Hello,
How does the Mini 3 fair in low light performance in comparison to the Mini 3 Pro since it scales up to 3200 ISO instead of the 6400 of the Pro version?

Hi there. Thank you for reaching out. DJI Mini 3 and DJI Mini 3 Pro are both amazing aircraft made by DJI however, DJI Mini 3 will not be better than the Mini 3 Pro as the DJI Mini 3 ISO range is lower than the DJI Mini 3 Pro (we recommend increasing the ISO of the aircraft in dark environment shooting). You can test this manually. Also, hope that our fellow DJI Pilots could provide you with the best recommendation regarding the best settings for this type of shooting environment. Thank you for your valued support.

Thank you for the reply but this is exactly my query before purchasing. As I am considering of buying a mini drone (already possess Air2s) for city and night footage I was wondering whether the Pro low light performance is a significant step up from mini 3 or if the difference is negligible. I am not interested for all the autonomous features of the Pro version but only camera image quality especially in low light conditions.

The useable night footage between the two should be very similar. The ISO6400 isn't really an option except to use for navigating on the RC/phone. At ISO6400 The video and photos are both likely to be too noisy for much use. Really beyond about ISO800-ISO1600 depending on what your expectations are, there's not much benefit for usable footage, only for navigation/set up purposes.

Based on my above described experience with ISO performance, I would be surprised if there's substantial difference between night footage of the Mini 3 vs the Mini 3 Pro. If there is any difference, it's not due to sensor, ISO range, or lens performance, only processing differences.

harshil102 Posted at 1-22 14:10
The useable night footage between the two should be very similar. The ISO6400 isn't really an option except to use for navigating on the RC/phone. At ISO6400 The video and photos are both likely to be too noisy for much use. Really beyond about ISO800-ISO1600 depending on what your expectations are, there's not much benefit for usable footage, only for navigation/set up purposes.

Based on my above described experience with ISO performance, I would be surprised if there's substantial difference between night footage of the Mini 3 vs the Mini 3 Pro. If there is any difference, it's not due to sensor, ISO range, or lens performance, only processing differences.

Thank you,
That makes sense.

One thing I forgot to mention is the Mini 3 Pro has a D-Cinelike filming mode. To use that footage, you would need to pull it into a video editing software and spend a not insignificant amount of time tweaking each clip to perfect the colors/exposure/etc. As an end result you can get marginally better final product for night footage. When filming at the edge of viable lighting for the drone, you might be able to pull out something usable after diligent tweaking of a D-Cinelike clip vs a normal clip might be just a little too far gone.

Again it's a marginal difference (the feature is really intended for preserving dynamic range for coloring in post rather than extending low light performance) but the only slightly notable spec difference to night footage.