Today we're talking about the DJI Osmo Action. I have thoughts about this camera
now. I've been using it for quite a while.
Today we're going with Arby's... Roast beef sandwiches.
Root beer float. Gotta have the Arby's sauce...
There's little seeds everywhere.
A lot of my videos
lately have been using this as the background camera.
So basically the camera that films me taking photos.
Doing the vlogging type stuff. I've been using this.
I do have the latest firmware and I think there have been a lot of
improvements on this camera since it was initially released.
So if you only looked at it back then, you're probably missing out on some of the
really good improvements. I don't know the specifics, but in general it's very stable.
I haven't had any issues with it. Giving me corrupt files or anything like
that. A big positive of action cameras and the DJI
of course is the size of it. This small compact size
is great. You can easily put it on a tripod and the tripod doesn't have to be
some big impressive thing. I use my Manfrotto
Compact Light tripod with this a lot and it's a really nice size for it.
Just good combination. So when I'm carrying
a camera, I'm carrying a bag.. backpack.. plus this is my filming camera. It's just
nice to have smaller stuff. Of course, it does have the weather resistance. I
bought a cage for this. And I actually bought a
replacement just in case once this goes out of production, I want at least
one extra front lens because you can always
drop it. I actually did drop this once already. But I had the cage on there.. so..
This didn't see any damage at all. When I bought this camera I got it with
their extra two batteries plus the charger. If I didn't
have that, this would be a lot more of a hassle for me. But having those two extra
batteries and the charger means I can get them
topped up. I bring a battery inside the camera plus an
extra. And I usually do end up using the second battery at least a little bit
of it. Audio quality is not amazing with this camera.
You can get decent stuff out of it. More of an ambient type
feel to it. Just wasn't the focus, I guess for this lens...
You want some other type of audio. So in my case I use a lapel microphone
and a recorder. Which I have a newer one right here the Olympus..ahh..
LS-P4 that I'm trying out. But in general I try to use external audio. I don't
trust the audio from this. These cameras do have a small sensors.
I think it's 1/2.3" inches, which is basically a small digicam
or really really large for phones. Image quality on this camera is not amazing.
But I think it is definitely good enough for a lot of situations. What I do
with this camera. I use it in 2.7k most of the time which...
4k on a small sensor, like this 1/2.3 inch,
I don't think it's really worth it. You will see
some sharpness improvements, but I don't think it's a lot. It's just
kind of past the point of all of that data storage that you need to do
with the 4k versus even 2.7 or 1080p. I could probably use this
in 1080p, but what I generally do with this camera and the background stuff
is that I jump in quite a bit with the 2.7k.
Because I render at 1080p. That's been really nice.
Having the extra resolution, even if it's not amazing resolution, it's still there...
Of course, one of the biggest things with an action camera is stabilization these
days, and this one is very nice. I haven't had
any issues with stabilization and getting that vlog style video helps out
a lot with the flow of my videos. Because I can
just hold it towards me. And it's good enough. It doesn't have any
focusing ability. So you don't want to have it too close to you.
Otherwise, you'll be blurred out. Holding it at arm's length for me at least...
Especially on a tripod, it's definitely far enough away that it looks good.
Not really sure how close I can get without it looking super blurry.
Try that out real quick...
Just in general this works very nicely for that vlog style stuff.
Especially with the lapel microphone that I can use to
get good audio out of it. Everything is not perfect with this
camera. The main issue that I do have.. and hopefully
they'll improve it in firmware, but I kind of doubt it at this point...
Is that I record for long periods of time when I'm out
doing the photography videos. This is just running. I don't need to
really turn it off turned on. It just adds extra hassle. And actually that's a
nice benefit just to have this thing running
even though the files do get pretty large. This splits
the video files up into four gigabyte chunks. Now, that would be fine if they
were perfectly in sync between the pieces. And I have to re-sync
every single four gigabyte chunk to the large audio
file... split it up, and at those split points
I might have lost a little bit. So hopefully
I wasn't talking between point A and point B...
you know, the first four gigabyte chunk.. and the second four gigabyte chunk.. or the third one.
The interface is easy to use, you
just swipe, up swipe down, swipe left, right..
You do have manual settings, but I personally have not used them.
I just use the automatic with either the descending d-cinelike or the normal.
When I'm outside doing photography stuff, I use normal. But when I'm..
say in here with the bright lights in the background, I might use the
d-cinelike profile to get a little bit more dynamic
range. I did look at the GoPro a lot before going with this one. The main
reason was price.. the front screen.. and just
price. So with the.. this.. versus the GoPro 8 and even the 7 that I could
find, this was significantly cheaper with that
extra two batteries plus the charger. I do have a few cheap
action cameras, and they are not comparable to something like this.
If you want a decent camera with stabilization that really works,
this is the type of thing you need to get. They're okay with stationary shots.
That was kind of a training wheels type of thing with those cheap ones to see if
it would work for what I'm doing. And it did well
enough that I really wanted to go up a step, and that was this DJI.
I do you think it was worth it. I'm going to be looking at action cameras a lot more in
the future. Another few things that I do find really
irritating about the DJI Osmo Action... Forgot to mention so we'll do it vlog
style. The first one: wi-fi, bluetooth, all the wireless
connectivity. You can't technically disable it in the
camera. So I'm going to assume here that it's wasting power
trying to find connections occasionally at least.
That's super irritating. They need to give us an option to disable that.
Another one is when you buy the camera new, as far as I can tell,
they forced me to register or basically activate the camera through
their Mimo application. It is a smartphone
application, which in my opinion, is a really stupid stupid
thing. Here's a quick test with
the action camera and the smartphone selfie camera.
See how the stabilization looks between the two.
I'm using 2.7k on the DJI and 1080p on the LG smartphone.
LG Stylo 3 specifically. Give you an idea how
something like a random smartphone would compare to..
the Osmo Action. It is tough going back to a larger
camera for my photography videos. Because it is so small. Because it does
have a really rugged nature to it. That's just a nice benefit.
I just really wish... I'm gonna keep saying it... I wish they could fix
that weird syncing issue. So that was a look at the DJI Osmo Action for
the stuff that I do. Works well enough a lot of situations.
I hope you enjoyed this video.
Scott of Photography Banzai, thanks!
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