Tips for Flying Your Drone After it Snows

Flying your drone in snow is not a good idea, but after it has finished snowing, there might be a great opportunity to capture some singular and beautiful shots, both video and photo.

I'm going to reiterate this: do not fly your drone when it's snowing, it won't end well. Not only is visibility low, but most drones cannot handle that level of moisture. Furthermore, there are temperatures you shouldn't fly your drone at all. For instance, my Mavic Air 2 warns: "Please be advised that the DJI Mavic Air 2 has an operating temperature of 14° to 104° F (-10° to 40° C). For us to prevent any issues during the flight, we recommend for the unit being flown on areas within the operating temperature range."

Now, when it comes to landscapes in the snow, there are a number of difficulties and these certainly don't go away when you're flying a drone, if anything, they can get slightly worse. Snow reflects light and so it's far too easy for you to overexpose your scene. As Tony mentions in this video, is good to use exposure compensation in this scenario, and purposely underexpose to preserve the detail in the highlights.

I'm waiting for a good delivery of snow where I live in England, but once it lands, I hope to take the drone out and capture those rolling white fields!

Rob Baggs's picture

Robert K Baggs is a professional portrait and commercial photographer, educator, and consultant from England. Robert has a First-Class degree in Philosophy and a Master's by Research. In 2015 Robert's work on plagiarism in photography was published as part of several universities' photography degree syllabuses.

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