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In the previous article I wrote about the basic disadvantages and limitation of the drone: it depends on batteries, has limited range, flight altitude and speed, all of which put it at a disadvantage compared to shooting from a manned aircraft. Granted, the drone is a very different tool to a manned aircraft, but I compare the two to emphasize that the photographer should be aware of the advantages and limitations of each option when planning a shoot.

This time, I would like to discuss another disadvantage of the drone: it’s VERY easy to lose.

To a drone user, crashes are a part of life. Drones keep getting better and safer, they are fit with sensors to avoid collisions, programmed to fly back to the home point when connection has been lost with the remote, but they are still not completely safe from tumbling down from the sky, and they still get lost quite often. Iceland’s Glacier Lagoon and Greenland’s Disko Bay must be a few meters shallower with all the Phantoms and Mavics that have been drowned there over the last decade. A colleague of mine’s clients lost 2-3 Mavics in one photo workshop in Disko Bay! Wow, just wow.

But why is that? How come drones just keep falling from the sky or become lost, never to be found again? If you disregard animal attack and hostile interception (both very rare events), there could only be two main reasons: human error and technical malfunction. Sometimes it can be both factors working together.

Human error

Earlier in this series I referred to drones as being ‘idiot proof.’ That was probably overstating it. Drones are by no means idiot proof, or even not-so-idiot proof. A better term would be ‘idiot resistant,’ as a drone can only correct its user’s mistakes so much – it is, after all, just a machine.

One of my workshop clients once lost a drone when we were shooting next to a lake. The problem was that the lake was a natural wind-tunnel, and a temporary stillness encouraged us to take the drones up. Upon feeling the wind getting stronger I brought my drone down and alerted my client to do the same. He chose to keep on flying, and once the wind grew even fiercer, he quickly lost orientation. A few minutes later the drone crashed down, while still keeping in contact with the remote.

DJI’s remotes have a distance indicator, showing how far the drone is from the home point, and we could see that the drone wasn’t too far away. My client started walking in the direction that kept reducing the distance, but eventually understood that the drone was resting on a mountain on the other side of the lake. It’s probably still there.

There is a lesson to be learned here. First of all, once you feel the winds getting dangerously strong, there’s no shame in bringing a drone back down. Secondly, if you lose orientation, don’t let the drone just drift with the wind. Instead, try your best to fly it back toward the home point. A lower flight altitude usually means gentler winds, so in case the drone isn’t progressing home, try flying lower.

The winds above this beautiful lake in the Argentinean high-altitude desert were blowing so strongly, the drone was being swept farther and farther even though I was flying it at full speed back home. It’s important to keep cool when something like this happens. The best thing you can do is bring it down and fly a few meters above ground – the winds will be much calmer and you’ll be able to get the drone back. DJI Mavic II Pro, 1/240 sec, f/9, ISO 100. Puna de Argentina

Another very common avoidable mistake is stretching the battery for too long. A drone’s remote will start protesting when battery level is below some (adjustable) figure. The default for DJI drones is 30%, but this depends on the drone’s distance to the home point. When the battery drops further, the drone will usually alert the user that it will automatically go home in a few seconds. This too can be overridden by the user, in case he or she wants to keep controlling the drone and shoot some more.

Lastly, when the drone is at 10% battery or less, it will automatically and autonomically start landing. But even this can be avoided if the user actively uses the joysticks to keep the drone airborne.

An experienced drone user can sense when they need to bring the drone back. In perfect conditions, without wind, when flying low and close to the operator, there is no real reason to bring the drone back home at 30%, 20% or even 15% battery. If you can bring the drone back in a matter of seconds, by all means, keep flying until you reach 10% and then land it. But when conditions get harder, that’s when experience is critical and you have to keep a close eye on the battery status.

Depending on distance, altitude and (mainly) wind conditions, the amount of battery power needed to bring the drone back may increase significantly. Yours truly has almost lost a drone when wind picked up significantly during an afternoon shoot in a pumice-stone field in the high altitude desert of Argentina. I struggled to fly the drone, which was facing harsh head-winds, and by the time I managed to land, I was on 1% battery (!).

It’s easy to be caught up shooting this beautiful Pumice-stone field, but the place is huge and the photographer must account for the drone’s distance and sudden increases in wind forces, or they’re risking the battery emptying before being able to bring the drone back to the launch point. DJI Mavic II Pro, 1/25 sec, f/5.6, ISO 100. Puna de Argentina

I will conclude the discussion of human error-related crashes with a story from my recent Greenland photo workshop. My group was slowly sailing in an iceberg-packed part of Disko Bay. Since we were going to stay in that area for a while, I took out my drone and started shooting aerials of the icebergs.

