Tag: cameras

Insta360 X4 Review: 8K 360 Footage in a Tiny Package

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In practice, this is the first 360 camera I’ve used where the video footage is still very sharp and clear, even when reframed to 16:9. You still have to deal with the stitch line, which is where the edges of the two lenses meet and software (imperfectly) fills in the gaps, but otherwise postproduction use of this footage feels like, well, just editing video. I mixed it with footage from a Sony A7R II, GoPro Hero 12, and Insta360 Ace Pro, and aside from the wider angle of view, it’s hard to tell the footage apart.

That alone is enough for me to say that this is the 360 camera filmmakers will want. The 8K footage still doesn’t reframe to 4K (you’ll have to wait for 12K footage before that’s possible), but it looks good enough for anything you’re going to put online.

It’s not just the high-end specs that have changed in the X4 either. Frame speeds have been improved in lower-resolution footage, with new options to shoot 5.7K video at 60 fps, 4K at 100 fps, and 4K at 60 fps when shooting in wide-angle mode. None of that is earth-shattering, but it does give you some better slo-mo options, thanks to the higher frame rates.

The color profile options remain the same as the X3: Standard, Vivid, and Log (for those who prefer to color in post). I shot primarily in Standard and found the colors to be nicely rendered, perhaps a little on the warm side. I find Vivid too garish, and of course if you plan to mix footage with other cameras, you’ll want to shoot everything in Log and do your coloring in software.

Film Crew in a Box

Testing action cameras is always one of the best parts of this job, but it was especially fun with the Insta360 X4. I don’t even like shooting 360 video, but shooting 360 video knowing that I can crop, reframe, and still get sharp, clean footage with lots of detail and smooth pans? Yes please.

In many ways the Insta360 is like adding a small film crew to your bag, especially if you get Insta360’s hilariously oversize 9.8-foot selfie stick, which makes it possible to fake surprisingly realistic boom shots.

At $99, the new Extended Edition Selfie Stick isn’t cheap, but is well worth it for the versatility it creates when paired with the X4. Fully extended and held behind you while you walk, it mimics a low-flying drone tracking shot, but without the whole crash-in-the-trees thing.

Speaking of trees, shade, and shadow, the X4 excels in bright sunlight. High-contrast scenes like a forest floor at midday are more challenging (this is true for any camera). HDR mode can help sometimes, but then you lose the ability to shoot Log.

Photograph: Scott Gilbertson

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May 25, 2024
Logitech Reach Review: Super Camera Arm, Subpar Camera

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If you went to school before the 2010s, you might’ve been taught with the help of an overhead projector. These gigantic light cannons blasted photons upward through typically transparent worksheets, through a lens and a mirror, projecting the image onto a screen so everyone could see. I can only imagine my teachers back then wishing they had something like Logitech’s Reach to make that process so much easier. Well, mostly.

The Reach is a unique product in Logitech’s lineup. First announced in September 2023 as an Indiegogo project and successfully funded within five minutes, it’s shipping to backers in July for a retail price of $350. The Reach is an articulated camera arm designed to make it easier to get overhead views of objects sitting on a table while keeping your hands free. It’s handy for showing off books and worksheets in a classroom, demonstrating how to do crafts for a YouTube channel, or giving a bird’s-eye view of a board game.

The arm itself is excellent. It’s easy to tilt the camera arm up or down, extend it farther from the base, and even slide it higher or lower off the table. It’s an ideal way to get overhead footage of almost anything, except for one pretty substantial problem: It’s designed to work only with Logitech’s Streamcam, a webcam that’s not great.

A Thoughtful Camera Arm

First things first. The arm is the star of the Logitech Reach and it’s an absolute delight to use and dead simple to install. There are two mounting options: a sturdy clamp that attaches to the side of a desk or a heavy base plate you can set on top of a table.

The Logitech Reach with the base.

Photograph: Eric Ravenscraft

And when I say heavy, I mean heavy, which is a good thing. The base plate is so hefty that it counterbalances the weight of the entire arm and camera, even when fully extended. This keeps it from falling over or even tilting. It’s so effective that the only reason I can think of to use the clamp is if you don’t have space on your table for the base.

