Photo by http://tuoitrenews.vn/society/19445/amazing-views-of-ho-chi-minh-city-seen-from-drone
Ho Chi Minh City has just developed a different, elevated kind of beauty as one photographer and hi-tech enthusiast highlighted the beauty of Vietnam’s Southern region through a number of videos taken from breathtaking aerial angles.
Nam Air is based in HCMC itself and is more popularly known under the nickname Airblade14 on the equally famous website tinhte.vn, an online forum for local technology devotees. He started uploading aerial-view videos of the city into his YouTube channel earlier this year, but it was his two recent uploads which earned the utmost attention from viewers since it displayed several amazing sites in Ho Chi Minh City from a drone. His videos featured Nha Rong Harbor, Bitexco Tower and Nhieu Loc Canal using a video camera-equipped quadrotor or multirotor helicopter.
Also known as quadcopter, the state-of-the-art equipment is lifted and propelled by four rotors. Installing a video camera on the drone and flying it around to film the city’s stunning sights is the latest craze among photographers and hi-tech fanatics in general. Nam Air’s footage sparked a particular interest from the website’s visitors because it was unbelievably steady despite the fact that it was recorded from a video camera-equipped drone, often prone to the natural elements such as clouds, wind and other weather environments.
Nam Air filmed along a short part of Nhieu Loc-Thi Nghe Canal using a DJI Phantom FC40 quadcopter equipped with a Go pro Hero 3 with 1080 resolution. He installed a gimbal on his drone, a pivoted support and an anti-shaking device which “allows the rotation of an object around a single axis.” According to him, the device helped him achieve a balanced movement for his video camera while filming the canal from the sky. The gimbal enabled the video camera to retain its position no matter where or how much the drone moved.
Nhieu Loc-Thi Nghe Canal spreads through 8.7 kilometers across five districts in Ho Chi Minh City and is specifically monickered as “dead canal” due to its contamination of black and foul-smelling waters that it becomes unlivable for most animals. But through a pollution-elimination master plan by the municipal government, Nhieu Loc-Thi Nghe Canal is now “reborn.” Nam Air successfully, if not perfectly, captured this transformation of the famous canal as evidenced by over 8,500 views of his video after posting it on YouTube just overnight .
Nam Air preferred to keep his personal information private but is more than willing to share his equipment and filming style with anyone who is interested in videography with the aid of a drone.