Flying my Sony a7s3 on an FPV drone.

Creating videos has always been so much more to me than trying to make the most captivating content I can. To me, it's more about bringing the ideas in my head to life as accurately as I see them. But some of the ideas I get aren't always possible, as some equipment I need is too big or too expensive to help fill the production gaps in my imagination. So when there's something new on the horizon, I'm always open-minded and keen to give it a try to see if it can help me tell my stories closer to how I imagined them. Throughout my videography journey, flying drones has become a big part of everything that I create. And for a long time, I've been on the lookout for a way to capture stunning cinematic aerial footage with my Sony A7S III. But there wasn't many realistic solutions out there. Then, iFlight released their Taurus X8 drone, a drone built to carry small cinema cameras. So I knew I had to get my hands on one and see if it could elevate my work to the next level and provide me with that cinema-like aerial footage. Okay, it's a lot windier than anticipated, but I think we should be fine. So we might get a bit more vibrations than expected, but we're going to give it a go anyway and see what we can do. Oh, and this is my mate Tom, an aspiring videographer who has a sense of humour that cannot be matched. I was going to put the Taurus through a few tests, and the first one was with a 55mm lens, as this could generate an incredible cropped-in look. The Taurus X8 definitely feels a lot heavier and less manoeuvrable than the 5-inch quads, but it has the ability to carry a 2kg payload, including the battery, and still move very fast. We actually tried this test about four separate times because nearly every time when I landed, the camera seemed to have stopped recording. We later found that this was because of the amount of vibration that was going through the camera, causing it to automatically shut off as a safety precaution. I also did the same flight with the Nazgul 5-inch quad from iFlight with the GoPro Hero 9 so I could compare both of the drone's footage later on and see if the Sony a7S III was significantly better than the GoPro. Fortunately, we were able to record one flight without the Sony shutting off. Even though it was really tough to keep Tom in frame with the 50mm lens, some parts of the clip were pretty awesome and you could see the cinematic potential coming through, but the vibrations were just too severe for the footage to be of any use. I cropped in to narrow on the GoPro so we could get a close result to what the Sony was going to give us, even though it was still a bit wider, but it seemed at the moment the GoPro on the Nazgul was producing the only usable footage. For the next test, I wanted to test out slow motion, another game-changing element to perform on a cine lifter. For this flight, we'd be using a 24mm lens for a much wider look. Before the flight, I made some more tweaks to the drone to see if I could get rid of those vibrations. The 120fps result on the Taurus was quite terrible. There was so much vibration, even though the slow motion looked awesome, it was just unusable. At this point, the 5-inch Nazgul from iFlight with the GoPro Hero 9 was giving me much better footage with no vibrations at all. I tried some different adjustments on the Taurus and gave it one last test run. It was definitely better than the slow motion clip, however it still had some very noticeable vibrations and some twitches every now and then. I've got to admit, I was feeling quite defeated. My vision of capturing incredible cinema-like FPV footage was quickly evaporating right in front of me. But being someone who just won't throw in the towel, I decided to examine the Taurus further and see what I could be missing. Me, myself and I noticed a few things that could be affecting the flight performance. The lugs which stop vibrations from entering the mounting plate might have been too loose, so I tightened all 6 up much more. The top plate I was using was also quite wide which could have been affecting the aerodynamics, so I swapped it over for a much thinner plate. Then I tightened everything back up and moved the camera backwards on the quick release plate to lower the centre of gravity even more. If there's one thing I know about filmmaking, it's that talent generates the ideas, but perseverance creates the results. I took the Taurus X8 down to my local park to see if the tune had improved the vibrations. I crossed my fingers for a successful flight and took off. The footage definitely looked like it had less vibrations, but it still wasn't to the point where I needed it to be. I performed some last tweaks to the frame and the next day I ran another test at my local park again. This had to be the one or else I did not have any more answers. The footage seemed to have dramatically improved. There was very few vibrations at all and the footage was very usable. And so I set off to my favourite place to fly to capture some stunning A7S III aerial footage. But then... So here I am walking, and check this out, a baby brown snake. Here in Australia this is a walking path, you do not want to step on a brown snake. So I've come out all this way, almost stood on a snake, and found out that my controller's dead. This video's not going too well is it? I charged it the night before I left though, so quite odd, maybe I accidentally turned it on and left it on. Ah, let's start again. I pulled my controller apart to test the battery and I found that one of the cells was busted. So I ordered a new battery for my Tango 2 and waited a week for it to arrive. Then finally I set off one last time to capture the footage I was after. But then my