Walked back to the kitchen and saw a red sky for the first time in a while. Hustled back to get the DJI mini 2 aloft. Had to get some shoes on because the pavers are cold. Then had to fuss with the DJI Fly app. Just seemed to freeze, showed no GPS satellites and wouldn't even let me take off "with caution." Forced quit it twice and it finally decided it would go to work.

By then, the big show was over. So we hung around up there long enough to observe sunrise.

I'm planning to buy the mini 3, not the Pro. Since I mostly use it as a compact camera with a very tall tripod, I don't think I need the obstacle avoidance. I would welcome the larger sensor and the ability to tilt the camera above the horizon.

The gimbal is wonky, and apparently this is fairly common with the mini 2. It starts out level, then develops a tilt as you rotate the aircraft. Not a huge issue for stills, so I haven't spent any more time on it.

I think I should add that without the drone, there'd be no photo. Or, a much less interesting one. (Not that I find this one especially interesting.) From my backyard, I have no view of the horizon and I can only see the red sky through the trees. That's one of the downsides of Florida being so flat, there's often no horizon to speak of, and it can feel claustrophobic sometimes.

This is two images stitched in Affinity Photo 2. If you happen to look at the html, ignore the filename. Meant to type 1-10 and typed a 7, no idea why. Also meant to fix it, but got distracted when I noticed that Affinity Photo exports jpegs with the .jpg file extension, not .JPG, so I had to fiddle with that. Le sigh.

Anyway, shot the images so I figured I'd post something. I share your disappointment.