- Now the very first time DJI showed me this Ronin 4D
I was completely caught off guard.
It was not something I was expecting DJI to put out,
but the more I thought about it,
the more I realized it actually kind of makes perfect sense.
Upfront, we have this full frame sensor,
which is stabilized with this three axis gimbal,
and we can also activate a fourth axis with this arm,
which is partially mechanical, partially electronic.
This is gonna help reduce that Z-axis motion. You know,
if you're walking step in or you're sitting on a
washing machine, something like that.
And also I noticed that there are sensors along the front,
right here, also down here on the bottom.
And these are the type of sensors that you can see on DJI's
drones.
And that's also gonna give it a little bit more feedback
on its height and its positioning to further give you better
stabilization.
Pretty impressive, right?
Game changer. I know you guys hate it when I say that word,
but I mean,
now this one is the X9 6K,
but there's also gonna be an X9 8k
if you're looking for that extra resolution,
but I like the bigger pixels and 6K has plenty of
resolution for me.
And this also has a dual native ISO at 800 and 5,000,
which you can switch to in lower lit environments.
And interestingly enough, this whole thing can be detached.
So I'm very curious to see what DJI is gonna do with this
ecosystem.
Are we going to have different types of heads that we can
attach on to here?
Or are we going to attach this camera onto different things
like drones? We'll see, you can record in H.264
or PRORES 422HQ or PRORES RAW
And we have your selection of color profiles from REC709
to HLG to D-LOG or your own custom look.
Now looks like the background is bit blown out,
but since we're getting over 14 stops of dynamic range on
- the 6k sensor, let's
- see if we could do some color grading magic
and recover some of that.
Now, when it comes to a camera like this,
the most important factor is image quality, right?
So I'm going to be doing a followup video where I show more
of the footage that I was able to get out of this camera.
I'll give you a little teaser.
I thought the footage looks really good in my opinion.
And especially that PRORES RAW gives you tons of
flexibility. So if you're trying to match all their cameras,
I don't think you're going to have too many issues,
but in this video,
I'm going to be focused more on the huge list of features
that we are getting on this camera.
One of the things I thought was really cool is if you're in
a place like this and you don't have a fluid head tripod,
you could always just set this camera down and use the
joystick to try to get that nice smooth shot.
And look at that shot of Dylan,
sitting on a rock thinking he's cool.
Now the sensitivity and responsiveness of the joystick is
fully customizable.
So that took me a little bit to dial into my preferences,
but now I'm feeling pretty good with it. Now, me personally,
the thing I find most impressive about this RONIN 4D is
the amount of features they were able to pack into this
thing. And not only that,
but just make it very easy to access,
even if you're out hiking in the middle of nowhere or you're
a solo operator. And speaking of convenience,
when I first saw this, I was like, ah,
there's no way they could fit ND filters in here. Right?
But check it out.
We have ND filters from 1 stop, 2 stop 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,
all the way up to 9, every stop in between,
which is pretty awesome.
Now I want to get some Slow Mo shots.
So let's look at our frame rate options,
and this is a pretty big chart.
So I'm going to go ahead and throw it on the screen.
And with the 8K version,
it looks like you could get that 8K raw at 60 frames
per second,
but the asterisks on the 72 and 75 frames per second,
that basically means it has to crop into an aspect ratio of
239:1. Now looking at the 6k version,
we can do 6k full frame at 48 frames per second.
We can get 6k 60,
but that is also going to require that 239:1 aspect
ratios. But if we crop into that Super 35 mode,
it looks like we could get 96 frames per second,
or 120 with that wider aspect ratio.
But let's say I really want to shoot 120 frames per second.
and I wanna use the full sensor.
Then I'm going to have to drop down to 2K PRORES 422HQ.
And it also looks like there's a few limitations depending
on what kind of media you're going to be recording onto.
Now, this is the pro SSD.
