|
Forum: Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Other Camera Brands
05-12-2019, 10:47 AM
|
| |
The FAA is more like a Pitbull than a Bloodhound. What I mean by this is that the FAA is not very good at sniffing out the offenders but once they have found the offenders they can latch on without letting go and do a tremendous amount of damage. Once they have spotted an offender, depending on how egregious they believe the drone actions are, they can charge multi-thousand dollar fines per drone photo incident. One photo could have thousands of dollars infines with multiple incidents being into the tens of thousands of dollars. They could also seize all of the drone/camera equipment if they believe the incident is egregious enough. This risk and the potential cost is the primary reason that people hire somebody with a FAR part 107 license instead of doing it themselves under FAR part 48. It’ll cost a couple of hundred dollars under part 107 just to take the license test, not counting how much time required to study and learn the test. Even under part 48, there are many more restrictions than most people are aware. If you don’t follow the part 48 rules, you still risk fines and the possible seizure of the equipment. I would highly recommend that if someone’s going to take drone photos that in anyway that will be used commercially that they get their part 107 license as the FAA can come back at you even years later. I would also recommend studying up under the part 48 rules to keep yourself out of trouble even if you don’t intend to sell or use a single photo commercially. It’s the people who aren’t studying up and learning/following these rules that you hear about closing down airports.
I don’t entirely agree with the philosophy that you need to buy very expensive equipment to take good photos. It is the same whether you’re taking them with your handheld camera on the ground or with a camera drone in the air. It was somewhat true for the early generation of drones, but the cost of the drones has gone down considerably along with the quality of the photos that can be produced have gone up significantly. This is precisely the same argument that some make between amateur photo equipment and professional photo equipment. There are some aspects of the more expensive equipment that gives you more flexibility and possibly some increase intechnical quality, but it depends on what kind of photos you wish to take and how much effort it will be to take them. I’ve been using a DJI spark drone for about six months now and have managed to take some decent photos/videos. I’m doing this only as an amateur, so I do not have to meet some specific requirement of a client. As I am the client, this gives me the flexibility to take the photos that I want where and when I can within the limitations of the equipment. Here’s an album of some of my photos/videos that I’ve taken so far with my DJI spark. Https://www.flickr.com/photos/dazt/albums/72157688722912063
DAZ
|
