Hello, a question to owners of Alta 6-8 Did you experience any increase in jobs after purchasing your machines? I mean, did you buy the Alta to get some new jobs or did you already have some jobs that required it? I'm currently an inspire 2 owner and planning to go on a heavy lifter later this year Thanks
Hi, Nicola. If compared to professional aerial cinemaography, after upgrading to heavylift I haven't notice big increase jobwise rather there has been some new ideas how to use a drone artistically. For you I would recommend to stay with inspire 2 because it's much smaller and faster to operate and much much much faster to move from one place to another. Rolands
Hey Nicola, Just my opinion, but if your current clients are not requesting the Alta, and you're not losing jobs from not having one, it wouldn't make sense for you to but one. I stayed away from heavy lifter as it is much, much easier to pilot/maintain the Inspire and 99% of normal people will only ever need the Inspire 2. I only jumped to an Alta 8 when we started getting multiple requests from productions for heavy lifters and it made more financial sense to buy one than continue to refer it out. I hope that helps.
I agree with everything that has been said, but if you do need a heavy lift at some point then it is a no brainer. My Alta 8 has proven to be very reliable. I trust it 1000% more than my other two custom built heavy lift machines which use DJI for flight controllers. The two main gotchas with the Alta is; one, GPS hold is that great and two, it really should have a higher payload capability than it does. If you live in a hot environment or routinely fly at higher altitudes then density altitude will become your worst enemy when flying Alexa Minis or basically anything from Red. Wayne Mann www.helicamhighdefmedia.com
Heavy lift jobs are just easier with the ALTA 8. It is the Inspire of heavy lift (plug & play). However, IF you don't already have access to that market that level of business will NOT be created for you just by purchasing a fancy ALTA8. We built and flew our own heavy lift rigs for 5 years before we switched to ALTA. I think it would be very difficult jumping from an I2 straight to ALTA. You are skipping too many steps!
Just advertising that you have a drone, even a fancy one, will not get you any work. You have to actively go out and pitch clients. About 5% of my work is expert witness work doing Photogrammetry on construction projects to resolve contract disputes, but that is more than 1/3 of my income from drones. I get that work because I have the skills, the credentials and because I pitch every week for about 3 jobs a year. My Alta work is about 40% of my drone work and about another 30% of my income from drones. I've never had a single client call me out of the blue. I pitch to get the work. Another 20% of my drone work is usually a Mavic Pro or a Phantom 4 Pro and on rare occasions that comes out of the blue from a referral from another client. The other 5% of my drone work is training and consulting, and I get that from pitching. The moral of the story is unless you just won a major award, most of your paying work is going to come from pitching clients. You have to do it or hire an agent to do it. If you are lucky enough to have won a major award you might get one or two phone calls out of the blue but they dry up in a couple of months. I know because I have 9 enemies, two NAB awards, a half dozen Cleos, and a box full of other placks and trophies. I think I got one real job out of all those awards from somebody I was not already working with or actively pitching. Nobody is going to be able to make a living in the movie business by sitting around and waiting for a call or relying on a fancy website to solicit business. It's not going to happen.
Rick: you make some sound points -- but did you mean 9 "enemies" or Emmys? I think you might have been royally "spell-checked!" But, if I'm wrong, congrats on those awards with that many enemies. Cheers Andy Forensic Software & sUAV / Drone Analyst : Photographer : Videographer : Pilot (Portland, Oregon, USA): Trees=2, Ground=1, Props=11. The Ground Is The Limitâ„¢ ---------- Forensic Drone Analyst : Forensic sUAV Analyst : Forensic Unmanned Aircraft Analyst : Forensic Drone Expert