And this little thing here is actually an entire terabyte,
which is pretty impressive,
but this is going to give you no limitations,
but you can actually remove this module and use a C fast
express type B,
which is gonna give you a majority of your options still.
And there's also this USB C port right here where you can
plug in an external SSD and record straight on to that,
which is gonna to be the most budget friendly option.
But it's also gonna have the most limitations due to
limited write speed
Now,
I think one of the big X factors is what kind of lenses can
you attach onto here?
Because the space up here on this gimbal is fairly limited.
So right now this is a DL Mount and this attaches and
detaches kind of like an EF mount.
These are the lenses I've been using so far,
but the selection is pretty limited. I mean,
there's a 24, 35 and 50. There's also a 16 mil prime,
but that is not a full frame lens.
Now I did ask DJI if they were planning on expanding on this
lens line up, but they haven't been able to tell me much.
So we'll have to wait and see for that.
But to switch out the Mount is actually really easy.
You don't have to use any screws or anything like that.
There's a locking ring right here and the whole mount
actually just came off and this is a E mount
and there's also a M mount that I've seen so far.
And an M mount actually does sound pretty interesting because if
you're looking into some pretty compact lenses,
there seems to be some good options there.
Now this is Sony 16-35 F 4,
and it's a fairly compact lens.
And I can go ahead and slide that LIDAR back on and to
balance it,
we get to skip a few steps because it's pretty symmetrical.
So I'm gonna go ahead and start with a tilt and we're gonna
slide this all the way back.
And this just tells me that this is pretty much as big of a
lens I can throw on it.
It is a little bit top heavy because I have this LIDAR in
here. And usually if you put a focus system down here,
it will help balance out the top heaviness,
but the motors can compensate for this.
So if I tilt the camera to the left,
I can see that it's front heavy. So let's go ahead.
Slide that back a little bit.
And I think right around there. So now I'm
gonna go ahead and get this fired up.
And I was actually surprised that I'm able to control the
lens already electronically.
It doesn't require the focus gears and motors.
If you're trying to run some manual lenses,
you just mountain this down here and plug it in.
So it's pretty straightforward.
Let's go ahead and try to balance the fourth axis and
it tells me,
I just have to turn this top knob counter-clockwise and once
I get it centered, I should be all balanced.
And this will also tell me if I need to adjust my tilt or
pan as well.
So pretty straight forward process balancing this.
So I like that.
And now we are officially switched over to these Sony E mount.
Now DJI just gave me this list of lenses
that are compatible, and I'm sure they're
gonna add to it as they test out more lenses.
But it's interesting to see that there are some lenses that
you should use a counterbalance with.
So I'm curious to see how that all works in,
but what's cool about this LIDAR system, is that
you can kind of turn any lens into an autofocus system and
programming it in is pretty straightforward.
And one thing I would love to see is some sort of rig or
brace that will hold this nice and securely on there in case
you want to attach a big old lens on here.
And that probably means you can't use it in gimbal mode,
but if you're an owner operator,
not every single project you're ever going to shoot is gonna
be shot from a gimbal.
So maybe if you want to throw an Angenieux zoom lens on here,
that would be an option if there was a nice way to support
it. And then that'd be also a good way to use it in handheld
mode. Now, yeah,
you can go ahead and turn off all the stabilization and lock
everything in place to get more of that handheld type of
feel.
But I don't know how much I trust putting a ton of weight on
this gimbal.
And there is also a little bit of play even when things are
locked in. Now,
most tripod plates also seem to cover the bottom sensors,
but the Z axis seems to still be pretty stable,
even with that sensor covered.
So I don't think it's a big deal,
but maybe someone can design a plate that will leave an
opening for those sensors,
or maybe like a VCT style plate where, you know,
part of the mounting happens up front.
And part of it happens in the back and you can just drop it
in. Now, let me go ahead and show you super cool feature.
Number 38, these handles come off and then I can go ahead,
attach them onto this external monitor and I have full
camera control. So let's pan it over to us.
