“We feel a very strong obligation that we do it responsibly,” Holze said. “We’ve never seen it as playing around or trying to do something illegal.”

He said crews in the past have occasionally gone up in the county helicopter for aerial footage, but the quadrocopter is more convenient and flexible.

“This puts us in control,” he said. “These guys can be as creative as they want to.”

Zack Morris, a producer for the station who was demonstrating the camera this week using a handheld device with two joysticks, said it didn’t take long to get used to operating it.

“The learning curve wasn’t that steep,” he said.

Before flying, the operator punches in his or her GPS coordinates, and even if the flying camera lost signal, it would rise 60 feet then return to the starting point.

Unmanned aircraft

The use of unmanned aircraft in the past few years has grown quickly as the price has dropped as low as a few hundred dollars. Municipalities, photographic firms and newspapers such as the Tyler Morning Telegraph have used them for a variety of purposes.