At the start of the day, we’ll make sure you are familiar with the drone and transmitter, and take a deep dive into the various sub-menus, making sure you understand the importance of checking that the battery is healthy, selecting the correct return to home height, and how to find out the amount of background radio interference there is in the area.

Generally speaking, we believe in keeping the flying element of drone flying as simple as possible.  After all, the purpose of the drone is to act as a giant tripod for the camera.  At the same time, improving your hand-eye co-ordination, and your ability to move the drone in 3-dimensions, will help you to get the drone to where you want it quickly and efficiently, and opens up a wide range of videographic options for you.

Therefore, once in the air, your Drone Pilot will make sure you know how to use all of the tools at your disposal, including map-view and the camera, to quickly and effectively move the drone into any position in the sky.

After that, they’ll walk you through how to complete a manual “point of interest” with the drone, which is great for improving your hand-eye co-ordination and fine stick inputs.  With this mastered, you’ll move onto flying figures of eight.  Now there is a challenge that requires some time to master.  

The best drone photographers and videographers, we find, think carefully before they even take off about what they want to do, are able to fly quickly and smoothly to where they want to start shooting, and then apply a laser-like focus on the task in hand.  Composition, framing and camera settings for photographs.  Starting position, flight, camera angle and end point for video.  At this level, it is very much two stick flying to get from A to B, and very often two stick flying, or intelligent flight mode, to capture the video clip that you want.

Later in the day we’ll exploring intelligent flight mode, and what it can give you.  Including our favourites: Point of Interest; Tap Fly; Course Lock; and best of all – Hyperlapse.  DJI set great store by their object tracking technology “Active Track”.  But in fact we much prefer Spotlight mode.  We’ll show you why during the day, as well as how to solve the problem of chasing fast things.  The answer is not Active Track.

Some of the best drone photos and video include something that frames the image or clip in the foreground, to lead the viewer’s eye into the subject matter of the image, which is likely in the background.  Getting this right requires flying close to things: buildings; trees; rocks etc.  During the day we’ll show you when you can rely on Collision Avoidance to help you, when it will actually spoil the party, and how to fly close enough to things with confidence if your drone does not have collision avoidance – the DJI Mini 2 for example.

At the end of the day, your Drone Pilot will review what you’ve learned with you, and give you suggestions for what you should work on next to take your drone flying to the next level.