#3

Wow great shots!!

I have to ask if fill flash, external lights or heavier exposure bracketing captured more details in the fore ground. or Extreme HDR?? I took a second look at the flicker download and changed my mind.
They are great as presented.

Short answer No! But as a hobbiest you could have a drone weighing up to 55 lbs if you have deep pockets.

Just got a Yuneec Typhoon Q500 4k drone for Christmas as a gift from my wife. $500.00 before taxes, 4k videos, 12mp stills. I started with the toys to get my coordination up to the task of flying without crashing it. I have not flown this yet, going through the motions of registration and marking the drone with the registration numbers, learning the rules and etc.
This drone is advertised as a aerial and ground imaging solution as it has a detachable gimbal mounted camera and a steady rest for shooting handheld videos and stills with a cell phone as the viewfinder. I will post some pictures soon (samples look good). This is a big leap forward from the toys I learned to fly with. The toys were hard to fly requiring lots of stick work to hover.
I will say at this point the technology in the new mid-priced drones has made it much easier to fly and get good? results. Namely GPS. Return to home. Smartmode (Drone moves left on left moves of the right stick and moves right on right moves of the right stick). Automatic Hovering(Just release the sticks). Object avoidance (while helpful it's not infallible). Return to home(again, while helpful, it's not infallible). In minutes almost anybody can fly.
Now the downside, it almost impossible as a hobbyist to fly legally in the most desirable areas. 4 miles from any airport you must call the airport tower requesting permission to fly. National Parks and any parks marked "no fly" are off limit. Any use considered commercial is off limit. You almost have to move to the next level of licensing to have the freedom to fly in places that are desirable and you still have to get permission from the property owner. I believe in flying safely so the rules make sense. I would not like to have a 3.5 lb. drone fall on my head, property or anybody else's.

According to the current regulations for commercial use, the fees and testing required make it almost impossible for the average person to legally take the pictures you want. It might be cheaper to hire someone to take the pictures.

Wow!!
Got a drone for Christmas, I intend to do every thing by the book. I hate that I waited so long to hop in with both feet.
With just about every desirable location off limits, I know I will not be able to capture anything near the images that this photographer has produced, but my love of flying and photography I think will still make my endeavors fun.
I have dreams of being able to match his results!!

I also have two, they work great for me.

I played with the third image and a second image of the same insect moving my feet.
Are these better composition wise?

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Thanks for the composition tip.
How would you have composed the first images?
feel, free to demonstrate with an example.

Thanks for the complement.

I am trying to reach the next level. Trying to improve in all areas of photography.
Here are some of my best shots to date:

Again what's next?

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I have resisted the temptation to use the more expensive product because I really like the Photoshop Elements Program. I am still trying to master the Camera basics part of it. I am also focusing on building my kit of lenses.

I read through all the posts and agree that the 14bit raw has the potential to capture more image information than the 12bit raw. It's the post processing skill that will determine whether you will see a difference in the final photo. I recently started using photoshop elements 14 and noted that for some of the effects it reduces the images from 16bit to 8bit. There is definitely a shift in image quality visible on my 23" monitor when this happens.

I always try to get the best images possible from my equipment. Meaning I shoot raw and until recently I just cropped them, adjusted them for exposure or color temperature, then I converted them to jpg's. Because I didn't know that shooting in Raw required some degree of sharpening I discovered I was losing some potential Image quality! Since my camera doesn't allow a choice in saving files in a higher bit format, I was curious how much image quality I was losing. I was hoping somebody would post a picture, say a static scene shot in 12bit versus 14bit so that I could see if I could appreciate the difference.