I have a good chuckle each time I hear of a person all excited because they invested in a drone and they want to go into business having had no flying experience, because as the big drone companies will all tell you, they fly themselves. Yes, until you clobber your first tree (hoping that it's a tree and not something alive.)

Ah yes, everyone wants a shortcut to success.

What people don't realize is that these so called self flying drones are able to take off and land by themselves for the most part. However, the most important part is really left out: What do you do with it while it is in the air? Can you place it exactly where you want it in three dimensional space using all the controls in a coordinated manner?

An operator must use 5 controls in smooth coordination through out each flight. Throttle, rudder, forward/backward, side to side, and camera angle. Sure, not so hard when the UAV/drone faces away from you, but what if the thing is facing toward you? The controls are backward. This point for confusion can take some serious time and practice to sort out. It's a matter of training the brain.

This is where things become evident. The final video product will show this, for sure. Simple smooth flying technique translates into good footage. Movement is what video is all about, and interesting movement is where the challenge lies, for any operator. Take a subject and move the camera through space to capture it in an interesting way so that the viewer holds an interest to it.

I am at the point where the drone/UAV is no longer an element to be concerned with. It to me is a flying camera that I can place anywhere I want, at any angle in any space that I choose, and from there to transition it from one place to the next in a smooth and interesting way. That is the big difference.

To a beginner, their mind is on avoiding trees or figuring out how to get from one place to another using the controls. The mind is not free to be creative.