Hey guys my name's Rob Blight. I make videos about
wildlife photography, cameras, gear, things like that.
And in this video I'm going to be talking about the DJI Osmo Pocket
and whether you can use this as an action camera. In my case I've been using this for running.
And I've been using the mount which released recently.
When you get it right, this is quite amazing the footage it puts out.
Particularly in 4k/60 the footage really does look very, very nice.
But there are a few things I had to do to get my footage to come out this smooth.
Let's get into it.
[Running Handheld]
So when I first got this Osmo Pocket I knew that I wanted to try it out on a run
just to see how the footage looked.
But at the time the mount wasn't out yet, so my only option was to just hold it in my hand
as I was running. And this actually works pretty well, I'll show some footage of how it looks.
The main problem with doing it this way is that it's just a bit annoying to have it always in your hand.
It is kind of cool to be able to look to the side. If you're going past a cool landscape or building
you can just hold it out to the side and show what you're running past.
I really just wanted to use it with like, a GoPro chest strap
so that I could have it mounted on my chest during my runs and then just get good footage
and not have to worry about using like a head mounted camera like you would for a GoPro or something.
I almost missed a really important point, so let me just cover this quickly.
If you plan to use this gimbal handheld there's not really a way of ensuring that it always tracks straight forward.
So what tends to happen is that it will drift off to the side and the path that's in front of you
will no longer stay in the center.
This is just the result of your hands not really facing forward
and the screen is so small and hard to look at while you're running that's it's kind of inevitable.
So this was the other thing that led me on to a chest strap, as I knew it would face forward the whole time.
[Running with Chest Strap]
So this is the actual mount.
The thing that just doesn't really make much sense to me is where they chose to put
the actual GoPro mount which is on the back.
The Osmo Pocket only goes in this one way and it's with the screen facing you.
I'll just put it in to show you.
So you can see here the screen is at the front, right? So if this is mounted on your chest,
so here's the mount, here's the screen. You can only put it in that way round.
It means that by default the gimbal faces you instead of facing forward.
So you have to put it in I guess what would be its kind of portrait mode where the lens turns round and faces you.
It means that when you're trying to set up the gimbal and get a straight view and the right angle and
just make sure you can basically see what it's filming
you can't really do that. You have to like strain down awkwardly or pull the chest strap up.
Also having the screen at the front, when you're recording the screen is on,
so it makes it blatantly obvious to everyone that you're recording video as you run past them.
Which I guess isn't really a big deal, but why have it on the front? It just doesn't make much sense to me.
Any time you recenter the gimbal
It puts the horizon dead center in the frame, which sounds pretty reasonable for running, right?
When you have it mounted to your chest it's the other way round, so you have to spin the camera round
so that it's facing the other way than it normally does. The trouble with this is
when you recenter it, instead of locking to the horizon like it normally does in the dead center of the frame
It actually - whatever angle you have it mounted at, it will align at 90 degrees to that angle
instead of locking to the horizon like it would do normally.
So you can see why this would be a problem for running right, because you might want
to have the horizon in the center of the frame, or, in my case I prefer to have it about two thirds up the frame.
I dunno, it just doesn't make much sense having the screen at the front
when you're using it like this as a running cam.
But! With a bit of setup you can still use it this way and get good results.
[Running with Chest Strap (solution)]
This piece. This was the game changer for me.
So, it comes - I think it was in like a helmet head mount kit or something.
They're pretty cheap, I think I paid about £8 for it on Amazon.
I'll put a link down below in the description.
And this curved piece essentially fixes the problem.
Because it goes on the back, like so...
So, you see that? Now your mounting point is on the bottom.
This is ideal, because now - here's your chest strap...
Now it mounts like this.
Now the screen is facing you. And you can angle it like this.
So for me this piece is essential basically, when using this as a running camera.
And it means that the screen is facing you and now it's in it's standard mode and it will lock to the horizon
perfectly when you recenter it.
Oh yeah this is the GoPro strap which sort of goes around you, mounts to your chest like so.
And one of the reasons this is so good is because of the way it can tilt up and down
now you can tilt it down a bit, access the screen, do all your setup,
make sure the camera is at the exact angle you want.
So what I like to do is start of by centering the gimbal so the horizon is dead center
and then aim it down slightly so the horizon line is about two thirds up the frame.
