A wedding from above. Don’t drone on now, Andy.

Those that know me, know I love tech. From phones to watches, tablets to laptops and earphones to cameras, I enjoy and embrace technology. Over the last few years I have been keen on adding a piece of tech to my collection but there just wasn’t quite what I wanted. Until this summer. My good friend Vicky (Mike to most) went on a road trip in the states and bought himself a DJi Phantom Drone. The footage of Yosemite was amazing. The drone is amazing. The size of the drone, however, is not. It isn’t massive but it isn’t easily taken on a walk round the peaks or to a wedding, say.

Then DJi announed the Mavic Pro, a foldable drone that weighed very little and was compact enough to put in your (large American) pocket.

Is that a Macbook in your pocket…..

The drone was perfect, the price was not. Was I tempted? Of course. Did I go for it? No. Then GoPro decided to announce a folding drone, the Karma. This time I was so close to clicking buy that I actually think I did and then bugged out at the credit card stage. Why? The price, again. The fact the Karma then started falling out of the sky made it feel like a good decision!

So that was that. Other drones were a possibility (Yuneec Breeze or one of Parrots) but they lacked either portability, advanced tech or price to finally make that purchase.

So imagine my excitement when DJi announced the Spark. A tiny, lightweight drone costing half that of the Mavic Pro but with object sensing and gps positioning tech borrowed from its brother and a camera capable of 4K pictures and 1080 video. This was the drone I was looking for.

It is small, portable and a lot of fun. The controller makes it simple to fly (I found the connection just using my phone was unreliable and too fiddly) and it takes great pictures and videos. So what about for weddings? Obviously this will depend on the venues but it will certainly be coming to the rest of the weddings and engagement shoots this year. I plan to take shots from above and whole group pictures and videos to see how they feel. The pictures won’t be as sharp as my Canon I don’t think, but, it will add something different for our clients.

Playing with the Spark

Brighton by Spark

We have a wedding and engagement shoot next week so we will see what I can do. I will update more thoughts in a future post ?