reframing the world one picture at a time
In my previous post I posted a flight report/review/extended test of the new 2018 DJI Mavic 2 Pro, with 1″ Hasselblad L1D-20c camera module. As promised, today’s post contains additional images I shot around Malaysia during the testing and calibration period – and yes, there’s a forest in there. I see a new project (or rather an extension of an old one, with previously inaccessible perspectives) emerging… Enjoy! MT
Shot with the Mavic 2 Pro and processed with PS Workflow III.
I’ve been flying the Mavic 2 Pro (Hasselblad version, of course) for nearly two months now – both for color/tonality tuning and flight testing. Yesterday, DJI announced two versions in an update to the highly successful original Mavic (which is what I’d been flying up to this point). The Mavic 2 Pro carries a 1″ sensor camera, 28mm-e f2.8 lens, and Hasselblad imaging pipeline; that camera module is designated as a Hasselblad L1D-20c. The second bird is a Mavic 2 Zoom, which carries a 2x 24-48mm-e zoom on a 1/2.3″ sensor. Everything across the board is significantly improved – we’ll go into the details after the jump. In short: it’s a Phantom 4 Pro in a Mavic’s clothes.
Disclosure notes: I work for Hasselblad/DJI, I was involved with the development of the Mavic 2 Pro, and this report was made on the basis of my experience with prototypes at various stages of development. Small image thumbnails are clickable for larger versions, and there are full sized samples where noted.
Nowhere is our collective societal impact on the planet quite as marked as when you view earth from the air – and whilst there’s probably some truth to those who think we’re going to ruin it through pollution, over extraction, global warming and the like – honestly, it’s much more pleasant to look at the view and just allow yourself to be a little bit amazed by what’s below you. I’ve always had a slightly odd feeling looking at places from the air – there’s scale, and at the same time, there isn’t. Small towns seem very much smaller; constricted, limited almost; large cities seem either daunting or filled with endless possibility. It may be a question of distance – if you don’t see the grittiness, it’s the latter. If you’re too close to the ground, it’s the former. Whatever it is – sometimes we literally need some perspective… MT
This series was collected over about a year and shot with a mix of cameras including the Hasselblad H6D-100c; H5D-50c and DJI Mavic Pro. All images were processed with Photoshop Workflow III.
I’m going to start this post with a confession: I lost/crashed a drone during the making of these, which is why there’s no video of me flying through the sea arch at Hellnar, or of that double sided beach where the waves pound a narrow strip of rocks. (I do have the stills from the Hasselblad though, which I’ll post in the near future.) Feeling confident after the flight low over the surf and through the arch, I went a bit further out to sea to do a flyby of the coastal cliffs, and an orbit of a sea stack. Mistake number one: I wasn’t high enough, and the signal was looking a bit ropey. That should probably have been enough of a clue that something was going to go wrong. Mistake number two: I underestimated the winds between the cliffs and the rocks – and there’s not really any way to judge wind speed remotely, other than sponginess of controls and lack of manoeuvring overhead as the bird uses more and more of its available reserve power to fight the wind. Mistake number three: I was flying sideways so the gimbal and camera would be pointed in the correct position to film, which meant that I didn’t really have much idea of what was behind me (the Mavic doesn’t have rearward or sideways sensors). What I surmise happened is that I got too close to the cliffs behind me, and a gust of wind did the rest. Game over.
Today’s images are a series shot from various parts of Europe – mainly Sweden and Switzerland. Some were captured as part of scouting for another shoot with the much larger M600/H6D-100c combination, and some were simply because the weather looked incredible and there was no reason not to fly*. The packing penalty for including the Mavic in my travel bag is so small that I think I’ll probably make a habit of this in future – sometimes there are really incredible mornings where you’d like to see the place come alive in the light… MT
*Be sure to check local regulations first: in Switzerland, for example, no-fly zones within a certain distance of an airport are marked as are restricted zones with height ceilings. There are also weight category restrictions. Sweden requires a permit full stop.
These images were shot with a DJI Mavic Pro and post processed with Photoshop Workflow III and the Weekly Workflow.
More months, more flying. I’ve come to believe that real appeal of aerial photography lies solely in one thing: the ability to see familiar places or objects or classes of objects from a drastically and otherwise physically inaccessible perspective. An image shot from a slightly elevated level with gimbal only slightly down is not that different to standing on a hill or building; an image shot from some altitude and entirely top down is at the other end of the scale. Most of the really interesting drone images I’ve seen or personally captured seem to fall into the latter category. We are coming dangerously close to the automated and the formulaic, here. Or are we?
Today’s photoessay contains the stills from the video of the shoot – there are also high resolution versions available for your pixel peeping pleasure at Hasselblad.com. There aren’t that many images simply because the setup for each one was quite extensive, and we were limited to a small window of time where ambient was dark enough for a long exposure, and bright enough to have some trace; too dark and I also had problems composing. You’ll notice a few other tricks in this series – there’s high speed sync flash involved, a little PS merge in one case (we only had one car!) and some interesting lighting…enjoy! MT
A big thank you to Koenigsegg for support and logistics, and Angelholm Airport for air traffic control. This series was shot with a Hasselblad H6D-100c, 50, 100 and 150mm lenses, several Broncolor Siros 800Ls and a DJI Matrice 600 drone. Postprocessing was completed using Workflow III.
Above and Beyond: Ming Thein x Hasselblad x Koenigsegg from Ming Thein on Vimeo.
This one has been some time in the making – planning started at the beginning of the year, with the shoot in May to balance weather and sunset/sunrise times, for release only now – today’s video and post is a taste of what goes into a production of this size. Please click the link above to watch it in full 4K glory.
In a nutshell, the concept is pretty simple – but as far as I can tell, unique to date – long exposures, cars, aerial perspective, twilight, Swedish locations for a Swedish car and camera, high speed sync flash to freeze. It is a way of visually describing the journey: the light trails are the past, the history, and the future; they’re not smooth because there are bumps in the road and and paths can diverge significantly due to small changes in causality*. The clearly frozen car is the here and now, and the moment we should be enjoying: it’s the immediate manifestation of the present, with viscerally clear details. The past and the context fade and blur away, dtails blurred by the biased lens of memory. After a little discussion with Christian von Koenigsegg and his team – they bit, and we were in business. Since we were going for the best of the best all around – the only choice was to use the flagship H6D-100c and DJI M600, of course.
*Physics reference.
“Oh no, he’s gone and done it now…”
For a long time, I resisted. For two reasons: firstly, the flight technology hasn’t quite matured to the point that I’m comfortable enough with my own flying abilities to not crash or injure something or destroy the aircraft; secondly, the camera quality really wasn’t worth bothering with – especially when you’re used to something with let’s say, a little larger sensor. The first problem has recently been solved; the current generation of consumer-level drones packs so much guidance technology in (GPS positioning, radar, obstacle avoidance cameras, subject tracking and recognition cameras etc., inertial navigation gyros) that it’s really quite difficult to crash or hit something: it just won’t let you, unless you decide to turn all of the aids off. The second has also been solved to some degree, though not in the Mavic Pro I’ve started flying recently.
Behind the scenes videos
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Ming Thein | Photographer 