I received my Mavic two days ago after ordering on launch day. This is my first drone I've ever flown. I have taken 3 flights. It has taken off every flight as normal and hovered 4-5 ft for as long as I don't tell it to move. I've even hovered in wind speeds of 10 MPH and it handled it pretty well.
I took a risky flight almost 1 mile out and 380 ft high just to play around and take some video of the area I live in. It maintained a strong GPS and Controller signal the whole time. I could have went further, but didn't have the balls to do it yet.
Active tracking works fine. It followed me for 500+ ft and even worked when I ran along with it. Very cool feature.
The only issue I have so far is taking photos and them not focusing. I would think it would auto focus. Maybe I'm missing something, but my photos from way in the air aren't as sharp as they should be.
I will continue to fly and test more features. For a beginner, there is a lot of settings, controls and buttons that it gets overwhelming.
I have not had any issues with the actual flying. No crashes. Return to home works fine. EDIT:
One of my first few pictures below in Bowling Green, KY. Photograph edited with Snapseed on iOS.
EDIT 2:
After having my Mavic for over one week now, I'm addicted. Drone photography is my new thing.
As far as the focusing issue I was having before, I have been able to correct that. Just a tap of the green square will focus in on the subject. You must make sure you do this before taking a photo or video.
I have mastered point of interest. It's pretty neat I can take a central point and then automatically circle that point via a specified radius.
I have also learned more about Active track and figured out how to take a selfie of my fiance (just got engaged two weeks ago) together.
I'm still learning about all the other hundreds of features and will continue to update this post as I learn more.
Also, my Mavic Pro has flown without any issues. It has handled 15 MPH winds with great stability. Collision avoidance works as intended. It has also flown without any issues or crashing. I'm very pleased with its performance.
Here is one of my small edited videos of a local lake:
Today has been my 33rd flight with my new Mavic Pro. Today, I experienced something that I have been reading about on the forums. Since I have been getting a feel for the regular mode with obstacle avoidance, I decided to try it in Sport mode today and see how fast I could get it to go in an open field. It got up to 44 MPH. Once I started to come back down to take some lower altitude photos, it started going crazy on me. It would just spin in circles and not respond to my altitude stick. If I would hit the down stick, it would either spin, go up, go down or whatever it wanted to do. I did my best to keep it under control without crashing it by letting it get critically low for the best landing I could hope for.
A few things to say before the questions are asked:
1) I have not updated to the latest firmware
2) I have flown in this area before 1 week ago
3) I calibrate the compass before every flight
My drone data is here - http://healthydrones.com/main?share=hAEwUT Raw video camera video -
EDIT 5:
I updated to the latest firmware yesterday afternoon and took a test flight at my house (which I have flown at multiple times). No issues occurred yesterday (11/13/16). The spinning out of control issue occurred on 11/12/16 100 miles away from my house (still, which a location I have flown my Mavic Pro before without any issues). I calibrated the compass each time.
Glad to hear you have your Mavic. I can't help you with your videos/pictures. But I'd like to offer you some advice. "While your learning all about flying this or any other drone, you should keep it in line of sight until you are real comfortable flying." Flying out a mile is just asking for trouble. Just my opinion.
With tap focus your supposed to get sharper images and I not sure on this one but I think you can get a close-up of something and the background will be blurt out?
Yes and no, it's easy to forget as a beginner but leaves some space for more creative shots/footage, There was a lot of doubts in the first days since some videos had lack of focus.
When you have become more use to and comfortable with flying this will be one automatic reaction for you.
First learn to control and fly and then you can learn the camera and more functions every day.
There are so many advices about how to setup and best settings for this and that but you will find your own settings that makes you happy after a while.
No auto focus on photo's. Does it have auto focus on video? If so I'll continue doing what I always have done. Play the video and take snapshots off the video. I feel I get better pictures this way.
Congratulations, and please be careful since this is your first drone.
You can take off and focus on something 20-30ft away or so and that should give you good focus throughout the flight as long as you don't come in for a close selfie.
You can also go into manual focus mode and set the focus to infinity.
Also, make sure you have read the entire manual and fully understand all the features, functions and limitations.
Happy flying and enjoy you new Mavic. Also, I encourage everyone to purchase DJI Care Refresh.
You only have 48hrs after activation to do so.
Like Ken says I think that is the best way of doing it.
I have not have my hands on one of these machines yet but if it is so "stable" as shown of the few examples shown here and on YT you will have plenty of time to make really good stuff.
Some great video... I bet it would look fantastic when processed a bit. Still, nice job.
FAA requires you keep your drone visible with the unaided eye at all times. Just pointing it out. You're a big-boy, you'll do as you choose.
An observation on your flight(s), my mention of the FAA rules and safety in general: I find it incredibly ironic that one of the few places that are generally considered "safe" to fly, with few to no obstacles, few to no people and literally no obstructions above the surface is WATER... the absolute worst place to have something go wrong with your drone. They need to be waterproof, they need to float (maybe not land on the water, but not SINK either) and we all need to learn to fly over the water with these waterproof, floating drones and our kayaks, fishing boats, etc.
This is what stops be buying yet.
Someone that has clearly stated everything is great with the Mavic then after many flights reports the complete opposite, and has no idea whats going on.
The veterans blame newbie flyers not reading the manual, whilst all the time there is clearly some major issues with the drones that show when the pilots least expect.
If these incidents are so random how can DJI continue to ship and not advise grounding all drones that are already out there? They can't possibly have any confidence that something more serious will not happen.
Trying to work on incidents as they come in is firefighting when they should be working on a full preventative measure, and work out route cause. There has to be a common denominator surely??
Update: I updated to the latest firmware yesterday afternoon and took a test flight at my house (which I have flown at multiple times). No issues occurred. The spinning out of control issue occurred 100 miles away from my house (still, which a location I have flown my Mavic Pro before without any issues). Update above in initial post ^
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