As I’ve become more proficient in flying multirotors with attached cameras, I’ve started to write articles and give talks about aerial imaging. Each time I do something in public, photographers comment that they learned a lot, and RC hobbyists complain in RC forums and groups, asking who I think I am, and where I was 5 years ago, when they are already putting cameras on RC helicopters.

After the latest challenge on a Phantom group on Facebook, I thought about this more, and realized that the intermingling of photographers and RC hobbyists is a forced one, and is likely transient in nature. The vast majority of photographers are never going to be hobbyists. They never want to touch a soldering iron, and their end goals are not technical in nature. Photographers want a device they can easily direct in the air, the end goal being high-quality capture of a particular perspective they had in mind. Sport flying is certainly fun, but it is a very small subset of people who are going to invest the time required to become competent pilots. It just happens that right now, the only way to get a camera in the air with the requirements that photographers have (e.g., live composition tools and 3D aiming of the camera) is to enter the hobby world and modify existing, ready-to-fly multirotors. This is obviously going to change very soon, and I don’t expect that any of the aerial imaging companies really want to be in the RC hobby, which is tiny and insular in the grand perspective. Multirotor companies will swiftly move around—and beyond—the RC hobby. In the meantime, the hobby will continue to progress in its own way, with wires sticking out everywhere (which I happen to enjoy, myself). Hobby is necessary and fun because people relentlessly experiment with every new technology that is introduced. New sensors, flight-control algorithms, motors, batteries, radio technology, and more are all likely to be incorporated first by hobby. Photographers just want something that works, which is what people are racing towards (along with all of the other potential applications of UASes).

In all of my talks and articles, I’m addressing photographers and photography enthusiasts. I would never try to speak authoritatively about the RC hobby to the RC hobby audience, as I am merely brushing against it as I try to absorb as much as I can about flying cameras.