Travel & Hotspots
My latest (designer) purchase
You might not say it quickly about me, but I am secretly a huge fan of gadgets. Stores like Mediamarkt make me extremely excited and in the Apple store I always want to take everything home with me, from iPads to cables.
Just like in the gadget store at Schiphol, with the extremely creative yet appropriate name ‘Electronics’, where they have everything from headphones to external hard drives available. Whenever I'm at the airport, I want to take some time to browse the shelves, although I rarely buy anything there. Gadgets are expensive, often inconvenient to take on trips, and in recent months I've been trying to limit my impulse purchases to a strict minimum. But last Friday, while I was waiting for my flight to Venice for a press trip to South Tyrol (more on that later), I gave in and impulsively fulfilled a long-held wish.
Usually, those kinds of passion purchases are a pair of shoes that are way too expensive, a bag (hello Proenza) or a piece of clothing that I don't need at all, but at that moment I suddenly think I need it very much. But this time it was different. I actually bought a drone. Yes, really, a drone.
”Usually, those kinds of passion purchases are a pair of shoes that are way too expensive”
As you know I am a big fan of filmmaker/vlogger Casey Neistat. In his vlogs, we often see Casey, a big gadget lover, messing around with all kinds of drones. It's always a huge struggle to get that thing in the air, don't think it's just a piece of cake. But once it flies and the images come in on his screen, you can't believe your eyes, it's so beautiful. And I wanted that too.
So when I was doing my ritual round in that store, I saw a big box containing a white drone. Discounted from 80 to 50 euros. According to the gentlemen in the store, the camera quality was really good, it was fairly easy to control, and as mentioned, it was on sale. But well, just buying a drone like that is also something. So I first walked back to the group of journalists I was with and told them about my doubts. “Are you crazy, just do it. And 50 euros is always manageable,” said fellow traveler, journalist, and photographer Bas van Oort, and he was right.
So off we went. Galloping back to the store. Card over the counter and drone in the bag. Off to the mountains, the perfect place to test a drone. That Sunday, Bas and I did a little practice session in the hotel hallway. Just to see how the controls work. Then it turns out that drones are not made to fly indoors because the thing keeps crashing into cabinets, walls, and ceilings (I even manage to get it under a cabinet), but eventually, we manage to balance it in the air for a moment and feel ready enough for an outdoor session.
And we do that on Monday morning. I wrap the drone in a towel and put it in a backpack, and after breakfast on top of the mountain, we run outside to get the thing in the air. It sputters and coughs and crashes a bit, but eventually, it hovers meters high above our heads, soaring and filming. Like two little kids, we watch it with glee and point, taking turns operating the console. All this joy lasts only about ten minutes because then the battery is already dead; a drone can't peak for too long, of course.
”Like two little kids, we watch it with glee”
The big moment of truth is when I finally get back to the hotel, take the memory card out of the drone, and put it in my MacBook. HOW are the images? Well, it turns out, I won't make it too difficult, the images are pretty bad. Not to say downright terrible, see the video below. In hindsight, I could have expected that a thing costing 50 euros wouldn't deliver razor-sharp material, but I still had high hopes.
Nevertheless, this is still one of the best purchases I've ever made, if only for the endless amount of (pre)fun I've had because of it. The only downside of this whole adventure? The damage is done, the seed has been sown, now I must and will get a really good drone, and those things cost quite a bit. But since I haven't bought designer clothes in months, I can now allow myself to buy a designer drone. And who would have thought that.