When the battery was about to run out, I decided it was time to bring the drone back home. But then I realized that the captain had moved the boat several hundred meters, so the home point indicator was useless.

The remote started screaming when battery level reached 10%, and when it hit 5% I knew I had to do something

Moreover, the fact that the boat was sailing between thousands of iceberg – and it was a white boat – made finding it close to impossible. I had no indication of where the boat was or how to get to it. Using the larger icebergs as reference points was also futile, as the distances are huge and I couldn’t judge their location relative to the boat when looking at the remote’s screen.

I was getting nervous. Minutes passed and battery power was continuing to dwindle. For the life of me, I simply could not find the boat. The remote started screaming when battery level reached 10%, and when it hit 5% I knew I had to do something, or lose the drone.

This iceberg, and many next to it, were constantly collapsing, which filled this part of the bay with icebergs. That was great for foreground, but less beneficial in other ways. DJI Mavic II Pro, 1/25 sec, f/6.3, ISO 100. Disko Bay, Greenland

I started to drop the drone’s altitude, desperately looking for any possible landing site. At this point I was about 80% sure I would lose the drone. But then, I saw a large, relatively flat iceberg. I decided to land on the iceberg, without knowing if I was going to be able to retrieve the drone from it, even if the landing went well. After landing, the situation was looking grim. I was in a huge bay, with literally thousands of icebergs, one of which had my tiny drone on it. There was no way in hell I would find the drone without help.

What do you know – my drone was peacefully resting on the iceberg

But then our captain’s assistant, who had been though a similar situation, suggested that I use the “find my drone” feature on the DJI app. I had never used this feature, since I always knew how to get to the home point. But in this case, the home point was no longer where the boat was. I used the feature to see the drone’s last GPS location, asked the captain to sail there, and what do you know – my drone was peacefully resting on the iceberg. Luckily, the iceberg was big enough for me to hop onto it from the boat, get the drone and return safely. It was quite a surreal experience.

In retrospect, I could’ve done things differently and avoided the iceberg landing. I subsequently learned that it’s possible to change the home point on the fly in the DJI app, so the return to home feature directs the drone to the current location of the remote. Live and learn! At least I have a good story, and by sheer luck, no harm was done and my drone lived to fly another day.

Technical malfunction

Drones, as mentioned, are machines. And as machines, they can sometimes fail or operate in unexpected ways. The difference between a drone malfunction and a DSLR malfunction, however, is that when the former happens, the drone might not be seen or heard from ever again.

There can be different reasons for a drone malfunctioning. In the past, DJI drones crashes numbered in the thousands due to people flying them when batteries were too cold. This has happened to me too, in Iceland – an event on which I’ll elaborate at a later stage. Due to public outcry, DJI has had to include a better temperature warning system in its newer products.

Greenland’s famous Disko Bay is particularly notorious for drowning drones aplenty. This is mainly due to the large amount of iron in the bedrock, leading the drone’s navigational systems to go haywire. Personally, I’ve never lost a drone in Greenland, but I’ve had my fair share of GPS malfunctions. When GPS fails, the drone starts drifting away with the slightest breeze, which, in extreme cases, can lead to a crash into the water.

It’s hard to resist the allure of flying a drone between the ice giants of Disko Bay. Be be wary of GPS malfunctions – they can cost you your drone. DJI Mavic II Pro, 1/30 sec, f/8, ISO 100. Disko Bay, Greenland

Again, the important thing is keeping cool, regaining orientation and preventing the drone from being swept too far away. The GPS system usually comes back up in a short while.

Drones are constantly getting better and more fail-proof. They don’t crash nearly as much as the used to, which is a very good thing. If the worst happens and you do crash a drone just remember: you’re not the first and definitely not the last.

Erez Marom is a professional nature photographer, photography guide and traveler based in Israel. You can follow Erez’s work on Instagram and Facebook, and subscribe to his mailing list for updates.

If you’d like to experience and shoot some of the world’s most fascinating landscapes with Erez as your guide, take a look at his unique photography workshops in The Lofoten Islands, Greenland, Namibia, the Argentinean Puna, the Faroe Islands and Ethiopia.

Erez offers video tutorials discussing his images and explaining how he achieved them.

