More Peak District Aerial Photography
A landscape photography blog by Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire based landscape photographer Rob Thorley Photography.
After getting home from the previous outing I’d thrashed YouTube for my DJ Mini 4 pro photography refresher and was a lot more confident in what I was doing. Storm Darragh had now passed and it was literally onwards and upwards as I went back out with the drone.
I was still very much in practice mode and with that in mind I didn’t venture far into the Peak District, returning to Ramshaw Rocks, and The Roaches. The aim of the day was to play with the drones photography settings and see what I got. I was hoping for sharper images, and less noise as the main “improvements” over my last outing.
Weather wise there was a bit of wind but I thought it’d be within the capabilities of the drone. The day was overcast and the light flat. Not the best combination to get some banging shots but certainly good conditions to practice in.
First stop was Ramshaw Rocks. I headed up to the top but unfortunately the wind was a lot fresher up there than forecast, so I dropped back down to the bottom. Whilst the drone was coping with the wind it certainly wasn’t ideal for photography. I quickly decided to go with a plan B. The wind was coming in from the east, so I headed over to Roach End. My thinking was the barn would be sheltered by The Roaches themselves and whilst I may not be able to throw the drone up 120 metres I’d still be able to get it in the air and take some pictures.
On the way around to Roach End I did pull in and send the drone up to get an image of the Baldstone ridgeline.
Plan B however soon became plan C.
I’d made a good call in regard to getting a bit more of a sheltered spot, but unfortunately the farm had their sheep grazing around the barn. I didn’t want to spook them, so decided to go and have a look at another barn a little further on that I’d never photographed. As it turned out I’m glad plan B was a bust.
I’m not sure if this barn has a name, so I’ll refer to it as the “other” barn. I pulled into what appeared to be a layby rather than a passing place and sent the drone off to have a look at the other barn and to get some photographs. From an aerial perspective it looks like this barn has potential for future outings with the Z8. I had a look at the CROW open access map when I got home and whilst I don’t think the barn itself is on access land I think the land around it is and therefore should be shootable with a telephoto lens.
After getting some photographs of the “other” barn I continued on and came to the main car parking for The Roaches, and Hen Cloud. As I still had one full battery left I decided to throw the drone up and see if I could get a photograph of Hen Cloud. I was getting a few wind warnings as it went up and being down on the road meant that I couldn’t get the best of angles before hitting the maximum altitude.
After somehow managing to land the drone under my car in one piece . . . honestly I have no idea how I achieved that . . . I decided to call it a day.
So whilst the weather hadn’t been the best for a spot of aerial landscape photography with the DJI Mini 4 Pro I was still more than happy with how the session had gone. I was pleased with the quality of the images I’d got. They weren’t too noisy and a definite improvement over the ones I’d captured in the last outing.
The main thing that I changed was to ditch the ND filter. With the ND off I was able to get a shutter speed in the 1/240 to 1/320 whilst keeping the ISO at 100. This will have helped with the sharpness. Keeping the ISO at 100 rather than auto will have helped with the noise. I also shot with the auto exposure bracketing (AEB) set to 5. Whilst I don’t think the conditions warranted a bracket of 5 shots I just thought it’s digital, so why not. Again, the AEB will have helped with the noise.
I kept the resolution to 48MP. I need to do more testing to with this setting versus the 12MP to see what works best and when each setting works best.
I thought I’d take a punt and submit the aerial photographs to the stock agencies I use to see if they’d pass QA. I’m more than familiar with the inconsistent checks from stock agencies, so I was pleased and pleasantly surprised to see all of the images got accepted. Happy days.
A couple of days after the outing above I did venture back out. The forecast on this particular day was for very low wind, so I decided to have another play even though the forecast was for overcast conditions. Whilst the forecast was spot on from a wind perspective I found myself by and large to be in a cloud, or the mist. I wasn’t sure how the drone would cope with the moisture, so whilst I did send it up I was a little apprehensive. I’m not sure why I was apprehensive given my old DJI Mini 2 had been fully submerged in the River Dane and worked fine after drying out. As it turned out other than a few visibility warnings the drone didn’t have any issues with the damp / rain / water vapour from being in the mist, and low cloud.
I was still playing, so didn’t get any new compositions but thought I’d share the image below as it gives a good indication of the conditions from this particular morning.
Winter aerial photograph of low cloud, and mist at Ramshaw Rocks.
Thanks for reading along. I hope you’ve enjoyed these aerial landscape photographs from Ramshaw Rocks and The Roaches.
You can view more images from The Roaches, and my gallery of other Peak District locations.