The arm slides into the base with a metal peg that rotates freely and can spin 360 degrees. The USB-C cable that runs to the camera fits into a ridge along the length of the camera arm so neatly that it’s almost invisible. Since the camera and its cable are already set up, it takes only a couple of seconds to place the base plate on a table, slide the arm into the base, and plug the cable into a laptop, and you’re ready to go.

The arm itself is so smooth it almost feels unreal. You can rotate the top section of the arm forward to a 90-degree angle from the lower section without fiddling with any controls or locks. It just moves easily into place. Likewise, the top section of the arm can slide forward and back, extending up to around 18 inches away from the base, and it stays in place. Again, no extra buttons, knobs, or clamps involved.

Photograph: Eric Ravenscraft

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May 24, 2024
Valoi Easy35 Film-Scanning Kit Review: Fast, Affordable, and Easy to Use

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We might be deep in the digital age, but film photography has never gone away. Like records, which lived on through tapes, CDs, and now digital music, film continues on. However, while you can DIY develop film quite easily, making prints with an enlarger remains a cumbersome process that requires a dedicated space. The more economical alternative is to scan your film and print it digitally.

Professional scanning is expensive, and pro-level scanners are also expensive (not as expensive as enlarging your house to make way for a darkroom, but still not cheap). One popular solution is to photograph your negatives with a high-resolution digital camera. The resulting RAW file can then be touched up, sharpened, and printed like any other digital file.

And finally, photographing your images still isn’t as easy as it sounds. That’s where Valoi’s Easy35 film-scanning kit comes in. It’s everything you need to “scan” your 35-mm film in one simple-to-use kit. It’s a breeze to set up, fast to scan, and produces great results.

A Series of Tubes

Scanning film by photographing it is tricky business. You need a good light source, you need to keep the film absolutely flat, and you have to have the camera and lens aligned with the film so there’s no distortion.

Film photographers have been building scanning rigs for years, and there is a ton of great advice on Reddit and elsewhere, but if you want an off-the-shelf solution that eliminates the learning curve, the Valoi Easy35 film-scanning kit is the best option I’ve found.

Photograph: Scott Gilbertson

The Easy35 consists of a light box, with brightness and temperature controls for the backlight and slots on each side to feed your film through. Inside, there’s a film holder that helps your film slide through and line up. A series of tubes forms a light-tight tunnel between the film you’re photographing and the sensor in your digital camera.

The result is consistently excellent digital images of your film with very little effort.

There are some caveats, though. The big one is that this only works for 35-mm film. If you’re shooting medium format or larger, this won’t work. That a shame, because 120 and larger film is where you still have a resolution advantage over digital. I’d love to see Valoi build a 120 scanner, but for now it’s 35-mm and smaller (there’s a 110 adapter if you shoot 110 cartridges).

The next caveat is that you should probably have a camera with interchangeable lenses. It doesn’t have to be the best camera, but the quality of your results will depend on both the quality of the camera and lens you’re using. A 100-megapixel Fujifilm GFX is generally going to give you better results than a micro4/3s camera.

Photograph: Scott Gilbertson

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May 19, 2024
8 Best Online Photo Printing Services (2024): Tips, Print Quality, and More
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Starting at $13 per month

Best for Printing Business Card and Postcards

I covered SXSW for WIRED way back in 2006 and one of the strange things I remember is that everyone I met was handing out these clever little half-size business cards that came from a company named Moo. Moo still offers those cards ($21 for 100 of them), but it has also grown into a full-service print shop that can do anything from business cards to custom postcards to water bottles. Moo would not be my top pick for photographs, as that’s not really its specialty, but for artwork, invitations, postcards, flyers, and just about everything else, I’ve been impressed.

I printed some postcards with some custom designs (including photographs and some of my kid’s artwork) and was impressed with the accuracy of the colors. All the paper I’ve tried has been high quality and the color matching is probably the best of all the services I’ve tried. You can upload your own designs for most things or use Moo’s templates, which offer some customization options. That would be my only real criticism—Moo’s online tools don’t offer quite as many customization options as I’d like. Fortunately, it’s easy to do your own work in free software like GIMP and then upload your files as PDFs or JPGs.

