Drone Tip: Flying & Photographing in Fog, Mist or Low Clouds

Fog, mist and low clouds can be some of the most beautiful conditions to fly your drone in. Clouds in general add a lot of atmosphere to photographs and videos and when you can be surrounded by them, you can even use them as a way to frame up your shots. However, if you are unaware of the challenges & problems that can come with it, you may be in for a rough time. In this blog, I want to talk about the challenges you may face while flying your drone in fog, mist & low clouds and how to overcome them.

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The Sensor Headache: How To Circumvent Them!

When flying in fog, mist or low clouds, it is very likely your drone’s obstacle avoidance sensors will act up and cause you trouble. Over the years, I have seen this occur on anything from a DJI Mini 3 Pro to an Air 3 and even Mavic 3 Pro. Some fog & clouds can be so dense that the sensors detect them as obstacles which will prevent you from flying further. Another issue you will likely encounter is that your drone begins to auto-land as if it detected a flat surface underneath. This can seem very scary when you see this happen for a first time but it’s nothing to worry about. The drone won’t shut off the motors unless it actually detects it is on the ground and you can easily disable this landing procedure by pressing the cancel button on the screen. Finally, perhaps the biggest issue, is that your drone may not be able to descend at all due to a supposed obstacle beneath it. This can happen if you went above fog of low clouds and it has become too dense for you to lower your drone through them.

So how can you circumvent these problems? Firstly, when you are flying in such conditions with your drone, you want to completely disable the obstacle avoidance sensors by switching your drone to Sport mode. You can also disable them from the menu but I find it is far easier to just switch to Sport mode, which then also allows you to easily switch back to Normal mode, with sensor, when you cleared the fog or clouds.

However, when you switch to Sport mode, you are still bound to encounter the auto-landing issue and may even not be able to descend at all. This is because Sport mode does not disable the bottom-facing sensor. In order to continue flying, you will have to manually disable all sensors, which you can do as follows:

• While flying the drone, open the Settings from the top right corner.
• Go to Safety and scroll down to Advanced Safety Settings.
• Disable Vision Positioning and Obstacle Sensing.
• This will disable all sensors – including the bottom facing one used for landing.

A Few Other Tips

While those are the most important things you should know to make sure you can get your drone back down safely, there are a few other smaller tips that I want to share:

• If you fly through fog, mist or clouds, you may notice that the camera may be covered in rain droplets. Whilst flying, it is a good idea to keep a close eye for those. If they are stuck to the camera module, you can try to fly upwards and forward, while tilting the camera down simultaneously. This will generate enough force to get rid of the droplets. Spinning the drone around the Y-axis while tilting the camera up and down will also help remove the droplets without having to return to your home point.
• Check whether your drone has focused on the right compositional element of the landscape in case you are flying near a low cloud. If you are really close, the drone may unintentionally focus on the cloud instead rendering your photo out-of-focus.
• Before you fly away, make sure your drone has locked in the home point. If clouds shift while you are flying and block your view, you may struggle returning back to home otherwise.

Do you have more tips to share? Make sure to leave them in the comment section!

What to Expect?

• A 125-page educational PDF about nature drone photography with very detailed explanations
• Which drone to get for photography and why
• Important settings and configuration options 
• A list of useful skills & tips
• A list of useful accessories and what not to buy at all
• How to research locations for drone photography
• How to compose with a drone and insight into Jeroen’s thought process with plenty of examples
• Thoughtfully planning ahead for your drone shoot
• The how and why of creating bracketed images
• The how and why of shooting HDR panoramas
• What challenges you might face and how to deal with them
• Common mistakes & how to deal with them
• How to stitch your panoramas together

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