- This is the DJI Action number 2.
They've completely redesigned this camera
and packed a ton of features into this tiny little body.
So in this video, I want to go through
what this camera is all about,
and we're going to go through 10 reasons why you would want
to get the DJI Action number 2.
(upbeat music)
So this is pretty incredible, I am at Utah's Grand Canyon.
Like this is absolutely insane.
I was just in Alaska a few days ago,
testing the Pro camera that just came out for DJI.
And now I'm out in Utah testing the Action 2.
And I really wanted to show the Action 2,
in a bunch of different settings.
So I shot some footage up in Alaska and we're shooting a
bunch of footage here as we're overlanding through these
different spots throughout Utah,
and then just testing a lot of the different features that
are packed into this camera.
But I just want to start with number one,
which is the camera redesign.
So you'll notice right away that this camera looks very
different than other action cameras.
It's a small cube format.
And one of the big changes with this camera,
it's now magnetic.
So you have these different camera modules that you put on
the bottom of the camera to add an extra battery or to add
an additional screen.
And by using this modular setup,
the main camera has an internal battery and internal memory.
However, when you connect it to one of the bottom units,
you can now use an SD card and the bottom units are also
additional batteries.
Now the camera has 155 degree field of view,
and it's an F 2.8 lens.
So you get the super ultra wide view and it looks really
good.
So there's three different modes that you can shoot in,
the standard, which is basically like linear on a GoPro.
That's where you get rid of that bubble effect.
Then you can shoot in wide and then you can shoot in ultra
wide, which gives you that full field of view.
And you can just see from this footage, even in my Jeep,
when this is super close to me, you get a super wide shot,
and it's just very useful in those tight settings or the
situations where you're shooting action style content,
and you want to see more.
But a lot of times I've been shooting on the standard mode
and it looks great.
It's easy enough to hold an arm stretch away,
be able to Vlog, but you're also getting
a field of view that looks great
for just standard looking footage,
where you don't get that bubble effect.
The camera unit itself is waterproof and the additional
units, which I'll talk about in a second, those ones aren't.
But if you're just using the camera as a standalone,
it is a waterproof camera.
It's a 12 megapixel one in one seven inch sensor.
And one thing that you can do on this camera is zoom up to
four times internally.
So if you want to get some zoomed in shots,
you can go up to four times.
So number two is the built-in battery
and internal memory on the main camera unit.
I know some of you will say that having an internal battery
is actually a bad thing, but the way that this camera works,
it's definitely thought out.
So on this camera unit, it's small.
It's like the go-to from Insta 360,
a little bit bigger than that,
but you have a built-in battery.
And the internal memory is 22.4 gigabytes.
It's kind of a weird number,
but when I go to the internal memory,
it says 22.4 when it's formatted.
So that gives you enough time to shoot
a decent amount of content.
But how this camera works is you have these additional units
that you attach on the bottom and you can transfer the data
from the camera to an SD card that's on the bottom unit.
So this one is a battery unit,
and then you also have a screen unit.
So the screen unit has a screen battery and SD card.
And then the battery unit only has a battery and an SD card.
So basically you can charge your camera off of these units,
and then you can also offload your footage.
And if you have the bottom unit attached,
while you're filming,
you can just record directly to the SD card.
So number three is the magnetic mounts.
So the way that the Action 2 is built is you have a magnet
on the bottom of the camera unit and that hooks
to these different attachments.
Like I said, you have a battery or you have a screen
and all of the other accessories are also magnetic.
So you can get the traditional two-prong style GoPro kind of
Mount, and it has a magnet on the top of it.
And then what's cool is on the side of the camera is you
have these two clips and these two clips will keep it
latched on.
So if you're worried about the magnet falling off,
then you have these additional clips right on the side.
And we've been testing this in a bunch of different
settings, whether it's on an FPV drone
or on our Jeeps and the clips help keep the magnet safe
when you're in these situations
where it's super bumpy and rocky.
So one thing I really like about these magnet mounts is not
only do you get the two prong Mount,
but you also get one that hooks to a 1/4-20.