videography career almost came to a painful end. I got way too close to one of the world's most aggressive and dangerous snakes, the tiger snake. As I backed off the snake began to hiss and coiled up ready to attack. At any second it could lunge at me and hit me with a lethal bite that could be fatal. But thankfully the snake was like, you do you man, and slithered off into the bushes. What a scary encounter that was. Alright so that was a tiger snake, another incredibly dangerous snake. So we've seen a baby brown snake and a tiger snake and that is one of the snakes you do not want to mess with. It was hissing at me and it was not happy so hopefully we don't step on any of them. And so after dodging some of the world's most deadly snakes it was finally time to put the Taurus to the test. I've just adjusted the angle of the camera to be a little higher because I think it was a bit low in that last shot. And I'm going to wait for the sun to come out and have another go. But it seems to be working really good now so I'm pretty happy about that. Also special shout out to Mama TK who's come out today to help me film some little bits and pieces. What an absolute legend. What do you reckon? Yeah I did most of it. She did most of the flying actually. She's the pilot, she's the pro. Alright so did I end up getting the footage that I was after with the A7S III and the Taurus? Yes and no. You see there's a lot that I learnt throughout making that video and testing the Taurus over and over. That you guys are really going to need to know if you're looking to get a cine lifter. And the first thing I learnt was cameras with inbuilt stabilisation are a no go for flying on cine lifters. That's because inside the camera the sensor is loose. Because of all the turbulence and g-force and everything when you're flying. The sensor inside the camera still shakes and moves around. So if you're looking into getting a cine lifter make sure you have a camera that has a fixed sensor. Like the Blackmagic Pocket 6K, 4K or the Komodo. And that's one of the big reasons why I had so much trouble with vibrations throughout this video. So I'm not going to be flying the Sony A7S III anymore on the Taurus. I'm going to put it aside and maybe I'll look into getting a Blackmagic Pocket 6K camera to put on here. But to be honest there's not really a lot of situations where I'm going to be flying this big drone. I'm very rarely going to be pulling it out. And that brings me to the second thing as well. Taking it around with you and travelling around with it on your backpack. It's very difficult to carry around because it's just really big. And there's also lots of bits and pieces you need to take with you. For example the batteries. Batteries only last for about four minutes in the air. So you need to take a couple of those and they are heavy. And that can really weigh your backpack down. And especially if you're walking for half an hour. Now when flying something like the Taurus you also need to be super careful and triple check everything before you fly. And because it has eight propellers you need to make sure they're on the right way and that they're all tight. So you've got to triple check that stuff. And with these more complicated drones comes a bit of tweaking. As you can see through the video I've had to fix up so many bits and pieces to get this flying the way I wanted it to. But again my problems are also mainly because of the IBIS inside of the camera which I shouldn't have been flying with in the first place. Also readjusting the angle of the camera does take a bit longer. You need an allen key to get into these screws here. I quite often found it a bit frustrating having to keep changing the angle when I needed to get different shots. So you need to be a lot more patient when flying these drones. Now the Taurus does have a built in GPS system. So if you do lose connection with your controller it will come back and you can set it to a button on the controller to click it and have the drone come back. Oh I almost forgot a very important thing. The GPS system has to be set up in Betaflight first before it actually works. So you've got to like switch it on and do these things to get it to work and then it should be ready to go. But if you don't set it up and you go fly and you lose connection it might drop out of the sky so that's a good thing to know. Especially when you're flying with such expensive cameras on there that's definitely a feature you want to have. It also has two ESCs. So if one of them blows on the drone then you've still got another one to bring it back home. It also has a two kilogram payload which includes the battery and the camera. So make sure the camera and the battery together don't weigh over two kilograms. It should be good to fly. I was kind of sketched out about the quick release plate actually because it's just one tightening knob to keep the camera on the plate and one screw that screws into the camera. So it is a bit sketchy but I've made sure everything's super tight before I fly. And the quick release plate actually does tighten up quite well and it doesn't come loose easily. Be very careful flying these things. They are not like the five inches. They're much heavier, much more dangerous. Please take every precaution you can and also check the rules and regulations in your countries and states because bigger drones mean bigger laws. I've left a link in the description to iFlight's website where if you're looking to get into cine lifters you can pick up a Taurus for yourself. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed that video and seeing me almost step on a couple of the world's most deadliest snakes while flying a giant drone. I'll see you guys in the next video.