Starting at $21 for business cards and $23 for postcards

Printing Services to Avoid

Amazon’s Photo Printing: This service produced the worst images—not just out of this particular test, but the worst prints I’ve ever seen. The best I can say about it is that it’s fast. I had my prints in less than 24 hours. The problem is, of the 25 prints I ordered, eight of them had printing errors. Convinced that a 30 percent failure rate must be some kind of fluke, I fired off another round of 25 (different) images, and this time seven of them were misprinted. That’s a kind of progress, I suppose, but not one I would recommend. I didn’t bother trying again, and I suggest you avoid Amazon’s photo printing service.

Walmart/Target/CVS/Walgreens: Technically, 1-hour photo kiosks didn’t die. They wormed their way inside pharmacy chains. There’s nothing wrong with these services. They’re convenient, and this is still the fastest way to get your images printed as uploaded jobs generally process within a few hours. But the results vary tremendously from one store to the next. Just like the 1-hour services of old, the quality of prints you get depends on what shape the machine is in and how skilled the technician working that day happens to be. You might be able to get good prints at your local store, and it might be worth checking out if you’re not happy with other options, but for most people, this option is very hit or miss.

Costco: Costco used to have in-house photo printing and it was surprisingly good for the price. These days though the company outsources its photo printing to Shutterfly. If you’re a member and you can get a discount or it’s convenient for you then by all means, go for it. Just know that you could get the same results using Shutterfly directly.

What to Look For In A Printer

If none of these services quite fit the bill, or if you prefer to use a local service, here’s a few things to keep mind when choosing. First of all, regrettably, these days your local shop may well be sending their print work off to somewhere like Nations, so ask where they print before you dive in (not that there’s anything wrong with that, but you’ll likely end up paying a middle man fee for nothing). Here are some other things to ask about.
- Photo Paper: Paper quality varies tremendously, but the quality prints in our testing have been done on Kodak Endura and Fujifilm papers. Reputable printers will tell you which paper they use so ask and if it isn’t from a name your recognize, avoid it.
- Paper Type: Do you want glossy prints? Luster? Matte? Metallic? Fuji’s Deep Matte? There’s no right answer here, but you ultimately have to pick one. This is one of the reasons I love Printique, you can order a set of sample prints in most of the finishes the service offers. Check to see if the printer you’re interested in offers something similar (and if you’re curious about a specific service, drop a link in the comments below and I will test it).
- Enlargements: How big can you print? This will depend on where your images come from, but a good rule of thumb for those shooting mostly on phones is don’t go over 8 x 10. Files from any DSLR or point-and-shoot camera made in that last decade can likely go to 11 x 14 without issue, possibly even 16 x 20. See the next section for some tips on how to get the best prints from your images.
How to Get Better Prints

We used a mix of images that represented a good cross-section of the kinds of photos most of us have. That includes green forests, blue seascapes, browns and grays in city shots, portraits, macro images, close-ups, images with strong bokeh, stacked images with long depth of field, and more.

We didn’t limit testing to good images either. We tested plenty of blurry images, photos that were overexposed and washed out, and ones where details might be lost to shadow. In other words, images like most of us have on our phones and in our cameras. Some images came from RAW files we edited in desktop software, others were sent straight from our phones, and we also pulled from social media posts.
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May 9, 2024
Fujifilm Instax Mini 99 Review: An Instax Camera Photographers Will Love

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Fujifilm’s New Instax Mini 99 is an Instax camera for those who love manual controls and creative effects. It’s not the sharpest Instax I’ve tested—that remains the Mini Evo—but it might be the most analog and the most capable.

The $200 price tag is well above the entry-level point-and-shoot Instax cameras, but here you get exposure and shutter control, a swatch of color effects, and even the ability to simulate light leaks, like the ones you get with those thrift store cameras collecting dust on your shelf.

Manual Power

Except for the colorful and bubbly entry-level cameras, Fujifilm’s Instax design usually tends toward a retro-camera vibe, which holds true for the Mini 99. The 99 is all-black instead of the silver and black found in the Mini 90, but otherwise bears more than a passing resemblance to the older model. Fujifilm hasn’t officially said the 99 replaces the 90, but they feel close enough to each other that I’d be surprised if the Mini 90 continues for long.

