Thank you, Stephen for sharing your experience.
This type of photography would appeal to me, but living in Ontario, I have two concerns:
1. There is a lot of talk about coming UAV regulations and that if you want to publish or sell your pictures, you'll require a commercial license for your UAV. Are there any exceptions or ways to avoid this requirement?
2. Wind factor. Quite often, I photograph things around the water edge and on many occasions I encounter winds between 20 and 30 km/h, with occasional gusts even stronger. How does the wind affect the stability and safety of the copter? Do you use your setup only in windless conditions or do you dare to fly it also in windy weather?
There's nothing that I'd enjoy more than being out in some beautiful, pristine wilderness area, enjoying the sunset, and having a miniature helicopter clattering overhead. Certainly would enhance the experience.
My son lives in San Diego, and a neighbor of his flies one of these things around the neighborhood. Some people in the neighborhood believe he is spying on them. I have no idea whether this is true or not, but I fully expect that some evening this helicopter will be blasted out of the sky with a shotgun. Be a terrible waste of a D-800. To take care of such issues, I would suggest that all UAVs require licenses, and an umbrella insurance policy to cover possible claims of invasion of privacy, damage to property in case of crashes, noise pollution, etc. I think a $20 million policy, payable annually, should be adequate.
There are lots of ways to annoy people, with or without a UAV. I have been in areas where I have set up on a tripod, and some other photography comes along and sets up right in my shot. I have said, hey, you're in my shot, and he just ignored me. This is not uncommon.
The best way to deal with this (that I've found), is to pack up your tripod and start walking around in the middle of their shot, maybe 10' from their camera. Every once in a while stop and make it look like you're going to shoot but then pick up and walk around again.
Back to the topic - A Practical Drone Application - it would be even more effective to launch your copter and let it hover just in front of the interloper.