I have a job coming up for which I’m camera operating for an Alta 8 but the boss man wants to see what I’ve got in terms of piloting my FPV drone. The nature of the job is a car commercial and I’ve never tracked moving vehicles in real life. I’ve done it in the sim a little bit and I’ve tracked friends’ drones in the park but I want to gain a little more confidence going into this.

Has anyone found any videos on YouTube that are somewhat of a tutorial on tracking moving objects (cars,bikes,skis)
Or
Does anyone have any tips for me?

Johnny FPV do a lot of car tracking video. No tutorials though. You might get some ideas watching his videos

(08-Aug-2020, 07:42 AM)voodoo614 Wrote: Johnny FPV do a lot of car tracking video. No tutorials though. You might get some ideas watching his videos

Yea seen em all LOL.

But would love to see someone do a "breakdown" on one of his videos or something? Idk... 

Maybe i'll make a breakdown of my own video after im done with this job as I don't see anything on the subject anywhere!

Nurkfpv does some car tracking. He has a video where he works with Catalyst Machineworks and he films a Bugatti driving. He goes a little into how he gets his shots. 
Here's the video:


Definitely not the same kind of drone but same concept i think.

I've done some tracking. It's not as easy as it looks.

Keep your distance. Let's you keep the vehicle in frame much more accurately when they change direction and stay above looking down at it. Staying centered on the tail lights you see a whole lot more bobbing with throttle changes and doesnt let you track but react abruptly makes a lot of sloppy or useless shots. That effect is drastically reduced when your looking down somewhat from above.

Most videos you see are mostly somewhat distance shots while tracking and cut to close ups shots that are a 5 second one off pass they never planned to attempt to track and follow afterwards. You get to know the track quick enough if you're following on a track and can plan to cut some corners to get some inside shots then back in behind or over or in front with some yaw spin. When you loose track rolling makes cut shots a little easier to stitch together if you like that effect. Outside hoologan style tracking shots are much much harder to keep in frame but you pickup the dust and rocks and look much cooler to slow down. Try coming in hot for those and roll so your flat then yaw and just let it carry through a few times before you try to fly sideways while tracking and accelerating. This works great on a tight S bend where you can catch them on the inside next turn to continue to follow from there.

Sometimes I find it easier to ignore keeping the vehicle perfectly centered in frame and try to focus on a further object like a tree on the horizon when following and let the car move around in frame especially if it's a motocross track where you can pickup other parts of the track adjecent the bike. I like this for turns and well watch the horizon and track a point far off that keeps the car in frame and ignore the car. Gives it a smoother turn and a different view point then constantly following. I find it also shows the car isn't rolling smoothly in a straight line, shows the aggression like it's really racing.

Best of luck at the very least this will be fun.

another quad have one more direction, even more difficult. i beleive tracking a buddys drone would be the best training.

Thanks guys! I’ve got a couple of ideas from this thread. I’d say I’ll circle back with my footage but I signed an NDA regarding the project which certainly means I can’t post anything I film... womp womp. But I’ll let you guys know how it went, verbally.

First of I'd use a hero 6 or 8 with real steady shot in 4k so you can crop stuff if the end product is not 4k.

Also I've been thinking about this kind of work lately and I'm looking at something like this servo tilted fpv/hero cam setup that shendrones did for Gab some time ago. http://www.shendrones.com/ichabod-jr (scroll to the bottom for the servo setup) So you don't have to land each time you want to make cam adjustments. You can change your angle as you fly, this will take some practice obviously but it should make tracking subject a LOT easier.