Photograph: Scott Gilbertson

The lens of the Mini 99 is the same as the Mini 90. It’s a 60-mm lens made of plastic. It works out to roughly the same field of view as a 35-mm lens in 35-mm format (or if you prefer, somewhere between 1x and 2x on your iPhone). The shutter is fixed at f/12.7, which means you’ll be relying on the flash in all but bright, sunny, outdoor shots. That said, unlike quite a few other Instax models, with the Mini 99 you can turn off the flash for those well-lit shots.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the Mini 99, and something new for the Instax line, are the manual focus options. The Mini 99 does not have true manual focus where you turn a dial on the lens to get precise focus. Instead there are three zones of focus: close up (0.3 to 0.6 meters), midrange (0.6 to 3 meters), and infinity (3 meters to infinity). For those not metric-savvy, that works out to 1 to 2 feet, 2 to 10 feet, and 10 feet to infinity. While that’s not as precise as a true manual focus camera, it’s more control than you typically get with Instax.

I find the manual focus to be a little inconsistent—or rather, the results were less dramatic than I expected. Keep in mind that the aperture is f/12.7, which means the plane of focus will be pretty wide, even with the focus zone controls. The Mini 99 is capable of bokeh (the name for out-of-focus regions in a photo), but only in very specific situations like a portrait, and even then you have to use the closest focus, which means your subject’s face will mostly fill the frame anyway. That said, being able to play with focus at all is a step up from most Instax cameras, where focus is fixed, and the 1-foot close focus distance of the Mini 99 is nice for macro-style shots. Unlike some Instax cameras, there is parallax correction in the viewfinder so that what you see in the frame is very close to what you get.

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May 3, 2024
Review: DJI Avata 2 Drone

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If I need to stop suddenly, I can tap the brake button and it’ll bring the drone back to a safe hover. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible to crash, and I managed to bring the drone down once by steering it directly into the post of the aforementioned fence. It dropped about 8 feet onto the stones of a beach, but was fine to resume flying, without a visible mark on it. This thing is impeccably built, and while I don’t doubt repeated high-speed crashes will damage it eventually, it’s clearly designed to withstand some punishment.

But what of those mind-bending aerial stunts on YouTube? Sadly, you can’t really pull them off with the motion controller. The drawback to its user-friendly simplicity is that it doesn’t work in the same way as a twin-stick controller. Think of it as a controller with training wheels. If you stop flying—to dive for instance—it will eventually stop moving and hover in place. Clever, but limiting.

For those that want to graduate to trickier manual flight, DJI sells the $199 console-style Remote Controller 3, which allows you to fly the drone in manual mode. Here, the training wheels are off and the slightest error can result in an embarrassing and potentially costly crash. You can also perform incredible tricks, if you know how.

For me, who’s keen to return the Avata 2 sample back to DJI in one piece, the RC Motion 3 feels like enough for now. It’s allowed me to capture some wonderful footage using the Avata 2’s electronically stabilized camera, which records video at 4K/60 fps or 2.7K/120 fps. There’s also the option to use a 10-bit D Log M color profile for more postproduction color grading too. The drone comes with 46 GB of built-in storage for videos and 12 MP photos, plus a microSD slot for those requiring more space.

My First FPV

Ultimately, the Avata 2 is the latest in a long line of DJI drones that makes it easy for amateurs to achieve great results. In this case, it makes FPV flying incredibly simple and intuitive, and its camera allows you to create some thrilling, smoothly cinematic sequences with very little effort.

There’s also very little in the way of comparable products on the market, with most FPV drones being kits built by enthusiasts, rather than consumer-friendly designs. As a result, the main alternative to the Avata 2 is the original DJI Avata. And for those who own the first-generation model, I’d say, aside from the Goggles 3, which aren’t retro-compatible, the improvements here don’t really warrant an upgrade.

Photograph: DJI

But if you’re new to the FPV game, I strongly advise you to choose the latest version. It is only $179 more, but there are improvements across the board, with enhanced flight performance, longer flight time, intelligent flight modes, and advanced safety features. If you’re looking for a gateway to FPV fun, they don’t come any more accessible than the Avata 2.

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April 16, 2024
Blackmagic Cinema Camera 6K Review: Finally Full Frame
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Few camera manufacturers have managed to stand out the way Blackmagic has when it comes to capturing high-quality video on a mirrorless camera. The Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro (dubbed PCC6K Pro) impressed me when I reviewed it a few years ago, but somehow the company’s new Cinema Camera 6K has managed to top it. With a full-frame sensor, the new L mount, and a similar $2,600 price, it’s turning my head again.

