A lineup of aerial hardware stacks to fit a variety of enterprise photography and video use cases.
Photography and cinema drive the drone industry in both the professional and prosumer markets. Increasingly the line between the two is blurring, with prosumer and sub-$4,000 drones delivering commercial-level quality and advanced flying features that just a few years ago were exclusive to the highest-end equipment. It can be daunting wading into the deep roster of drones designed for enterprise photography and video. Sure, DJI, long the market leader, makes some truly fantastic devices, but before you go out to buy the first Mavic you come across for your business photography needs, take a moment to appreciate the nuanced diversity of UAV hardware out there and understand the strengths and weaknesses of the current offerings across a variety of applications and budgets. To help, we reached out to video and photography professionals to hear what they had to say. Here are our top picks for enterprise photography and cinema drones, along with some advice on deciding which photography drone is right for businesses of all sizes. There was a time, really just a few years ago, when your choice for an aerial photography platform was relatively straightforward. You either bought a DJI and called it a day, or you took a shot at with any of a number of startup outfits whose staying power in the sector was uncertain. Fortunately, the market for commercial drones in general, valued at around $6 billion globally, and for aerial photography, in particular, has matured rapidly. There’s been a simultaneous rush of development in camera technology in particular.
