This is cool. really. Although it uses an example for paparazzi, it could be used for news, sports and even commercial stock. It will probably become the new “have you got it?” gadget of the photo industry.
Here is how it works. Mounted on a quad copter, a remote-controlled helicopter with 4 blades for stability, a camera, a video feed and GPS unit are combined to survey and photograph any place from 20 feet above the ground ( or lower). The operator can see through the video feed to aim and shoot stills that can be either transmitted or saved into an on board card. The unit is very silent and extremely stable.
It is still in a prototype stage and probably cannot yet be used over crowds of people. ( might fall and hurt someone). But just imagine the possibilities. If undetected, it can photograph a celebrity wedding for 1/10 of the price it would cost to rent a very noisy and visible helicopter. For nature or commercial stock photographers, it can allow to photograph hard or impossible to reach places. Just imagine : you could photograph a model on a cliff by hovering beyond the edge.
The boundaries of uses of this gadget are only in the owners imagination . Click on the image to see a video :
( NDLR : the link to the original video posted here was deleted so we had to updated it with a more recent one from the same company)
