DJI Mavic 3 review: Best image quality for photographers on the move
Drones
Speaker 1: The DGI Mavic three has seen a total overhaul of its specs, making it one of the best drones around filming from the sky. Let's take a closer look.
Speaker 1: The Mavic three has seen a suite of upgrades over its predecessor, allowing it to take better video sheet, better photos, and stay in the air for longer. Every single little element has been updated. So it really feels like a big step up. [00:00:30] So let's start with this camera because let's face it. That's the thing that we all really care about. Now. It's actually packing two sensors and two lenses inside this stabilized unit here. Now the main camera has a four third size image sensor, which is the biggest sensor size that we've seen in the Mavic range. And it's a big step up from the one inch size sensor seen on the previous Mavic two pro our bigger sensor means it can capture more light and off better dynamic range. So that should mean that when you're doing those lovely [00:01:00] videos of sunsets, don't have a completely blown out sky.
Speaker 1: And I have been impressed with the footage that I've captured with this so far. The exposure is excellent as is the detail. When you shoot at the maximum 5.1 K resolution colors and contrasts look good. Thanks to that hassle blood color science, but you can also shoot in D log. If you wanna do some more grad in post-production later, it'll shoot 4k video at up to 120 framed a second for some slow motion. And it's got a manually adjustable aperture [00:01:30] from F 2.8 through to F 11. It still images our 20 megapixels in size, and it can shoot in DG raw, which is great for applying more edits over the top in software like Adobe Lightroom. The second camera provides a telephoto zoom with an equivalent focal length of about 162 millimeters. Now, I was really excited about having this zoom option when I first heard about the drone, but in use, it is only okay.
Speaker 1: You can't shoot DNG raw former images with this it's [00:02:00] JPEG only, and the video tops out at 4k 30 frames a second, but it's the image quality that takes a real noticeable dive. When you switch to that telephoto lens, particularly if you're using the digital zoom as well, things start to get very, very blurry, very, very quickly. It is a useful tool for location scouting from the air, as it does allow you to get close up on those as details, but the footage does not look good enough that you'd actually want to use it in a production. DGI [00:02:30] is also offering the Mavic three Sy version, which is basically the same drone, but it can shoot in apple ProRes, which allows for a lot more scope for post processing. Later on that drone also features a builtin one terabyte SSD drive for saving those massive files while up in the air.
Speaker 1: And surprisingly, it comes with a much higher price. The drone itself is aesthetically similar to others in the range. And of course it does fall down. As you can see into a much more compact [00:03:00] size, it's about the size of a large zoom lens. So it will fit quite comfortably in a photography backpack, which makes it great for checking in a bag and going out on a hike with various efficiency improvements for the motors and more dense batteries. DGI reckons, you can get up to 46 minutes on of flight time from this. In reality, I found that was closer to about 35 minutes in mixed conditions, but that's still a big step up over the last model. If you buy the fly more combo [00:03:30] that comes with two extra batteries, then you can easily be looking over an hour of footage. Every time you go out, it's just as easy to fly as other in the range with the same basic controller that connects to your iPhone or Android phone.
Speaker 1: Anyone that's familiar with D's existing drones will have no trouble flying this at all. And even beginners will not struggle to get up to speed. I love the automated flight paths and object tracking of the previous drones. And while that is coming to this drone, it won't [00:04:00] arrive until the end of January. Now that is disappointing that such an important feature isn't already on board at launch, particularly considering the quite high price. So of course, if being able to have the drone follow you while you are out, hiking is crucial to your filming, then it's probably worth waiting until next year to buy one. It's got improved sensors all around, giving it better object avoidance in all directions. Now that meant I had no worries at all about flying it close to trees because that improved [00:04:30] object detection should hopefully mean that it won't go and crash into the branches.
Speaker 1: And indeed it's still here. So it didn't, it also makes the automated return to high home a lot safer as it is better at avoiding obstacles on the way all of which will hopefully make it less likely that you're gonna lose it in the middle of a forest. So is the Mavic three actually worth buying? Well, if your priority is just something compact in NiPy to get some decent shots from the sky, then you should probably look towards smaller drones, [00:05:00] such as the DJ. I mini two similar, if you want decent all round footage and you don't want to spend quite as much money, then last year's air two S is a great drone to consider, but the Mavic three is maybe for people who want to take their aerial filming a little more seriously. It's great image quality, and it's bigger. Synthesized puts it more in line with DJ's pro level inspire models, except this is a lot smaller and also quite a lot cheaper. So what the Mavic three really offers [00:05:30] is a compact and relatively affordable way of getting beautiful footage from the sky. But what do you think to the Mavic three? Is it the drone for you or have you got your eyes set on something a little bit smaller and lighter? Do you snow in the comments below and make sure to keep it CNET for a lot more.
