heavily based on US laws...)

(Note: from a non US point of view, I find it astounding that "drones need regulating", but it's a fundamental human right to buy an assault rifle at a gun show with no paperwork. The perspective and risks and responses seem all way out of whack from half a planet away. Not saying "all guns are bad", but surely "very few drones are as dangerous as an AR47" is unambiguously true...)

[bigiain]

Note: I'm pretty sure the glass alone in the lens of that camera weighs more than all but my biggest drone (my second-heaviest drone is 470g ready to fly).

I usually fly with a 38g camera if I'm trying to record decent pictures (a Mobius) or a 17g camera if I just want a useable recording of a flight (an 808 keychain camera).

[btiede]

Thanks for sharing Bigiain. Interesting discussion. Have wanted to get into drone photography. Am a painter, so think this would be an interesting new domain for me (provided that I can find a canvas large enough!)

[bigiain]

Heh - watch out for that... Photographers - in one sense - make the _worst_ drone hobbyists. Some of them are never happy without most of a kilogram of very expensive glass up in the air, because it's quite true that everything GoPro category and down takes quite flawed photographs compares to even mid range DSLR type camera with good lenses. I've got friends who spend more on software licences for their colour grading tool than I've spent in total on my whole fleet of 5 quad copters.

If you just want to be able to see what things look like "from up there", here's a way to do that for ~$130: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bigiain/5228554566/

If you want to do _ART_ from a multicopter, you're quite likely to be unhappy with the results of 10 or 20 times that much outlay...

(And, you're quite likely to be distracted from "doing important art" by "having way too much fun with toy helicopters"...)