This was my last island aerial video of the trip, and the only one I’ve done at sunset into early evening. The sun sets pretty early here on Bohol — 6:05PM today — so by 5:35PM I was already in position in front of our beachfront resort waiting for the right evening lighting. There was plenty of activity along the long stretch of Alona Beach: a fair number of tourists, but what seemed to be an even larger number of locals, including many whom I suspect live in Bohol itself and were out enjoying the beach.
I haven’t done many sunset aerial shoots, but one thing I’ve learned is that timing is critical. There’s only a small window where you get the perfect blend of ambient and artificial light — for example from the lighting at the various retail and dining establishments along the beach. As evening falls, the small sensor on the DJI Mini 4 Pro also starts to struggle with the lower available light, and the onscreen readout on the RC-N2 controller showed that the ISO was exceeding 4000. As a result, parts of the resulting video look a little mushy. Increasingly strong winds were also blowing about — possibly because thunderstorms might be forming later in the evening. I could see the drone’s camera gimbal and propellers working really hard to keep the footage stabilized.
This is our last night in Bohol, and there’s really a lot to see and do on the island, especially water activities. I reckon we could have spent another day here and checked out some of the snorkeling or helmet-diving activities offered by the numerous dive and water activity shops that line the beach. Oh well — perhaps on a future trip!