Hello, over there.
I told you, there's a lot of cool features in here.
You know, you show up,
you have a long day of shooting out in the sun and you're
secretly hung over. You know,
you just set the camera up on a tripod,
go back to your car and just operate this thing remotely.
And it's a pretty serious monitor too 1,500 Nits so you can
brighten this thing up and up to 20,000 feet of
transmission. Now, of course,
that's gonna be completely unobstructed,
but still that's like over three and a half miles! Loved that
this is integrated into the whole system.
Now I definitely want to get myself a Force Pro that's the
thing that makes it so you can literally move around and the
camera gimble will match that motion.
They made it for the Ronin 2, but it also works on here.
And also if you're super fancy,
you can get the Master Wheels for the Ronin 2,
which is also compatible with this.
So, many ways to control this thing. Now,
my biggest question is how much is this thing going to cost?
Now, as of right now, I have no idea,
but they have told me that they're going to try to make it
competitive. All right.
So now that we're filming at night,
let's try to take advantage of this dual native ISO.
So right now we're at ISO 800 or exposure index,
but you can kind of think of them as the same thing.
Let's bring it up to 2,000, not enough.
Let's pop it up to 5,000 where that higher ISO based starts.
I personally, I'm a huge fan of a nice clean user interface.
Last thing I want to be doing on set is digging through the
menu, trying to figure out how to do something.
And I think this is as clean and simple as it gets.
For example, if you want to change the ND filter right here,
I can press the touch screen and scroll through it that way.
Or if you're not a fan of touchscreen,
you could always press the corresponding buttons.
So notice that there's eight buttons,
four on the top four on the bottom. And then let's say,
I want to adjust the aperture.
I can go ahead and just hit that,
but then I could also set it to auto and that will just
allow me to set the exposure value,
but let's go ahead and go back to manual and leave it at F2.8
Then we have the shutter speed.
Now I'm personally not a huge fan of shutter speed.
I prefer shutter angle.
If I'm filming videos so you can long press it and you could
change that shutter unit over to angle mode.
And now I can dial this into 180 degrees and I'm gonna
leave it right there. So when I changed my frame rates,
my shutter speed is going to change accordingly.
And if we go into the menu here, we have our image area.
So we're on full frame,
but if you have some Super 35 lenses,
we can hop into Super 35 mode.
And then of course there's certain frame rates that are only
accessible at Super 35 mode.
So you may need to toggle that for some technical reasons.
And we have PRORES 422 RAW or H.264 and then recording
I have it on D-log, which is generally what I prefer.
And then let's go into audio and you could see that there is
an internal microphone built into here,
which is great for reference.
And you can always attach a separate type of microphone and
fix that in right there. So love that.
And then we have our display here.
I have my false color set.
So every time I hit my exposure button,
it will activate the false color.
But if you prefer wave form, let's do that.
And every time I hit the exposure,
now it just pops up that wave form.
So I love that it's given us all the tools that I want,
but this right here, LIDAR wave form.
One of the coolest things I've seen in a really long time.
So here on the right,
you can see where I'm focused so I can pull it all the way
to infinity.
So I'm focused on the background and then I can also pull it
close to me.
But Dylan is right there in the middle and go ahead and move
left to right Dylan.
And you can actually see right now Dylan's at the left of
frame. So that's there and this is the right of frame.
So you can generally get an idea of where he is in focus.
Now don't take a few steps back and you'll see that the
focus moves back here. So if I want to track him,
I can just follow my wheel over to him. And then Dylan,
go ahead and take a few steps closer to me and see how he
moves up. If I want to chase him,
I just bring that yellow one right up to here.
And this is such a nice focus assist tool.
And now that I have it on auto focus,
you can literally see the focus chasing Dylan's LIDAR.
And since all the focus data is coming out of this LIDAR,
you can be focusing if really dimly lit environments.
