- About two weeks ago
I was a few thousand miles away from the office.
So, I'm currently on vacation in Iceland,
and I decided to do a little bit of work.
A day before I left for my trip,
I was able to get my hands on,
the new DJI Mavic 2.
(electric music)
The unit I had with me was the Mavic 2 Pro,
but we'll cover both the Pro and the Zoom in this video.
I attempted to film this in Iceland, but the audio--
(wind blows)
Yeah, it wasn't great.
But now we're doing this in the studio,
which works out better since I have more time
to test out all of the new and or upgraded features too.
Now with over eight hours of flight time with two Mavic 2s,
I'm ready to tell you why these drones
are changing aerial photography.
The new Mavic 2 Pro and Zoom are slightly bigger
than the old Mavic Pro Platinum,
you really won't notice the difference at first,
but what you will notice
is that it is heavier than what you expect.
Otherwise you're looking at the same portable design
with the original Mavic,
which makes it a good portable drone.
It also has the same props found in the Mavic Pro Platinum,
meaning this drone is a relatively quiet one.
(drone humming)
The difference between these two is A, sensor size,
and B, the zoom has, well, zoom.
Real optical zoom that lets you get twice as close
without losing quality.
Lastly, the Gimbal and Bow seem to be really robust.
So you might get away with crashing this thing.
That's something I really don't have an interest in testing,
but there are plenty of other YouTubers
who love destroying gadgets for your pleasure.
Filming with the Pro has been great.
From connectivity, various modes, and most importantly,
superb image quality.
The 1" CMOS Sensor with optics doesn't make a big
difference when it comes to video and photo quality.
A built issued 10-bit 4K video and D-log
truly helps to maximize what you get out of it.
The zoom on the other hand has a smaller sensor
and it doesn't have a true flat profile.
It does have a Cinelike which is what we saw
in the Mavic Air, but it just doesn't retain
the same amount of data.
You should be aware that however the only way
to shoot D-log on the PRO is if you are shooting
in H265 which in theory is a better compression
system, but in practice isn't widely adopted yet.
Reviewing footage with Premiere on my relatively
fast MacBook Pro has been a real struggle,
and I had to create proxies for all of my files.
The Mavic 2 PRO is the first DJI drone with HDR
and it does make some difference in exposure
for certain scenes but truthfully D-log
just looks better to me.
Also quick note I tend to leave my white balance
to auto, just to see what the camera chooses.
And to me it seems to be a bit on the warmer side
although the colors do look very accurate.
Second note I didn't have neutral density filters
for this drone so some shots didn't come out as good
as they could've.
DJI says the units are coming for both units.
But it'll be a lot easier if these were just
built in from the start.
All right lets dissect D-log footage a bit more.
When you are shooting in very low lights ISO100-200
you'll get really clean footage. No noticeable noise.
Even when you zoom-in you are still getting
very good results, when bumping up the ISO
obviously more noise introduce, especially
in the shadows.
It's more noise than you would expect from
this drone, but it's still not as bad
as what you get from the smaller sensor
that is in the Mavic 2 Zoom.
Nevertheless footage that you get on the
Mavic 2 Pro is the best you can get from a
drone of this size.
One more quick note: Unlike the Phantom 4 PRO v2
which can shoot 4k at 60fps, the Mavic 2 Pro
can shoot 4k up to 30fps.
Not a deal breaker for me since I tend to shoot
at 24 frames and both can shoot
slow mo at 120 frames at 1080p.
And I only mention this so I can have an excuse
to put this clip in the video.
Another new mode you get is hyperlapse.
I do love how is implemented into this southbreak
you choose your interval and the total runtime
of the clip.
Mavic does the rest.
Video is out in your phone and its ready to use...
Or close to it.
Unfortunately the hyperlapse footage isn't stabilized
So its too shaken and basically unusable.
On a few occasions it even randomly changed my
exposure setting.
Either way there is an option to save photos
individually so more often than not,
I'll just process those myself in AfterEffects.
And lastly there is the Dolly Zoom
which you obviously get in the Zoom model.