More in This Series:

• Landscape photography with a drone: Gear basics
• Landscape photography with a drone: the advantages – part 1
• Landscape photography with a drone: the advantages – part 2
• Landscape photography with a drone: the advantages – part 3
• Landscape photography with a drone: disadvantages and limitations – part 1

Selected Articles by Erez Marom:

• Parallelism in Landscape Photography
• Winds of Change: Shooting changing landscapes
• Behind the Shot: Dark Matter
• On the Importance of Naming Images
• On Causality in Landscape Photography
• Shooting K?lauea Volcano, Part 1: How to melt a drone
• The Art of the Unforeground
• Whatever it Doesn’t Take
• Almost human: photographing critically endangered mountain gorillas

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

So far, I’ve offered nothing but praise for the drone. It’s a remarkably cheap and widely available tool. You can fly it anywhere, get infinite perspectives and unique compositions. It can easily hover in place to shoot long exposures or wait for the right time to shoot. It will venture where no human will, be it through toxic gases or scorching lava. And it is so much fun.

But the drone has its disadvantages and limitations, and that is the subject for today. Discussing these limitations is important in order to understand where and when one should choose to use a drone and when not to. It’s an important aspect to planning a shoot in a new location or circumstance, and it will help you understand that a drone isn’t a magical tool, as amazing as it is. Let’s review some of these limitations, starting with the easier ones to discuss.

Dependence on batteries

All of today’s drones fly using state of the art Lithium Polymer (LiPo) and lithium polymer high voltage (LiHV) batteries. These batteries are compact, and they last a surprisingly long time, but even the longest-flying drones cannot fly for more than about half an hour. This number is further shortened if the drone is flown “aggressively” (made to perform maneuvers, accelerate, decelerate and change direction often), when flying in sports mode and also if there is strong wind pushing against it.

Half an hour is a whole lot in some situations, but it’s not enough in others. I have had to land a drone in the middle of a shoot in harsh winds, even though the light was amazing, simply because the battery had run out. When the actual shooting location is relatively far away from the launch location, just getting to it and back can eat up half of the battery, leaving a measly ten minutes of shooting time before having to head back and change batteries, even if the sky had just opened up and the conditions became optimal.

Afternoon light on the magnificent cliffs of Suðuroy. I flew the drone in the harsh winds typical to the Faroes, and as a result, the battery drained so fast I only had 10 or 15 minutes to shoot. DJI Mavic II Pro, 1/80 sec, F5.6, ISO 200. Suðuroy, the Faroe Islands

Dependence is not only on the amount of power one battery can give, it’s also on the number of batteries one has or can carry. In situations where the user cannot charge the batteries (for example, camping trips), there’s simply nothing left to do once the battery capacity has been used. Each battery has significant weight – Phantom batteries are 450 grams each, and even the tiny Mavic batteries weigh almost 300 grams each. When you have to carry those batteries, the drone, plus your regular camera equipment (and camping gear if you’re camping), each item matters, and those 3-4 batteries alone will make your backpack more than a kilogram heavier.

I carried three Phantom batteries for 8 km on solidified lava to shoot these surface flows in Kilauea Volcano. The batteries alone weighed almost 1.5 kilograms, not to mention the drone itself, my DSLR gear, tripod and 2 liters of water. While worth it, the backpack was very heavy and the hike wasn’t much fun. Even so, I would in retrospect bring two more batteries, to be able to use them more sparingly on a rare shoot such as this one. DJI Phantom 4 Pro, 1/15 sec, F6.3, ISO 400. Taken outside of Volcanoes NP, Island of Hawaii.

Limited range

Drones not only have limited flight time, they also have limited range. The range is not only limited by battery power, but by two other factors: connectivity between the drone and the remote, and legal aspects.

When shooting the 2014 Holuhraun volcanic eruption from a helicopter, I spent more than an hour shooting a mind-blowing sunset over the lava, and stayed well into darkness. A drone wouldn’t have been able to remain airborne for long enough to get these conditions (not to mention get there!). Canon 5D Mark II, Tamron 24-70mm F2.8 VC, 1/200 sec, f/4, ISO 1600. The Central Highlands of Iceland

In modern camera drones, radio connection between the drone and its remote is usually excellent when flight distance isn’t too long (I would give a numeric example but it really depends on many factors). But fly further away and the connection might break. If you use drones, I’m sure you know the horror one feels once the screen turns black and white and the app announces that connection had been lost. Even though the drone will attempt to return home and regain connection 99.9% of the times, there’s always the chance that it has just crashed. If, like yours truly, you have crashed a drone in the past, you will forever dread this feeling.

Connection may be compromised not only when flying too far, but when the drone is positioned so it loses direct line of sight to the remote, which can be a bit risky as the drone is left to navigate its way until regaining connection. Harsh weather such as heavy snow or rain my also break the connection, but this is usually intermittent.

Say what you may about manned aircraft, their range is far longer than that of any drone, and lost connection is not an issue.