And if you look right here, I can also hit track.
So this is going to activate the active tracks.
So not only is it focusing on Dylan,
but it's also following him. Now get out of my way,
Dylan. Here,
I'm gonna go ahead and highlight myself now and now I can
just walk like this. What's going on, everybody.
Welcome to another video from the best channel on planet
Earth, Potato Jet.
I'm just going to walk over here and guess what?
I'm still in frame. And I'm in focus.
This LIDAR goes out to 10 meters.
Let's say I'm not a huge fan of this composition.
I want to go more this way then
I can shift that over and it will hold my position generally
this way. Now it's not hard to lose this active track.
If I move fast, then I can.
And also I noticed that it's pretty good at sticking to my
face, even if I turn around and hold the back of my head.
And I'm actually curious what a higher ISO is.
Let's try 12,800 and let's see how this looks.
How much noise are we seeing at 12,800?
Wow. I don't know what I'm doing guys.
- All right. Now let's take a, close-up look at the camera.
Starting here at the 5.5 inch display,
which is huge compared to a lot of other monitors.
I love it. It's nice and sharp.
It's bright at a thousand nits. So you can see it outside.
One of the best on-board monitors I've seen on a camera,
like what I'm doing here, by the way, with the reflection?
I'm so clever sometimes. Oh my gosh.
Wow. Potato Jet, you should run for president.
I would vote for myself, so fast. Can you vote for yourself?
If you run for president? Right now
I have it mounted to the top handle with this cold shoe and
Scott, some good swivel action going on.
And also three buttons back here at one for peaking,
one for the lut and one for exposure.
So I have this set to false color and going around to the
side here, we have our menu, a scroll wheel,
which we can click in. And we also have playback.
Now, what I like about this playback is when you press it,
it automatically just starts playing the most recent clip,
which is what I'm trying to do most of the time anyways.
And then we also have buttons lined up on the top and
bottom,
which will help us navigate the menu and coming up front,
we have the LIDAR,
which can be removed very easily if needed and is attached
with a USB type C cable right here.
But there's also a second slot right here.
If you want to plug in the follow focus,
which would plug in just right there, but this is DJI's
lens, so it's all done electronically internally. Right now,
the gimbal is turned off and it's locked into place.
And you can tell because all of these little red indicators,
but as I switched them to release the access,
I can go ahead, loosen everything up.
And now I'm going to go ahead and activate the gimbal and to
turn the gimbal on and off is this switch right here.
So I'll turn it back off. I'll put it back in follow.
And here you can adjust the follow mode.
So pan follow the pan tilt or FPV mode right here.
And if you just want to completely lock off the direction,
you just put it in lock mode.
And then of course we have the power button and then a lock
switch, which locks all the buttons,
as well as the touch screen. This button
I'm not quite sure what it does,
but I don't think it's important,
but this is what you need to know.
This is how you activate the fourth dimension or the Z-axis.
And then took down here is you recenter the gimbal and also
the Z mode, which gets toggled between lock.
If you want it to have the same height consistently or
follow, which will adapt to your height smoothly,
like if you're on a staircase.
And then of course we want our most commonly used features
right here on the hand,
grips where our hands are naturally going to rest.
And we can also lock it if we don't want to accidentally
bump it. And if we double tap,
you recenter the frame and we can also present hold the
lock, the direction of the gimbal.
I got to say, I love this lever right here,
which is a quick way to adjust the angle of the handle and
it locks into place.
And we also have a button to check our exposure.
And this is to select the target for active track or
auto-focus, there's also another lever down here,
which you can release.
And this is another safety release right here,
which will completely take off the handle.
And then on the inside here,
there's another button where you can press it in the hold to
quickly activate sport mode.
And then let's flip over to the right handle,
same type of deal with the lever to position the handle.
We have a record button,
right where your thumb would rest. Now top instead of having
the joystick, I have this focus wheel,
and this is really cool because I have it on auto focus
right now. So if I put my hand out front,
you can actually see this dial turning, right?
