Technology

Look At Me – A Crash Course In Selfie Drones

The selfie is one of those things that you’d have to carefully explain to someone from pre-camera phone days if you went back in time. In fact, you’d have to explain why cameras were glued onto phones as well, come to think of it. While taking self-portraits has a long tradition in photography, the modern social-media selfie is a little light on the artistic merit and heavy on the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses part of living on Facebook or Instagram.

Nonetheless, it’s such a popular pastime that drone manufacturers offer a range of options to let you photograph yourself with the help of a dedicated flying robot. Honestly, now that selfies kill more people each year than sharks it’s probably best to use a professional tool to do the actual photographic work. While you pay attention to that sweet, sweet pose.

IMAGE: PIXABAY

What Is A Selfie Drone?

In case it’s not entirely clear from the name, selfie drones are flying camera drones that have special features to take photos of the operator. This means you don’t need another person to operate the drone.

In fact, you don’t need to directly operate the drone either. Selfie-capable drones are generally autonomous enough to snap that perfect picture without constant manual control. After all, having to hold a remote control in every picture would spoil it!

The ambit of selfie drones has expanded to include not only drone that can take a picture of you but can also film you by themselves without the need for a second person. The technology that makes this possible is pretty amazing and, as it ever more the case, pretty affordable all things considered.

While plenty of big, expensive drones have selfie capabilities, true selfie drones have to be small enough so that you can actually take them with you. Usually, they should fit in a backpack, be foldable and charge from common sources like power banks.

Selfie Drone Technologies

Selfie drones have sophisticated machine vision systems that let them understand the world they see through their cameras. For example, most have facial recognition software onboard. So all you have to do is use an app to tap on your own face and the drone knows who to film or photograph.

These commands are often given through an app, but plenty of drones can now understand voice commands and special hand gestures. They also have advanced tracking modes where you can tag people or objects and then just do your thing. Pretty amazing!

Notable Selfie Drones

While the line between general modern drone and selfie drone can be a little blurry, there are a few specific drones on the market that are definitely good examples of exemplary selfie drones. The DJI Spark is the most common name you’ll hear in this regard.

It’s pretty affordable and packed with technology and features you’d only find in top-tier machines from the previous generation. It’s one major issue being a lack of foldability. Still, this little guy is small enough to fit in most bags and you don’t need a controller to use it. In fact, as standard, it doesn’t even ship with one.

The Spark might be too general purpose for selfie-enthusiasts however, so something like the ZeroTech Dobby could be a closer match for purists. It folds up and fits in your back pocket while letting you quickly take group or individual photos using a smartphone app.

There are plenty of variations on the general theme between these two specific drones, but it’s a good start to understanding what these nifty little machines are all about. So if you’re hankering for some face-to-face time with a camera, why not treat yourself to the latest in selfie-technology?

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