Old Mavic Pro owner, i decided to move to the mini for some weight issues... Even with my Drone pilot licence it's very tough to fly in Canada : The restrictions are damn too high. Other point, every time i go out to shoot, having my drone + camera + lenses.... Too heavy.
So, les me share with you my first impressions about the mini :
Unboxing : My first tought was "What the h****, this is a toy, the weight, the size, the quality of the materials... Starting to miss my MP :/ but, let's give a chance to the baby. Batteries charged, FW updated (The .500 is rock'n roll) let's do a flight test.
Photo mode : Let's be frank, the tinywinnie sensor is not a warmachine, you will shoot in JPG... Be sure to setup your shutter speed/iso to avoid a bad result (Over exposed or lowexposure). If you are used to any form of raw, this is a new (and good) exercise. The photo with the mini is more like a point and shoot camera.Video mode : - Gimbal : Damn, even @24 fps and 1/50th for the shutter speed the gimbal movement is not that fluid... Have to do more tests to find the correct setup... My first result was making me cry. - Movement smoothness : I was @24fps for 1/50th... But it's not that smooth, feeling a bit mechanic... - Colors : Damn, toooo saturated, looks like a Samsung S4 advertisement ! - Color correction : No D-Log or any other flat profile, the color grading is a real exercise. Looks like the picture is too contrasted, Looks like everything is concentrated between 0 and 6 on Ansel Adams' zone system... Need some oxygen, need a wider contrast palette... Please DJI, on the next update, add a color profile, add a FLAT/D-Log or anything like that ! - Sharpness : Ah damn, an other surprise, no sharpness settings... The picture is crispy... A bit too crispy... Need to be able to setup the picture sharpness... Let pray Eos (God of the wind) for a sharpness open settings in next firmware.
Global result : This drone have a huge potential in terms of growth in his segment. Many countries are having a more and more severe drone regulation and the -250gr can be a superb growth lever for DJI, i think that, if they wan to establish a real supremacy in the market, they MUST push some firmware update that will transform this drone onto a nice and real jewel !
Sample Video :
de 00:00 à 00:16 : As filmed
de 00:17 à 00:33 Basic color correction
de 00:33 à la fin : WB correction, Correction of the colors, correction of the luminosity, contrast adjustment.
- Stability : It was a bit windy, not that much, and the drone managed this with no stress.
Voler avec le mini me fait penser à une point and shoot camera, attention je ne dis pas qu'il est mauvais mais que DJI pourrait le rendre plus intéressant en injectant une ou deux features dans l'app (d-log, sharpness).
That will push the price up as well. I mean, if what you say is true, that they cannot sell the higher priced versions of the Mavic in EU because of their weight, then they will make a higher priced version of the mini to sell there instead.
Deucalion Posted at 5-20 20:50
That will push the price up as well. I mean, if what you say is true, that they cannot sell the higher priced versions of the Mavic in EU because of their weight, then they will make a higher priced version of the mini to sell there instead.
Regarding the software updates : They will not have any impact on the Mini price point...
Deucalion Posted at 5-20 20:50
That will push the price up as well. I mean, if what you say is true, that they cannot sell the higher priced versions of the Mavic in EU because of their weight, then they will make a higher priced version of the mini to sell there instead.
Eu rules are not just about weight, some rules will come in regardless of weight if it has a camera for example. The main EU issue is that it needs to be classified at the factory for it to be less restricted in the future. Its a bit like the FCC logo that gets included in American products.
DAFlys Posted at 5-21 00:23
Eu rules are not just about weight, some rules will come in regardless of weight if it has a camera for example. The main EU issue is that it needs to be classified at the factory for it to be less restricted in the future. Its a bit like the FCC logo that gets included in American products.
Ok but... What the link with the firmware and picture quality ?
DAFlys Posted at 5-21 00:23
Eu rules are not just about weight, some rules will come in regardless of weight if it has a camera for example. The main EU issue is that it needs to be classified at the factory for it to be less restricted in the future. Its a bit like the FCC logo that gets included in American products.
Being a photo-lover myself (as you notice from my profile pic) I too considered the price and weight and opted for the Mini, 'cause it can easily fit in a lens slot inside my Tarmac Expedition Pro backpack.
Photo wise it's a bit noisy but nothing too dramatic. If I am really concerned about noise I image stack. Never happened to me w/ the Mini but I am inclined to say the output is quite noisy so I will in the next future.
For the video the time 1/50th of a second with 24fps you're suggesting I think should produce motion blur almost as any other camera, including cinema cameras. I've never noticed rolling shutter with the Mini (not saying there isn't or there is). If you wanna get smoother results use an ND filter to lower the shutter speed even more, try 30fps or speed up your 24 fps footage to 30. I think 30fps strikes the best balance between smoothness, quality, system resources (60fps being too much for my systems)... I can use 24fps "telecined" (I should have some program from my HV30 era), but so for I've only sped it up.
Concerning color and color grading I find the footage a bit contrasty and squashed on the highlights and shadows (color actually OK), but the good news is the midtones detail is still there and so is the shadows'... you can expect to not only bring the midtones right where they belong but also recover a lot of detail in the shadows. This is interlinked with the next paragraph.
If you want to see how I recover the shadows/midtones/highligts here a post I made about it Tutorials & Tips]Grading it Old school with Movie Studio https://forum.dji.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=212079
Color grading a Mavic Mini (comparison with original footage)
Sharpness. I admit to use 1080p only... I've only seen 2.7K samples online (through YT) but for what I've seen the output is still crisp (as you say), and pixel crisp at 1080p... but it's not oversharpened, at all. In fact I believe the actual level of sharpness used to be very low... I went down pixel peeping boundary lines and I've found no traces at 1080p to say "that's artificial sharpening". There is... surely to some degree, but that would certainly be better noticeable at 2.7K. The result of the crispy 1080p picture is entirely due to the oversampling. Bayer filters don't offer this kind of resolution so our eyes aren't exactly accustomed to that and tend to accept a softer image with non-pixel level detail as the norm.
You can read more (and see samples) in this post I've made Reply (post #17) on -DJI Please allow us to remove sharpening- https://forum.dji.com/forum.php?mod=redirect&goto=findpost&ptid=214529&pid=2149074
I think we should avoid asking for "de-sharpening" things (or softening, or blurring) because most of what we've got has to do with the incredibly crisp image processing algorithm. The unsmoothed motion pictures (both in spatial an temporal scales) help us extract a lot of details squashed into the shadows (and to lesser extent highlights), something that can be easily washed away when you're dealing with a meager 40 Mbps encoding rate. They can do that very easily indeed... and the videos would look awfully poor when graded.
And so many features I am afraid they're destined to stay where they are (and rightfully so), including D-log which would be a folly in a drone like the Mini. We may still ask active tracking (because other DJI basic drones of the past had it), but other than that, the feature set is pretty much complete.
Now... being quite a perfectionist in what I do I am not asking to be approved, but I hope I've made a good point that can be simply understood by most of you.
Good luck @Zaphkiel with your Mini ... I am sure you will learn to like it and work around its limits and shortcomings.
I could see them doing some minor tweaks, but it makes no sense for them to add many features that are in their higher priced drones. That is simply how marketing works. It isn't a technical issue, it is a marketing issue. Most of the software I buy now actually has ALL of the features in it, but it depends on what level I buy and my activation key as to whether I can use them or not. I don't know of a more plainer example than that.
I find myself very satisfied with this $400, >250g, lightweight and handy drone. Does exactly what I need and allows me to gain introduction to the DJI universe without risking twice as much for an Air 2.
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... I am sure you will learn to like it and work around its limits and shortcomings.