Lily - The Self Flying Selfie Drone

Jaron Schneider from Resource Magazine had a chance to talk and test the new prototype of Lily- a small, light, waterproof and fairly inexpensive camera mini drone with some very cool automatic shooting modes.

The drone/quad-copter market is flooding with new devices. Some of them are big, some are small but most of them require some knowledge of how to control them. Lily is a drone your mother can use (especially if she is into snowboarding, biking or any other outdoor extreme activity).

Jaron Schneider and Lily (prototype)

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObDvc1saMr4[/youtube]

The whole idea behind Lily is a drone which will track your movements on its own and shoot you at all time in high res (1080p@60p/720p@120p) without your intervention. All you need to do is throw it in the air and and press a bottom to decide what mode the drone will operate in (follow, loop, zoom, fly out, hover etc.).

The Lily – the Tiny drone that could

Hre are some specs of the new Lily:

Automatic flying drone (no controller required).
Waterproof, compact (10.3 inch square / 26 cm on both sides weight – 2.8 lbs/1.3 KG).
Stills: 12 MP images.
Video: 1080p @ 60fps / 720p @ 120fps (using a Sony IMX117 1/2.3’’ image sensor).
Programmable flight paths via mobile app – control of basic functions with a tracker).
Battery life – 20 minutes (2 hour charge).
Range: 10-30 ft (3-10 meters from the user), up to 25 mph/40kmph winds.
Audio recording from the tracking device – for better sound.
Complies with FAA guidelines.
Price: Just under $500 for the pre-order (until mid-June 2015) and later on $999.

We are definitely looking forward to testing Lily when it becomes available early next year to see if it live up to the high expectations of being the first no nonsense elf tracking low cost photography drone.

Waterproof Tracking Device housingWe have looked at drones for photography many times in the past including a super cool video with a huge Aerigon drone carrying the super heavy super expensive (super slow motion) Phantom Flex4K (don’t miss this one if you haven’t seen it yet. We also published a special interview with the creators of the Smart Kite which is a different take on aerial photography.

If you don’t want to miss any new photography product be sure to check out our product photography section on our photo gear channel.

Iddo Genuth

Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.