So you don't have to always
be screwing something in the side.
I know it's a little thing for an attachment,
but when I've been playing around with it,
it does make a difference when you can just hook into the
1/4-20 and then have a magnet mount versus always having
to screw and unscrew these two prong for most other action
cameras to hook them on two different devices.
It just makes the whole process so much easier
and so much faster.
Number four is the chest Mount.
So you get this lanyard that comes with the Action 2.
And it just goes right on your chest,
but you put it underneath your shirt.
So then you have this little magnet Mount that goes right at
the top of that lanyard, it cinches onto your shirt,
keeps everything centered, so your camera's
not going to sway back and forth.
And then your camera just pops on with a magnet, super easy.
Now you can get that POV perspective
of your hands doing things.
So using this lanyard is so much easier than putting on a
full chest Mount and using the two-prong system to like
screw in a camera, this is just boom done.
And you can always just have
this lanyard underneath your shirt.
All right so I'm going to switch over to the Action 2,
in the Vlog mode,
but number five, is the built in stabilization.
So on this camera, you have two styles of stabilization.
You have rock steady 2.0,
which gives you stable footage in all of the settings.
So right now I'm in 4k, 30 frames per second.
And you could see that how stable this is.
Now, if I start twisting the camera,
you'll see that you don't have
your horizon completely level.
Now there is a horizon leveling mode,
and if you bump it down to 2.7 K,
you can use horizon leveling.
Let me do that real quick.
And now in this horizon steady mode,
you can twist the camera in any way, I'm rotating it 360.
Now it's upside down and the horizon is always going
to be level in the background.
Now, this is great for those situations where, you know,
the camera's moving around a ton and you want to make sure
that your horizon is always perfectly level.
So it always looks like you're getting
this perfectly stable shot.
I'm going to rotate around 360.
It's crazy, it works super well.
And you can see from some of this footage when I was out
with Jake Sloan in Alaska,
I'm walking next to him and I'm like rotating
the camera all over.
So there's definitely a little bit of bump to it,
but I was more focused on the rocks
and the horizon is completely level it's stable,
even though I'm like running and jumping over boulders and
trying to like keep my footing and not even actually paying
attention to the camera at all.
I'm just pointing in the direction of where he's at.
This is such a good mode for any sort of action sports
or any situation where things are just kind
of all over the place.
And you don't really want to worry about making sure the
camera is level.
You know, and this is a feature that I've always wanted
from action cameras, because when I'm out
like climbing mountains,
I don't want to be worried about where my camera is angled,
and most of the time the camera gets off because
you're just moving around.
So having a completely 360 horizon leveling
is only been seen in a few cameras.
And it's just an awesome feature
that they've included in the Action 2.
All right.
So let's talk about some of the slow-mo options
that you have in this camera.
So, 4k 120, that's a big point of this camera.
You can get up to 120 frames per second, slow motion.
Now you can do that in all settings,
but when you bump it down to 1080, you can get 240.
So that is super, super slow.
And you can just see how the water moves around the shot,
when you're shooting in 240 frames per second.
Now there's two ways you can shoot slow motion.
You can either shoot high frame rate mode,
which is also recording audio.
Or you can shoot in the slow motion mode,
which will do internal slow motion so that when you play it
back on your computer, it's already slowed down.
Number seven is the super wide lens.
Like I said earlier, this is 155 degree field of view.
Now with rock steady on, you crops in slightly,
with horizon steady, it's going to crop in
a little bit more, but you get this
super wide field view even in standard mode.
But now I've taken it into ultra wide mode
and I've taken off the stabilization.
So it's definitely going to be a little bit shaky,
cause there's no stabilization on this,
but you can just see how wide
this field of view actually is.
And it's just, you can get a lot out of this camera.
So whether you are mounting to your bike or your chest
or your helmet, you know,
you're going to have a lot of options to be able
to get everything that you need in the shot.
You can play with these different fields of view
to figure out what, what works best.
