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 \u2014 6:05PM today \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 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 \u2014 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.<\/p>\n