Can someone please recommend a drone I could use for amateur 360 HDR sky photography in the USA? I hope recommendation requests like this are on-topic here.
Requirements:
- I will be mounting a Ricoh Theta Z1 360 panorama camera weighing less than 200 grams on top of the drone.
- The camera will be atop a 0.5 meter mast above the drone, so the center of mass will be high (This is so the drone itself will occupy a relatively small region of the panorama image)
- The drone must be able to hold a moderately steady position for about a minute while acquiring the multiple images needed to construct a high dynamic range sky image (True HDR, not just tone mapped).
- The altitude during image acquisition will be roughly 30 meters, to be above nearby trees, power lines, and buildings; so distant sky, clouds, sun, and mountains are the main focus of composition.
- I'm technically skilled, so I can do some assembly and simple electronic work. But I don't want to make a PhD thesis out of this.
Optional:
- The drone should be constructed of narrow struts, so the drone itself occupies as little of the panorama image as possible.
- The drone should be paintable, so I can use color to help edit out the drone image in postprocessing.
- I am a novice pilot; so I also want a recommendation for a cheap durable drone I can use to develop piloting skills before operating my real drone.
- It would be nice to have some way to alternately mount my camera 0.5 meters below the drone, for landscape images, but while also protecting my $1000 camera during landing and emergencies. Remember that this camera takes an image in every direction at once, so surrounding the camera with a cage or landing gear is not an option.