But if it focuses on the wrong thing,
I can actually stop it and force it and shift it into a
different position if needed. And then once you let go,
it goes back into autofocus. So really cool stuff.
And then here, we also have focus peaking.
Now I did once mess up and try to activate the peaking and
actually cut a shot mid take during a job.
So that was embarrassing. I had to go,
let's sorry everybody. Can we reset?
I cut the camera and get the slate back in there just don't
be an idiot like me and try not to mix these up and the mode
button. This will toggle you between your ND filters,
your ISO or your aperture,
and you can use the wheel to adjust those settings.
And one of the little things that's kind of cool when you're
switching the ND filters with this is you can actually feel
it click into place as you're switching the filters.
So this can be something that's smooth or it moves on its
own or has a little tactile clicking feel into it.
So pretty cool stuff. And on this side,
if we double press the trigger, it will activate it.
The Z axis and this side also can be removed the same way
the other side can. And this button right here,
it will be to toggle the auto-focus on an off.
So I think they did a really good job placing all the most
important buttons right here on the grip.
So we don't really have to let go of it so much.
The right side of the body's pretty straight forward.
You off the port where you attached to display,
you have the mic and headphone Jack 3.5 belt and HDMI,
which is a full-size, and DC in for power.
Then this right here with the antennas is the wireless video
transmitter.
So this will allow me to see the video feed on that wireless
monitor.
And I love how clean it is and how it's just integrated and
sandwiched in between the battery and the body, doesn't
really get in the way with cables and all these things
dangling off the camera. So I love that.
And DJI also told us there's going to be another optional
module, which will give us XLR inputs and SDI output.
So that may be interesting for some of us.
And all of this is going to be powered off of one TB 50
battery. You may have some of these things.
around, like if you have a Ronin 2 just slides in like that.
Now this charging hub is pretty cool.
It just opens up like that and you drop in a battery to
charge. It also has three other slots,
so you can have four charging.
And also what's cool is that these charge way faster than
they drain,
as long as you've got one on the charger and one on the
camera,
you can just flip flop them and you could literally leave
your camera on as long as you need to.
Cause the same also goes for the batteries for the external
wireless monitor and between this and the TB 50,
you can pretty much power.
All the things that we've talked about and this all gets
charged off one outlet. Now, DJI did,
let me take this pre-production camera out to one of my
jobs,
which was really nice, because usually prepping and packing
for one of those shoots can be such a nightmare. I mean,
you got your big old gimbal with its own battery and its own
charger and a camera with its own battery and its charger
and memory cards. And then you got your focus unit,
which has its own batteries and the monitor that needs its
own battery and then D-Tap to power,
the transmitter and the receiver. It's just,
you forget one thing and you're totally screwed,
but this was just grabbing the camera wireless monitor if
you need it. And the chargers.
And that's pretty much it, you know,
I used to do a lot of these jobs where I had to do a lot of
traveling for,
and they required a camera with a lot of resolution,
a good codec, good colors.
I was stabilized on a gimbal.
And if this was around back then I would have totally used
it because we had to lug around so much gear.
Every time we had to move to the next city,
we had to pack everything up and travel with it and unpack
and reset everything up.
This would have definitely made my life a whole lot easier.
Now of course,
any professional camera needs to be able to record for an
hour straight without overheating. And yes,
I did do my incubator tests at a hundred,
three degrees Fahrenheit. It did totally fine.
Now I got to hand it to DJI for their first pro camera of
this type.
They're really coming out of the gate hot and they're really
not holding much back, but anyways,
let me know if you have any questions about this Ronin
4D down there in the comments,
and I'll try to respond to a bunch of them in the follow up
video,
but for now I'm going to try to go get in the shade because
I am definitely getting some sunburn
I should have worn sunscreen, which is yeah.
I have like such the worst tan look at, oh my God,