LAS VEGAS—If you’re into drones, CES 2015 offered up a virtual smorgasbord of remote-controlled flyers at which to ogle.

They ranged in size from one with the footprint of a business card all the way up to a huge model that’s being targeted for military use. The breadth of drones available is quite staggering, and not every model is a simple toy or a device that’s only useful for aerial videography and photography.

DJI is the first name that comes to mind when you’re talking about drones. Its Phantom 2 Vision+ ( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) impressed us with its easy handling and slick integration with smartphone apps. DJI has opened up its SDK to outside developers, and I was able to speak to two of them at the show.

Bryan Field-Elliot of PixiePath is working on software that controls fleets of Phantoms from one Web-based application. He says that it opens up commercial use from anything from package delivery to aerial selfie services, but a more immediate, practical application is search and rescue operations. A group of Phantoms can be set to fly in a set search pattern, which could save the lives of stranded hikers. Check it out in the video below.

Lorenzo Marteletti is a sales director at Pix4D, a company with surveying software that, in the past, has been able to create 3D maps of objects on the ground for more expensive, commercial drones. Now that DJI has opened up the Phantom SDK, it’s working on bringing that software to the relatively inexpensive, compact drone market. Lorenzo showed a demo that mapped a small village in Germany. He’s able to draw vectors along lines in the model to precisely determine distances between points, which is useful to track progress in the construction industry.

And there’s filmmaking, the obvious application for a flying camera. Damon Webster, a photo blogger(Opens in a new window) and video producer, won’t go on a location shoot without a drone—they’re less expensive and more versatile than rented helicopters. He opts for larger models that are able to mount a mirrorless system camera; the 4K-capable Panasonic GH4 is his current body of choice.

DJI is attempting to compete with these high-end rigs with its $2,900 Inspire 1, our favorite drone at the show. It’s got an integrated 4K video camera with a fixed 20mm wide-angle lens. Using a larger model like the DJI Spreading Wings S1000 and a system camera like the GH4 does add the ability to use lenses of varying focal lengths.

Click through the slideshow above to see more than a dozen of the new drones that we saw at CES. And check out the video below.