Foldable and Portable Drones a dream of every Videographer | Cinematographer

Drone shoot involves capturing both still images and videos using a remotely-operated or autonomously flying unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). These UAVs are often referred to as unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) or simply drones.

Drones can give you the bird’s-eye view that makes any video look engaging and exciting, mostly because that perspective hasn’t been possible until drones came about. One of the biggest problems people have had with drones is that they are typically so difficult to carry around and take on adventures.

Cue the folding drone, first launched by GDU in 2015 and recently copied by DJI and GoPro. This design lets anyone take a drone along in a backpack or small bag — portability solved!

But does a folding drone answer all the problems with drone shoot today?

Not quite. If you only plan to use a drone for a quick video or two, the DJI Mavic might be a decent choice for the holidays. But if you plan on using the drone for different photography and videography projects, or if you simply enjoy flying a drone, you’ll want to look for something that has a lot more power and the ability to change out gimbals and cameras.

Enter the GDU Premium Byrd — the first and only drone that has a folding design, a high-end 4K camera, the ability to swap out cameras and even carry DSLRs and mirrorless cameras for a true “future proofing” ability. They call this the Universal Flying Platform. And with GoPro recalling their Karma, the Byrd is the only folding drone that also works with a GoPro.

“All consumer-level drones are developed for only one camera, but not the Byrd. GDU will continue to create new gimbal packages to keep the Byrd “future proofed.” They simply don’t want people to have to buy a new drone to use a new camera you might buy: that’s the philosophy behind the ‘flying platform’ approach,” states Nicolia Wiles, GDU Director of Digital. “You shouldn’t have to keep buying $1K drones you don’t need just to use a different camera. When you buy a GDU Byrd, you only invest in a drone once, and can save your money for buying cameras you want to try. No other consumer drone manufacturer offers this.”

The Premium Byrd provides for 29 minutes of flight time during drone shoot, with a guaranteed 1000-meter video downlink system included in the shipped model (no additional downlink technology needed) and also offers a more advanced OFDM system, compared to WiFi transmission in the Standard model.