The Cinema Camera 6K is largely similar to its predecessor, with nearly identical battery life (about an hour on one 3,500-mAh battery), and it retains the intuitive controls compared to what you’ll find on most professional cameras. It lacks the built-in neutral density filters I liked in the PCC6K Pro, but the new features are worth the trade-off.

The Full-Frame Sensor Experience

The biggest upgrade to the Cinema Camera 6K is the one so important they put it right on the front of the casing: a full-frame, 36 x 24-millimeter sensor. Compared to the Super 35-mm sensor on the previous models–which, despite its name, measures 23 x 13 mm–the new model’s sensor is a significant upgrade.

Full-frame sensors are comparable in size to 35-mm film. The most prominent benefit of this is that there’s no crop factor when using most lenses. Cropped sensors result in a smaller field of view, meaning you can fit less of a scene into a frame compared to a camera with a full-frame sensor. Put simply, you need to be further away, use shorter lenses, or both to get the same image. This can often come at the expense of things like a shallow depth of field or worse low-light performance.

Putting a full-frame sensor inside one of Blackmagic’s cameras is probably the best upgrade I could’ve asked for. I often shoot videos in my apartment, and it can be difficult to get images that look good because there simply isn’t enough space in the frame to get the scene that I want. For example, below are two photos taken with a 50-mm lens, first with the PCC6K Pro and the second with the new Cinema Camera 6K; I stood in the same spot in my tiny living room. The full-frame sensor can capture significantly more of my living space. For some people like me who often have to shoot in cramped spaces, this is nothing short of a godsend.
Photograph: Eric Ravenscraft

Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro
The new model feels just as comfortable to use as Blackmagic’s other cinema cameras. It might be a little bulky, but its chassis feels excellent whether you’re holding it with one or two hands. The autofocus is impeccable; there’s still no autofocus tracking nor in-body image stabilization (IBIS), but with the handy focus button next to the left thumb, I find it easy to land the focus directly on my subject. The whole thing can be heavy, especially if you use it with Blackmagic’s optional battery grip, but this is still my favorite design for everything from the studio to run-and-gun shoots.

Low-Light Performance

With a bigger sensor comes larger pixels that can capture more light. Compared to the sensor on the previous 6K Pro, the full-frame sensor has nearly three times as much surface area, but the same 6K resolution. That means that each pixel is capturing almost three times as much light for each pixel in the image.

The result is that the new Cinema Camera 6K performs even better in low-light conditions than the already impressive model that came before it. Here are two photos, one with the previous 6K Pro, and one with the new Cinema Camera 6K. Both cameras were set to an ISO of 400, at an ƒ/3 aperture, and 1/30 shutter speed. They were also captured from the same position, although I cropped the full-frame photo to a comparable area of the 6K Pro.
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March 26, 2024
How to Find Film for Your Old Polaroid Camera (2024)

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We really like physical photos around these parts. Our guide to the Best Instant Cameras has a collection of modern gadgets that print out pictures that you can stick on your fridge or pin on your walls. But what about the ones that started it all? Polaroid cameras have been fumbling around attics, garages, and storage closets for decades. And if you found one or just bought a cheap used one, there’s good news: You just need some film.

The better news is that, despite huge difficulty in the past, it’s now easier than ever to get film for your old Polaroid cameras. However, despite it being easy to find cheap film on Amazon, there’s a bit more nuance to choosing film than randomly picking whatever shows up first. If you’re not sure what kind of film your camera uses, read on.

A Brief History Lesson

Finding film for older Polaroid cameras can be simple and tricky at the same time. Today, if you come across a vintage camera manufactured by Polaroid—which went bankrupt and shut down in 2001—you can still buy film for that camera from a newer, mostly unrelated company: Polaroid.

Confused yet? Stick with me and it’ll make sense.

When the Polaroid Corporation went out of business, its assets, including the production line for its film and cameras, were sold off or licensed to various investors over the next several years. Film was still produced using the Polaroid brand, until the companies that owned Polaroid’s assets decided to abandon the instant camera business entirely in 2008. Not coincidentally this happened less than a year after the original iPhone came out.