It lets you make cool shots like this.
But only in 1080p not in 4K... sorry.
The PRO's new sensor can shoot 20 MP photos.
And as someone who shoots photos with this drone
more often than video. It is a joy to use.
And they are a big step up from what
we had before.
Not only by pixel size but color just seems
very accurate to what you see in real life.
This isn't the case with the Zoom.
Photos look great even though they are 20MP,
but once they start editing the raw files
the colors just didn't look as true.
On both drones you'll find all the same shootings
you had before: Pano, vertical Pano,
360 spherical photos.
And on the Zoom you get this mode called
"Super resolution".
Takes 9 separate photos which then sitches
together into one massive 48 Mega pixel image.
And the differences are evident.
Last thing when it comes to photos
is the new Hyperlight mode which supposedly
helps with noise reduction in lower light situations.
Here are three photos shot in JPG, Hyperlight, and HDR.
To me there is a slight improvement, but all
three samples examples tried at 1600 ISO
look pretty noise, if anything Hyperlight mode
added a bit of chromatic aberration
although that is an easy fix.
When it comes to photos deciding between these two
can be tough, it might seem like the PRO is
better on paper because it has a bigger sensor.
But the Zoom has a number of features that
you just don't get with the PRO.
The zoom and Super Resolution.
At the end of the day it might come down to price.
All right that was a lot.
But we still have a few things left to cover,
I'm just gonna go through this real quickly.
First one: OcuSync 2.
Absolutely loved it, can comfortably say
this is the first time I haven't had a single
interference with signal.
Even when I maybe flew it further than it was allowed.
No issues there whatsoever.
It even gives me 1080p previews and caching
right on the phone, so I can edit there.
But I really don't see myself ever doing that.
Second one: Battery life.
Advertised 31-minutes of flight.
Seems possible under perfect conditions,
but most I got out of it comfortably was 24 minutes.
Just because I didn't want to find myself in a
situation where I lose battery mid flight.
Which actually happened once with a different drone,
I'll tell you the story in the encore.
Third one: Remote control.
Same old design you will find in the original
Mavic and Mavic Air plus the screen.
Although there is a switch in the side which
lets you toggle between Sport, Program, and Tripod mode.
And I'm happy to report their greatest invention
ever is back; removable joysticks.
Gosh I love those things.
Are we done here?
- [Woman] You wanted to mention sensors and tracking.
- Right, right, right. OK
First: Sensors.
There are two new senors on this drone
the side senors which help you when you
are tracking your subject.
Those are only active in tripod mode and,
when you are using active track.
There is also a pair of LED lights
at the bottom of the drone which help
with the bottom sensors and landing in
low light conditions. Whatever.
The Mavic 2s have also a 3D mapping feature
that helps predicting where a person or a car
would go in the case they are obstructed by an
overhead object.
The drone was good at following me around
and avoiding objects but it wasn't super fluid.
It was a little bit tricky when I went behind a pillar.
I'm excited to see how this gets improved overtime.
Alright, here is the bottom line.
A lot of the updates that we got with the new Mavics
are updates you would expect.
Better obstacle avoidance, more sensors,
better conectivity, quieter operation, and
yeah I guess longer battery life.
But what really stands out is how these two new
drones are elevating aero photography and videography.
The PRO gives you noticeable better video quality
that you could ever get with a drone of this size.
While the Zoom gives you new tools to completely
change how your drone photography looks.
These new drones make you think differently
about the creative possibilities you can get out
of your drone.
In addition to that, these drones just work great.
So you don't have to worry about connectivity,
stability, crashing or any other headaches
that you used to have to deal with
when with flying a drone.
Instead you can just focus on getting the shot.
Alright I promised you the story early so
here we go real fast:
I was flying my Mavic Air which is white by the way.
It was winter, it ran out of batteries.
Fell into the forest, I went looking for it
in the snow which was up to my knees.
It took two hours to find.
But apparently it has a find my drone feature,
so it pings sound, it really didn't help
that much but I found it.