Canon is droning on….

Friday, 7 April, 2017

Industrial drones are it… whilst the media spotlight has been firmly on cheap and cheerful like the DJI Phantoms delivering drugs to prisons or involved in near misses with commercial aircraft, the heavy lifting (literally) is being done by commercial drones in the industrial sector. You only have to visit something like the Commercial UAV Show to get a real sense of the breadth of application from behemoths produced by Lockheed-Martin, to the full range of DJI products and then a massive influx of products from China, including the impressive range from Yuneec.

The commercial sector is vibrant and it’s notable that drone manufacturers realise they need suitable cameras to hook up to their systems which means increasingly close ties between the sectors. We’ve seen Hasselblad tie up with DJI (flying on their industrial Matrice range), whilst Phase One have a range of cameras dedicated to commercial use. And this is invading a space traditionally held by aerial cameras (e.g. Vexcel).

So it’s no surprise to see Canon looking to move into this space and the (just rolling off the tongue) PD6E2000-AW-CJ1 is just that, as reported by DPReview. The drone itself is produced by Prodrone, a company Canon has invested in, and is not too dissimilar to the DJI Matrice 600, but kitted out with Canon’s ME20F-SH. This is firmly targeted at the disaster relief sector - the camera has an ISO of 4 million (yes, you read that right!) which will allow it to capture video in near-darkness.

The drone space continues to accelerate in terms of innovation, so expect to see an interesting and exciting roadmap of products appearing at breakneck speed!

  1. Kim

    Tuesday, November 22, 2022 - 23:44:32