You know, there's going to be times where, yeah,
it's going to make sense to shoot in this ultra wide,
just so you can get that experience of being in the action,
but then you might want to shoot in the standard,
so you don't have that bubble effect.
And then you can get more standard looking footage.
So you don't have all that warping happening.
I personally like shooting in the standard
with rock steady on.
I think it gets more than enough field of view.
You still get a super wide shot and it de-warps the image
so that it looks much cleaner.
Now when putting the side-by-side with the GoPro,
we were noticing that this is wider than the linear mode
on the GoPro.
So you're getting a little bit more field of view when
you're working with the Action 2,
especially in the standard setting.
So let me just show you how the Action 2 screen works.
It's all done through swipes.
You swipe down, you have your menus,
you swipe up, you have your resolutions and frame rates,
as well as your stabilization.
So in the corner, you can go for horizon steady
or rock steady.
On the left, you pull over and you'll see all
the footage that you've already shot
And go back you can pull right,
you can see your exposure,
your white balance, your color profiles
and your field of view.
So basically everything that you need is just a quick swipe,
one direction, and a couple taps.
Number eight is the photography options
that you have in the camera.
So you can shoot JPEG or raw.
It's a DNG file and you get 4,000 by 3000 max resolution.
Now, in terms of photography modes,
you have standard photo mode, you have a timer mode,
you have a time-lapse mode and you have a hyper lapse mode.
And one thing about the field of view is you only get access
to standard or wide when you're shooting photos.
You don't have access to super wide.
And when you're using these raw DNG files,
you're really able to pull a lot more out of your photo than
if you were to shoot JPEG.
So to access your different modes in this camera,
it's using the button, not the touch screen.
So you double click the button on top,
and then you can access photo, video, slow motion,
quick clip or time-lapse.
And then the top button, if you just press once,
that's how you record or take your photo.
So number nine is that this camera was made for Vlogging.
They have a few different features that are really catered
towards creators.
So on the camera itself, you have one pinhole mic,
but as soon as you attach the monitor unit underneath,
then you get access to four different mics.
So there's three additional mics
on the screen that faces you.
So you're going to get better cleaner audio when you're
Vlogging and also the front facing screen makes it super
easy to pop this camera on and start shooting Vlog style
content, because you can see yourself
right underneath the lens.
Now, if you don't want to shoot Vlog content,
you don't need to see yourself, well, you don't have
to use this bottom screen module.
So you're saving on size and weight,
when you just use the camera as a standalone product
and you're shooting from behind,
or you don't need this additional screen,
but at those times that you do want to Vlog,
you can easily just hand hold this camera.
Right now, my thumb and finger are on either side
of the screen module.
You're not seeing my arm that much in the shot,
so you don't need some big contraption to hold this camera
and be able to get a really good looking shot for this Vlog
style content.
And number 10 is that it's just an easy experience working
with this camera.
I've had no issues of the camera freezing up,
or just stop recording or anything like that.
Like there's been no issues with the actual hardware
actually functioning properly.
And then on top of it, you just have all these features
that make it a lot easier.
So the ability to offload your footage from the camera to
the SD card is so much of a difference.
Cause when I was shooting with the Go 2 last month,
I had to come up with this method to pull the footage to my
phone and then pull it to my computer.
And it was just a huge hassle. Whereas this,
you just bring it right onto the SD card.
The modular camera is not a completely new idea,
However, DJI has executed it properly with the magnet
and the clips on the side of the camera.
And then the whole design just makes the camera easier
to use whether you are doing action sports, you're Vlogging,
or you just want a small little camera
that you can take anywhere.
And overall the camera just works super well and the footage
looks great. And at the end of the day,
that's the most important thing.
Is it an easy experience, and how does the footage look?
If the experience is easy and the footage looks good,
then I think it's a win, win for a camera.
If you want to learn more about the DJI Action number 2,
I'll put a link down below in the description and next I
highly suggest you check out this video here.
It goes through nine different methods on how you can film
yourself when you're out doing these style adventures.
I'll see you on the next one.