[Mike in NYC]

I’ve been messing around with the Black Falcon Drone for a week and the video is decent in calm weather, but I’m struggling to get smooth pans without a gimbal. Is it just me or does anyone else find the footage gets jittery when you turn? I tried slowing down my stick movements but it still feels a bit choppy. Just wondering if there’s a trick to it or if that’s just how it is with this drone.

[Rick Blunt]

Mine sat in a drawer for a couple months before I actually took it out properly, and I went in expecting the pans to be total garbage from what people say. Turns out the choppiness I saw early on was mostly me fighting the sticks. Once I stopped trying to do nice slow cinematic turns and just made one deliberate move, let it settle, then moved again, the footage cleaned up a lot. It is not gimbal smooth and it never will be, but it is way less jittery than I first thought. The part that still bugs me is turning while the wind is pushing it, that is where mine gets ugly no matter how gentle I am. So I just cut those bits out. Not a fix, just what I ended up doing after messing with it for a while.

[Tessa Lane]

Slowing the sticks helps a little but the jitter is baked into these things. Mine does the same on anything above a crawl, so I just pan in tiny increments and cut the bad bits out later.

[RyanT]

I get smoother results by flying sideways past what I want instead of turning the nose. Sounds odd but it works for me. The yaw on mine always has a little wobble to it.

[Emma Ray]

Jitter on turns is just how these are, mine does it too and I stopped fighting it.

[Jade Writes]

I actually don’t think the choppiness on turns is unavoidable. Mine smooths out a lot if I let the drone settle for a second before I start panning instead of turning while it’s still correcting from the last input. That pause made a bigger difference for me than just easing off the sticks. The turns still aren’t buttery or anything, but the jerky start is what was really ruining my clips, not the turn itself. Worth trying once before you write it off as just how it flies.

[Pixel Pete]

Mine handles slow yaw fine as long as I keep it under maybe half stick, anything past that and it looks like a slideshow. You’re probably just turning too fast for what the camera can keep up with. Have you tried a really slow full turn in open sky to see where it starts breaking up?

[Mike in NYC]

I haven’t tried a clean full circle in wide open space yet, mostly because the spots I fly around here have trees and light poles I’d rather not clip. What I have done is a few longer sweeping turns over a park field, and I noticed it gets rough well before it feels like I’m really cranking the stick. It’s not even a fast turn by my standards, just a steady one, and the footage starts looking jumpy around the middle of the turn. So I don’t think I’m jamming it all the way over, but I also can’t say for sure where the line is. My turns usually only last a few seconds too, since I’m tracking something like a building or a treeline, so maybe that shorter duration is part of why it feels worse than a long smooth orbit would. I’ll try the big open circle next calm morning and see.

[Pixel Pete]

That bit about shorter turns feeling worse makes sense, the jumpiness has less time to get smoothed out over a long sweep. If your park turns are clean in the first second or two and then go rough, that tells you it’s the sustained turn, not the stick input. Worth checking on the open circle whether it holds together for the first few seconds too, that’d narrow it down.

[Alex Foster]

Mine gets that same choppy look on turns and I just stopped trying to fight it. Not saying it’s impossible to smooth out, but for me it’s more effort than it’s worth on this drone. I mostly just accept that turns will be a little rough and keep the interesting stuff straight ahead.

[Jordan M.]

Slowing the sticks down only gets you so far on these. I get way smoother pans by letting the drone drift forward a little while I turn instead of yawing in place, the movement seems to hide a lot of the jumpiness for me.

[Elena Voss]

Stick smoothing only takes you so far on this thing. I’ve had better luck just accepting the turns look rough and keeping the pans short instead of fighting it with slow inputs.

[Maggie Lopez]

The jitter is probably the drone correcting itself more than your stick input. Mine smooths out if I let go of the turn and let it settle for a second before the next one. Short clips edited together hide it better than one long pan.

[Olivia_park]

I mostly shoot straight-ahead stuff for that exact reason, pans on mine look fine until I actually turn the nose, then it gets twitchy. Have you tried filming in the calmer part of the evening? That made more difference for me than anything on the sticks.

[Mike in NYC]

I haven’t really tried evening flights much, mostly because the park I use gets buggy around dusk and I’m usually squeezing in a quick flight after work while it’s still bright. The couple of times it was calmer near sunset the footage did seem a bit less jumpy, but I couldn’t tell if that was the air or just me being more careful. My usual window is late morning when there’s already a light breeze, so that might be part of why the turns look rough for me. I’ll try a proper evening session on a still day and see if the nose-turn twitch settles down.

[Olivia_park]

Late morning breeze is probably doing more than you think, even a light one adds that little wobble to every nose turn. If you do try the evening session, I’d pick a day where the trees look completely still from the ground before you even launch, since sunset can look calm and still have air moving higher up. The buggy park thing is fair though, I usually fly in a field with nothing around so dusk is easier for me. One thing that helped me judge it, I started doing the same slow turn at the start of every flight so I had something to compare instead of guessing whether it was the air or me. Kind of boring but it made the difference obvious. Report back after the evening flight, curious if it lines up with what you saw at sunset.

[Lily___]

Mine does the same thing and I just stopped fighting it. Short clips and slow turns are about all I can get out of it, anything longer looks rough.

[Sam Writes]

Short, slow arcs work better than panned turns for me.

[Jordan Writes]

Panning smoothly is just harder on these little drones.

[Greg Henson]

I wouldn’t bother chasing smooth pans on this thing at all. I just park it in a hover and let whatever I’m filming move through the frame, or take a few short clips and stitch them later. Fighting the sticks for a clean turn is a waste of battery in my book.

[Sara Williams]

I’m still deciding whether to buy one, so this thread is useful.

[Maya Rose]

Slow stick moves help a bit, but the bigger thing for me was timing the turns between gusts rather than mid-gust. I usually just do a quick half turn, let it settle, then keep filming. Saves me a lot of choppy footage.

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