That same year, a company called the Impossible Project was founded to take up the mantle Polaroid was leaving behind. The company bought some of Polaroid’s old equipment and developed new instant film modules that could be used in existing Polaroid cameras. Throughout the following decade, Impossible often worked with whatever company currently owned Polaroid’s assets to manufacture cameras, film modules, and other accessories.

That is, until 2017, when the Impossible Project’s largest shareholder bought the entirety of Polaroid’s assets and intellectual property. Like reforging a sword that had been broken, Polaroid had become whole once again, and in 2020, Impossible rebranded itself as Polaroid.

Which brings us to the situation we have today: Polaroid once again makes Polaroid cameras and film for Polaroid cameras. If you search Amazon for “polaroid film,” you’ll find film made by Polaroid for Polaroid cameras. Convenient, right? However, there are still a few details about the various types of film you need to know.

What Type of Film Do I Need?

Polaroid cameras use a few different types of film, and they’re not generally interchangeable. The first step is to look up what model of camera you have. For example, I have a Polaroid Spirit 600 which takes (surprise) 600 film. Below we’ll go over each type of film, and the special considerations you should keep in mind for each.

Photograph: Eric Ravenscraft

If you have a picture in your mind of what “a Polaroid” looks like, this is probably what you’re thinking of. Early Polaroid cameras had low sensitivity to light, and thus were only really good for outdoor photography—unless you had a really bright flash. Polaroid 600 film was created to be more sensitive than previous film types, so you could take photos indoors or in low light and still get a usable photo.

These modules also had a small battery in them to power the camera, which didn’t have power on its own. This means, among other things, that any film manufactured by the original Polaroid Corporation prior to 2008 is probably dead by now. If you hunt for vintage film on sites like eBay, there’s a good chance that the film cartridge won’t work in your older camera. Fortunately, the new Polaroid makes 600 film manufactured this decade that will work just fine.

The Polaroid 600 cameras were popular in the ’90s, but if you have a Polaroid camera from the ’70s or ’80s, it’s more likely to use Polaroid SX-70 film. These have a square shape similar to the 600 film, but they’re much less sensitive to light. Most cameras that use this type of film will struggle to take a good picture indoors unless you have a flash—which many models didn’t come with.

When Impossible Project started making its own cameras in 2016, it made a small change to the film cartridges traditional Polaroid cameras use. Rather than putting a tiny battery in each and every film cartridge, the cameras would provide power themselves. This not only made it possible for film cartridges to last longer, it was better for the environment overall. This new format is the I-Type film.

A comparable pack of I-Type film is sometimes slightly cheaper than more traditional 600 film. However, you’ll need one of Polaroid’s new I-Type cameras to use it. These newer cameras can accept both 600 film and I-Type film, but you’ll usually be better off with the I-Type film, since it doesn’t require a built-in battery like the 600 film does.

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March 24, 2024
DJI Air 3 Drone Review: Serious Video Chops

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DJI’s drones dominate the market to such an extent that you barely hear any other brands mentioned. They’re not quite competing with themselves, but the DJI Air 3 does fill a gap between the professional-grade Mavic series and the pocket-size Mini range. It’s the first new Air model since 2021’s Air 2S, and DJI has done it again, with a drone that offers enhanced video performance and mercifully stress-free flying.

I’ve been flying the DJI Air 3 for the past few months, comparing it with a range of other drones, including its main competitor, the superb Air 2S. The biggest improvement over its older cousin is a multi-camera setup previously exclusive to the much pricier Mavic models, but there are notable boosts to battery life and flight safety too.

Twice as Nice

The headline feature for the DJI Air 3 is the two cameras mounted on its front gimbal. There’s a “standard” wide-angle camera offering a 24-mm-equivalent field of view (broadly similar to the camera on the Air 2S) and a medium-telephoto camera offering a 70-mm-equivalent field of view. The latter gives the drone a brand-new creative option, with the angle allowing for a narrower framing of smaller subjects and the ability to isolate them against the background in an all-new, dramatic way. A tighter field of view might not sound all that exciting, but in practice it’s a significant upgrade.

Photograph: DJI

Both cameras use a 1/1.3-inch Quad Bayer CMOS sensor with 48-megapixel resolution. What I like about these sensors is that they both capture video at the same quality, making it easier to give footage a unified, harmonious look when editing, no matter which parts were captured by which camera.

