One of my favorite people to fish with, Waynes father in law, John Leonard, is one of the most accomplished and experienced fly fishermen I know. Using the Phantom 3 in 4k mode with a polorizing filter, I was able to catch a glimpse of what makes us return to this unique river year after year. The Mary is closed as of this writing due to warm and low water conditions, but if this is the worst of conditions, I am optomistic that when the rains return, the river will remain one of the most unique trout fisheries in the world and my favorite place to catch rainbows on dry flys.
John and the twins met us in Alberta after fishing a week in Montanna. This years Monatana fishing was disappointing according to John. The droubt conditions and warm weather is effecting trout fishing in the entire north continent. Pray for the El Nino rains.
The workflow for this project involved converting the DJI phantom footage into ProRes HQ before editing. After completing the edit in Final Cut Pro, I exported directly to Vimeo using the 4k presets. Interesting to note that the master file was over 10 gigs but the Vimeo
compression reduced it to 538mb. As far as the quality of Vimeo streaming 4k compared to the original 4k master file sharpness, there is a long way to go to get Vimeo 4k to be as good. The uncompressed quality of the 4k ProRes is fantastic (maybe twice as good), especially on an 5K IMAC computer.
In one scene you can see the Think Tank Airport Helipak on the bank, The pack is designed to shlep the Phantom 3 around the world. Its an awesome camera bag as well and us the maximum carry on size dimensions. It is very light with just the drone, but I did manage to pack a gh4 and three gopros with lens, a macbook pro 13 inch and a full size IPAD with chargers, batteries and accessories inyo the bag on the plane. Also, it DID fit under the seat and in the overhead compartments on both planes. The TSA didn’t even open it.
This trip really changed the way I think about shooting 4k full time. With a fast enough computer, I can travel with the Phantom 3, a GoPro Session, 4 and 3+ and still loop record 4K with the GoPro 4. The ground shot 4k shots taken with the GH4 and the 4k GoPros will be more than enough footage to pull from.
Next trips checklist,
-Phantom 3 with Polorizing filters two batterys instead of three.
with charging
-Gopro Sessions on retractable pole and tripod for underwater shots
-GoPro 4 for looping 4k on minitripod with external lithium battery pack for all day looping and time lapse.
-Iphone for drone monitoring, controling Gh4 and GoPro Sessions (not ipad) I think lighter is more important that hi-res monitoring when it comes to traveling with the drone.
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