Hacker News Reader

This article links photos from a Sony full frame camera and 600mm lens but it clearly struggles:

https://eu.app.com/picture-gallery/news/2024/12/10/drones-in...

These photos look very much like a helicopter. Especially the fifth photo.

Odd, one of those pictures clearly show either a regular RC helicopter, or a full-scale helicopter. You can see the boom and tail light clearly. And no sound associated with it? There are designs for "silent" blades. I mean theyre not silent, bud at least less noisy.

Even decently fast glass won’t do a good job of capturing drones at night unless there’s a significant amount of ambient light.

And telephoto lenses with the range you mention with fast apertures are not exactly cheap. A 600mm F/4 goes for $12-15K and is still not fast enough for shooting moving subjects in the dark.

I did find it odd when this news reporter said of the craft "it's really difficult to show you with our camera, so we have to show you with our phones." You'd think a broadcast-grade camera rig would be better than a smartphone at this.

At the 11-second mark: https://youtu.be/M186uZ1RCxU?t=11