mavic 2 pro | day 3

for day 1 see → this entry.

drone with master. photo: ms/picture alliance

it’s been my third flight session, with only one battery, so restricted to slightly less than 30 minutes. i was still focussing on flight patterns rather than on the camera. the inflight videos were all of great quality. the shot after having landed safely has a ton of chromatic aberration. see below.

i flew all quickshot modes today, and they all did a great and very precise job. the spiral and boomerang are a bit irritating at first, because you have no control about the extension range of those kind of flight. and i still don’t know how to direct a boomerang ellipse into a special direction. imagine you’re climbing a cliff, you want to make sure the drone does fly away from the rocks rather than into them!

some modes give you extra options when you touch the icon again on the screen, others don’t, or they give you just rudimentary options like flying a pattern clock- or counterclockwise.

it’s nice to see that the drone comes back to it’s starting point once it has finished the quickshot flight. it does not repeat the flight, however. once the circle is finished, it is finished.

the videos are stored internally (on the internal 8 GB flashmemory bank or on the microSD card) in the original resolution, but the more interesting versions (in probably lower resolution) are sitting on your smartphone. example: all quickshots are accelerated in the smartphone version, whereas they playback in realtime when downloaded from the drone itself.

i’ve flown the mavic pro 1 for over a year and sold it to a man who uses it for flight only. he’s been a fan of radio controlled “model” airplanes since he was a kid, and he always wanted to fly a versatile, agile drone. he flew the mavic much more professional than i.

the more i get to know the automated flight modes, the more i know that flying the drone is cool and challenging, but much more interesting for me is taking precise videos and photographs for wikipedia and the german press agency dpa. so, the new automated flight modes plus the 360° obstacle detection come in extremely handy.

hasselblad at f 2.8

as to chromatic aberration: massive. there’s nothing lilac or pink on my bike. this detail is of 100% resolution:

lots of chromatic aberration

macro lens for | smartphone

lots of photos in short time. ms/dpa

this is a series of photos i took within 5 (!) minutes. details of a legacy video editing card for macintosh PCs. i used the → moment macro lens for this, attached to my google pixel 2 XL phone. i initially had problems with the lens because it has an extremely shallow focus distance, and the smartphone camera constantly tries to override this by searching for sharpness and not finding it. so all you can do is put the lens close, actually very close to your object and look around. moment is a startup company which currently ships another amazing lens which would cost 20.000 € on a canon EOS 5D Mk V. it costs about 100 € for my smartphone. haven’t received it yet and will keep you posted. oh, what lens? anamorphic…

the real thing looks exactly as advertised.

ehrenamtspreis der stadt | köln

alle ehrenamts-preisträger im rathaus köln

bei der feier wurden unter anderem die über köln schreibenden wikipediaautorInnen geehrt. die menge der leute, die über köln in der wikipedia schreiben oder in köln fotografieren und das in die wikipedia hochladen, ist unüberschaubar. wir gut 10 personen auf der bühne sind also nicht die wikipedia-größen kölns, sondern sozusagen als kölner autorInnen greifbar, weil wir einen stammtisch haben und das lokal k im stadtteil ehrenfeld. hier schreibe ich mich ins gästebuch der stadt köln ein.

fotos: vera krick, wiki commons

smart | phone macro

these images were my first ones with a macro lens on my smartphone. the lens comes from → moment in the US, the → smartphone from google. the lens does a great job but lacks the option to focus properly.

let’s start with an original resolution:

100% resolution of the image below

the word “Zeil” (actually from the town of → zeil in germany) is a detail of the image below:

detail of a german train map of ca. 1900

the next images were taken in the cologne wikipedia “lokal k” with the assistance of raimond.

soldered connection, now in → wiki commons

japanese capacitor 

capacitor from the top

RWE kohlekraftwerke von | oben

… zumindest von schräg oben, denn als anständige drohnenpiloten achten wir natürlich auf die vorgeschriebenen sicherheitsabstände.

kohlekraftwerk neurath, im hintergrund → niederaußem. foto: ms/dpa

das → kraftwerk neurath bezieht seine braunkohle per schiene vom direkt westlich angrenzenden braunkohle-raubbau-gebiet garzweiler. es ist die zweitgrößte CO2-schleuder unter den europäischen kraftwerken.

technisch entstand das foto als eins von acht segmenten eines automatischen drohnenpanoramas. es ist oft so, wenn ich der drohnenkamera sage, sie soll ein panorama aufnehmen, dass dann überraschende einzelbilder zustande kommen. die grüngelb-sättigung produziert die abendsonne. wenig später ging sie als großer ball tiefrot unter.

180° umgedreht im gegenlicht die türme des → kraftwerks frimmersdorf.

türme des kraftwerks frimmersdorf. foto: ms/dpa

die gegend ist regelrecht vollgepflastert mit kraftwerken:

google maps, mit von mir vorgehobenen kraftwerken und garzweiler