I think this gives a slightly better sense of speed, so I like to do it that way.
And because the screen is facing you, you can now actually see what you're doing and make sure you've got the right angle.
It also means that if you need to make adjustments it's easy to do because you can
see the screen. Makes sense right?
And then once you've done that you hit record, tilt it back up to this position and it's nice and tight to your body.
[Examples of runs (successes and failures)]
So I'm gonna talk about some of the times I went out running and some of the
problems I had and some of the successes I had.
This includes some of the first times I went out I had it chest mounted, but I didn't use
the adapter because I didn't have it at that point.
So the screen was facing outwards, and some of the problems that caused.
So fir my first attempt I just went on like a really casual 5k run.
I kept changing to different modes throughout the run to see what would work and what would look good.
And for some reason I thought that because it was mounted to my chest I would be able to use FPV
and it would give a nice dynamic kind of recording.
That's not the case. Do not use FPV for running, it's just not smooth enough.
I'm not really sure what they intended for this mode, but don't use it for running.
You want to use follow or tilt locked. I think tilt locked is the safest option.
Because with follow you can have some issues with it not lining up to the horizon correctly,
or it pointing too far down.
But you absolutely must use slow follow, not fast follow.
not fast follow.
And it's kinf of confusing because when you actually go into the menu there's like,
the icon for fast follow is like, a man running, with like, speed lines behind him.
So it's kind of contradictory because you're using it for running, so you'd think that's the mode to use.
But you actually want it to be in the other mode, slow follow, for running.
Otherwise the footage looks like this.
It just has too much side to side movement from like chest rotation while running.
And I would recommend using tilt locked the most.
And you can use follow, but you have to be careful, because if you don't get the angle quite right
the horizon will begin to drift up or down and you won't get the angle you're expecting.
But at least if you have this accessory you can see the screen.
For the second run I went on I actually went on a Parkrun.
They're these local runs that are run by volunteers, it's pretty cool.
So I got good footage during this run for the most part.
I used tilt locked, slow follow. At this point I still didn't have the adapter
so I was using it with the screen facing outwards.
But none the less I was able to get good footage. I'd say the main problem with this footage is
It was very humid that day, kind of foggy, and it was drizzling.
After a while there started to be a few tiny drops of rain on the lens
and because of this most of the footage ended up looking quite hazy.
But I think you'll have the same problem with a GoPro as well, so I'm not really sure of a good solution.
So I think with this footage as well, you can start to see some of the advantages of having it mounted
to your chest. This is kind of why I wanted to do it this way, because
you're a bit lower to the ground and when you look at the footage it feels like you're more within
a group of people running
rather than being sort of above everyone else like you would be with a head mounted camera.
And the footage is impressively smooth. I haven't seen anything quite this smooth coming out of say a GoPro.
So then my third set of footage I went for an interval run along a canal near me.
And there was a problem with this footage because I accidentally set it to fast follow
so all the footage looks like this.
And it's pretty annoying because the lighting was great that day, there was kind of this cool haze in the distance.
And I think the footage would have looked great if I hadn't messed up and set it to that mode.
So then my fourth run I went out with it again and at this point I still didn't have the adapter.
And this time I did manage to pretty much nail all of the settings.
The whole run looked good and I think this might be some of the best footage so far.
And I guess the trouble with this footage is just bad lighting.
It was pretty harsh that day and it does show some dynamic range problems with the Osmo Pocket.
You can definitely see some clipping in the highlights at times in the sky.
But for the most part I still think the footage looks great. I'm not too worried about it, it's just if the lighting's
harsh you're probably going to get a few clipped highlights. There's not much we can do about that.
And then since getting the adapter I've been on a few more runs.
I've done another Parkrun with the adapter so I was finally able to have the screen facing me.
And I think the footage on this run looks great. You do get a pretty good sense of speed
and being in a big group of people all running together, so I really like that about it.
And this adapter definitely makes all the difference. It makes it so much easier to set up.
You're not worrying constantly that your shot is framed badly or anything like that.
And even while running you can loosen it and check the footage if you need to, so
so yeah basically, highly recommend this adapter.
[Sound quality]
Oh yeah I wanted to just touch on sound quality. If you're in an area with no wind it can be quite impressive.
See here at the start of my run the audio is quite nice, you can hear everything clearly.
[Three, two, one, go!]