My drone lost connection for a few moments when this iceberg’s peaks came between it and the moving boat. There was little to worry about, however, as I knew connection would be regained in a matter of seconds. DJI Mavic II Pro, 1/30 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200. Disko Bay, Greenland.

In any case, today’s modern drones have been known to miraculously find their way home even after having lost connection. Equipped with GPS and with an array of sensors to avoid hitting obstacles, I’ve heard stories of drones reappearing after having been deemed lost, even after long minutes of disconnection. I’ll discuss this further in a future article.

Legal requirements in most countries dictate that the drone remain in line-of-sight. What that means could be debatable, but a stricter interpretation might be that the drone needs to be clearly visible to the operator. This means further limitation of the range.

Limited flight altitude

Another limitation to the drone is its inability to fly higher than a certain altitude limit. Again, this limit can be the result of different factors, technical and legal. Technically, drone manufacturers limit the maximum altitude a drone can fly in. In DJI drones this limit is 500 meters above the home point. Higher altitude flights may only be possible after hacking the drone’s firmware, which is sometimes possible but seriously discouraged.

A much stricter altitude limit is dictated by drone laws in most countries. 100, 120 and 150 meters are the common numbers here, with the vast majority of countries not allowing flight above 120m. My home country of Israel officially limits drones to 50 meters (hmmm…). Even though an altitude limit makes a lot of sense, there’s no doubt that it greatly impacts compositional possibilities. Light planes, for example, are usually allowed to climb up to 2-3 kilometers before intruding the airspace of commercial jets.

The gigantic dunes of the Namib Desert can rise 300 meters high – no chance of shooting them with a drone, even if droning were allowed in the accessible parts of Sossusvlei, which it isn’t. I took this image from a helicopter at a height of more than a kilometer in the air. Canon 5D Mark III, Tamron 24-70 f/2.8 VC, 1/1250 sec, F10, ISO 800. Sossusvlei, Namibia

Limited flight speed

Finally, drones are limited in their flight speed, which is usually not an issue, but can sometimes be a hindrance to getting the shot. Aerial photography often covers vast distances, and when light breaks faraway, you want to get there fast. A DJI Mavic can fly at 72 km/h (about 45 mph), and even that is on sports mode which quickly drains battery and can sometimes mess with the gimbal.

After DJI lowered its top speed due to stability problems, the faster, much more expensive Inspire 2 now tops at 94 km/h (58mph). Compare that with the 240 km/h of a Robinson 44 helicopter or with over 300 km/h of a Cessna, and the disadvantage is clear.

When seeing this light breaking between the mountains at a distance (and after picking my jaw up from the floor), I asked the pilot to “step on it” to get there as quickly as possible and avoid missing the shot. He asked me to close the window, easily pulled the throttle, taking us to 300 km/h and covering the distance to this composition in less than a minute, before slowing back down to allow me to open the window and shoot for several minutes. A drone would have undoubtedly missed the shot. Canon 5D Mark III, Tamron 24-70mm F2.8 VC, 1/2000 sec, f/4, ISO 800. The Lofoten Islands, Arctic Norway

To sum up, a drone is dependent on relatively heavy, power-limited batteries and the ability to carry and charge them. It has limited range, limited speed and limited flight altitude compared to manned aircraft, all of which limit the photographer’s ability to get to a location, spend enough time shooting it and getting good composition and light. While these problems don’t make the drone any less amazing, they have to be considered when planning an aerial shoot and when selecting the right tool to perform it.

In the next article I will continue the discussion of the drone’s disadvantages.

Erez Marom is a professional nature photographer, photography guide and traveler based in Israel. You can follow Erez’s work on Instagram and Facebook, and subscribe to his mailing list for updates.

If you’d like to experience and shoot some of the world’s most fascinating landscapes with Erez as your guide, take a look at his unique photography workshops in The Lofoten Islands, Greenland, Namibia, the Argentinean Puna, the Faroe Islands and Ethiopia.

Erez offers video tutorials discussing his images and explaining how he achieved them.

More in this series:

• Landscape photography with a drone: Gear basics
• Landscape photography with a drone: the advantages – part 1
• Landscape photography with a drone: the advantages – part 2
• Landscape photography with a drone: the advantages – part 3

Selected articles by Erez Marom:

• Parallelism in Landscape Photography
• Winds of Change: Shooting changing landscapes
• Behind the Shot: Dark Matter
• On the Importance of Naming Images
• On Causality in Landscape Photography
• Shooting K?lauea Volcano, Part 1: How to melt a drone
• The Art of the Unforeground
• Whatever it Doesn’t Take
• Almost human: photographing critically endangered mountain gorillas

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)