The DJI Air 2S had a single 1-inch 20-megapixel sensor, which might make the Air 3’s smaller 1/1.3-inch sensors sound a little disappointing. But it doesn’t feel like too much of a loss. I understand DJI’s justification; two larger sensors would add weight and take up space. But all told, I think the image quality is better on the Air 3, with wider dynamic range and less noise.

The Air 3 does lose the ability to record video at a 5.7K resolution, being restricted to 4K on both cameras, but in all honesty, I don’t think anybody will mind all that much. For the majority of casual users, 4K will be more than enough detail.

4K can be captured at up to 60 frames per second in the standard video mode, 100 fps in slow-motion mode, and 30 fps in the new night mode, which ekes out extra detail after the sun goes down. I found the flat D Log M color profile a joy too, as it let me do my own color grading and correction in postproduction and achieve the results I wanted.

Photos (which can be captured in JPEG or DNG RAW) look excellent too, and while the Air 3 can’t match the WIRED-recommended Mavic 3’s Four Thirds Hasselblad camera, it’s not far off, while being smaller and substantially cheaper.

Photograph: Sam Kieldsen

DJI Air 3. Still image shot using the wide angle 24mm equivalent camera.

Fly Safer for Longer

Buzzing around the beaches and headlands of Britain’s southeast coast, I found the Air 3 to be even more forgiving and enjoyable to fly than its (already forgiving and enjoyable) predecessor. This is thanks to a bigger battery (46 minutes as opposed to the Air 2S’s 31—although real-world use numbers are marginally lower for both drones) and a full omnidirectional anti-collision sensor setup that makes crashes very unlikely. The Air 3 now has sensors facing forwards, backwards, upwards, downwards, and laterally on both the left and right sides, and in good light these will spot hazards and stop your drone from careering into them. These sensors become less reliable the darker the conditions are, but it’s an invaluable feature that could save your blushes and bank balance.

Like all DJI drones, the Air 3’s flight controls are wonderfully intuitive and loaded with practical automated functions. For instance, you can tap a button on the controller to take off, and another to bring the drone back from wherever it is and land. You can also define waypoints for fully automated flight, and set the Air 3 to track a static or moving subject, keeping its cameras trained on it at all times.

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March 24, 2024
DJI Mini 4 Pro Drone Review: The Best Small Drone Available

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Even as a relatively experienced pilot, I love how difficult it is to to crash a DJI drone. This is thanks to its full omnidirectional vision sensor array, which is drone jargon for sensors facing forwards, backwards, downwards, upwards, and to both sides. It’s the first time this level of disaster avoidance tech has been seen on an ultralight DJI drone, and I love it. If the Mini 4 Pro senses an imminent collision it will stop immediately in the sky. You’ll struggle to even deliberately crash this drone, which is just as it should be.

These sensors also allow the drone to circumvent obstacles when using its autopilot-like ActiveTrack 360 system. Just draw a box around an object—a boat or car for instance—on the controller’s touchscreen and the Mini 4 Pro will autonomously follow it as it moves around, keeping it framed in the camera. I found it useful for making cinematic shots of me riding my bike, and also, impressively, keeping pace with a speedboat through the wake, and it was reassuring to know that the Mini 4 Pro had the brains to stay safe as it tracked.

The vision system isn’t totally foolproof, though. It doesn’t work when flying the drone in its fastest, most responsive Sport setting, which is fair enough, but you’ll also have to exercise some additional care after dark.

Night Moves

But it’s worth brushing up on your sundown flying skills, however, thanks to the significant upgrades lavished on the gimbal-stabilized camera. The Mini 4 Pro has the same 1/1.3-inch 48-megapixel Quad Bayer image sensor as the Mini 3 Pro, but processing has been greatly improved. It now matches the Mini 3 Pro’s 4K/60-frames-per-second performance but can also capture super-smooth slow motion in 4K at 100 fps.

Even better, it now has the option to record 10-bit D-Log M video, allowing for greater grading potential in postproduction. I’m still learning when it comes to color grading and correction of drone footage, but I was able to turn my 10-bit aerial footage into something really dynamic and engaging. It’s definitely the best footage I’ve ever seen from an ultralight drone, even if it doesn’t quite hit the levels of detail offered by the larger sensors on the likes of the DJI Mavic 3 or Air 3.

Photograph: Sam Kielsden

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March 23, 2024