[Excited shouts and sounds of running on grass]
The trouble is as soon as you have a bit of wind you do start getting a bit of muffled wind noise.
[wind noise]
If audio is particularly important to you you will need to use some kind of external mic
with a fluffy wind supressor type thing.
Maybe use something like one of these lav mics. And I would have done this, the trouble is
the adapter to mount the external mic isn't out yet so I haven't been able to try it.
[Battery life]
Oh yeah with regards to battery life, in my experience from a full charge
you can expect the battery to last between an hour and a half to two hours.
So if your run or activity is approaching or longer than two hours
you might want to bring like a portable battery pack that you can plug in while running and I believe it will
record and charge at the same time. However I haven't tried this as all my runs have been way less than
two hours.
And I haven't notice a big difference between using different resolutions and frame rates and battery life.
My gut feeling is that the higher framerates and resolutions do use up the battery a bit faster
but it's not like super significant. I think you'll be able to go for at least an hour and a half on any of those modes.
[File sizes]
Also when you switch between different resolutions and framerates the size of your video files will definitely
increase. That is very noticeable. So make sure you have a big enough memory card.
I'm using a 128GB microSD card and I've been able to record
an hour to an hour and a half runs
on 1080/60 with no problems. They usually come out to about...
I don't have the figures on hand right now as I'm recording this video, but I will insert a screenshot
that shows some of the values of different resolutions and frame rates
and how many gigabytes they use per hour? Minute?
Anyway, here it is.
[Low light (night run)]
So after filming this video I realised there were a few more points I wanted to go over, so
I'll just cover these next three points quickly.
I went for a night run and I thought it would be interesting to show the footage from that
and give a few thoughts. For the most part I think this footage looks pretty good
It's similar to how it looked to my eyes. Once you go into a much darker area it just becomes a bit too
dark and you can't really see anything. But if you're in a city which is lit with streetlights it's not too bad.
Here I'm using a headtorch and you can barely see anything.
This is the difference between 1080 and 4k.
I would say that they're about the same, but the 4k does look a little bit better because the noise is finer.
[Pro Features & D-Cinelike]
After I recorded most of this footage DJI did release an update for the Osmo Pocket with the
pro features and the D-Cinelike colour profile.
And the manual mode features are really good actually. On an overcast day I would recommend setting the
white balance manually to cloudy.
And that way it'll give you a consistent white balance throughout the whole run
I would say that the footage looks pretty nice. It reminds me of like a RAW photo. Full of potential for editing.
And it definitely holds the highlight clipping down a bit. I think you'll still get some clipping in the sky but
it's nowhere near as severe as it is in the standard profile.
So if you're planning to edit the footage then yeah absolutely shoot the D-Cinelike. It's really nice.
Especially in 4k.
[Annoying "wobble" bug]
Ah yeah, so this wobble bug. If you look at the footage you'll see what I mean.
The first time I noticed this I thought that I was just maybe accidentally
hitting the gimbal with my hand and causing it to freak out.
But then it started happening over and over again and it happened at least 3 or 4 times during this Parkrun.
I eventually noticed a pattern. When you record a run you don't just record a single file -
the run get's split up into say, six minute chunks.
And I noticed that this bug always happened within the first twenty seconds to a minute.
It does clear itself up after about twenty seconds.
It is a problem with thegimbal and I'm not sure why it happens.
Maybe we'll get a firmware update. I hope DJI fixes it.
And while we're on the subject of bugs, I did have maybe a more severe version of this bug.
It was actually on my night run, right at the start of this run. The gimbal just basically locked up on both
axes and then after about a minute the whole Osmo Pocket just shut down and stopped recording.
And then about five or ten minutes later into my run I realised and had to restart it.
It only happened once, but this was pretty annoying. I guess just a glitch, but still annoying that it happened.
But yeah I think that about does it. I think we're approaching the end of this video.
If you're using the Osmo Pocket for running please link me to your videos.
I'd love to see what footage other people are able to get.
Yeah so if you have any tips or advice that I didn't cover in this video please leave a comment below.
I'd love to know what you guys are doing to improve the look of the footage even further.
And if you liked this video please click like. It does make a difference.
Please subscribe. Some of the other types of videos I make are wildlife photography videos where I
go out into nature and take you guys along with me.
And I also do some tech videos and camera reviews. Things like that.