(gentle chime)
(gentle music)
(upbeat music)
- Let's get this out of the way.
The Mavic 3 Cine is the best consumer drone
you can buy right now, if you can afford to buy it.
At $4,999, it is an expensive option.
But the combination of image quality and size,
it'll be hard to find anything better.
But that doesn't mean it's a drone for everyone.
This is the Mavic 3 Cine.
The Mavic 3 is essentially the same size as the Mavic 2 Pro.
If you look closely,
you'll notice it's a little bit longer,
about the same height, and just slightly heavier.
Basically, it is the same footprint as before,
and you won't notice much of a difference
carrying it in your bag.
The wingspan, and therefore the arms,
are a little bit longer,
which adds more room
for these slightly longer propellers too.
The new camera module is big.
And it houses the main camera, the 24 millimeter lens,
and also this 28 times hybrid zoom lens,
which I'll talk about later.
The whole camera sticks out a little bit,
which is both good and bad.
It's bad because it leaves the camera exposed,
so any potential crashes might be catastrophic.
Luckily, I didn't find myself in that situation yet.
But it's good because this camera can also tilt upwards
by quite a bit, almost 30 degrees.
Oh, also, one neat little new features that
the gimbal locks itself after flight,
meaning it will not dangle in transport.
And it makes it easier to put this muzzle on.
And I'm going to call it a muzzle because, I don't know,
it just feels like a muzzle.
Anyways, DJI released two Mavic 3s.
The biggest difference between the regular Mavic 3
and the Cine is that the Cine has one terabyte SSD
and it can shoot 5.1K ProRes 422 HQ video
up to 50 frames per second.
Other than that, everything else is identical.
We'll dive into the camera quality real soon,
but out of all those improvements over the Mavic 2 Pro,
the one I noticed the most was the battery life.
It's rated for 46 minutes,
and you don't always get 46 minutes of flight time.
But compared to 31 minutes that the Mavic 2 Pro had,
it is very noticeable once you start flying around.
I'm very used to trying
to maximize battery life with each flight,
but every time I'd glance over,
I'd be surprised I still have around 70 to 75% battery life.
If you buy the $5,000 bundle, which, by the way,
is the only way you can buy the cine version,
it's not sold by itself,
you get three batteries and plenty of flight time.
Also, this might be minor to most,
but it's kind of a big deal for me,
the charging hub is now USB-C,
meaning you can charge it basically on anything
that supports USB-C charging.
Just know that each one of those batteries takes a while
to charge on a 65 watt charger.
So plan accordingly.
It took me about an hour and 45 minutes
to charge from 11% all the way up to 100%.
All right, camera time.
So we showed you all the specs before,
but the most important one is the sensor size.
This sensor is four thirds inch of a sensor,
which is to say it is third of an inch larger
than the Mavic 2 Pro.
It is also four by three sensor,
which means your photos are no longer
in three by two aspect ratio.
So with increasing sensor size,
you get better noise handling, richer detail,
greater dynamic range, reduced diffraction,
better depth of field,
which you don't really notice on drones,
effectively, better image quality all around.
So let's look at some of the clips.
All these clips you're looking at right now
are shot anywhere from ISO 800 to 6,400.
And they look extremely good.
To be fair, this whole scene as a good amount of light
coming from the buildings,
and there's some real-life ray tracing happening
with the reflections on the ground.
But if you're really looking for noise,
then you should look at the dark blue sky here.
This is at 200%.
It's definitely noisy, but it's really not that bad.
Overall, everything from that night looks extremely good.
Now let's take a look at the locked off shot
for more direct ISO comparison.
Traditionally, drone cameras have really steep
decline in quality as you keep adding more ISO.
And that's the case here.
But the downgrade isn't as steep as before.
3,200 is pushing it, 6,400 is really pushing it.
And in all seriousness,
you really won't need to shoot at 6,400 as often.
I tried doing it here and it doesn't look that good.
All those shots were shot in ProRes,
but you are watching this on YouTube's player
after it was exported to an H.264 format,
and then compressed again by YouTube.
So you're not really going to be able
to see every little detail here.
I am including links in the description
where you can download those files yourself and take a look.
The built-in one terabyte SSD on the cine model
has enough room for about two hours of 5.1K
24 frames per second ProRes footage.
Unfortunately, the SSD is not user replaceable,
but there is a micro SD slot here too,
which you can use to store your H.264 and H.265 clips,
but not ProRes.
But the differences between the two codecs
are really not that noticeable.
So looking at the clips in the Premiere timeline,
it's actually really hard to notice much of a difference
in just overall clarity and sharpness.
So for the sake of this demo,
we're going to start manipulating clips
by lifting up the shadows all the way up,
overall exposure, we're going to add some saturation.
I know this looks ugly,
but looking back and forth between these two clips,
I don't really see much of a difference.
So I've duplicated these clips
and I started adding more color to it,
especially in the sky, adding some blue.
And you can sort of tell that the H.264 isn't holding up
as well as the ProRes in the top right corner.
But those differences are so minor.
If I were to do a blind test
and try to guess which is which, I really wouldn't know.
The bottom line is you don't really notice any difference
between the two codecs.
But some of you who do drone work professionally
and work for production houses or on big productions,
you often need to shoot and deliver files in ProRes.
So now you have that option.
I also think is just remarkable we live in the age
where you're able to shoot ProRes videos on our phones
and now the drones of this size.
But most who aren't using drones professionally
will still reap the benefits just from this larger sensor,
higher bit rate,
and more frames in the standard Mavic 3 for far less money.
This new camera can also shoot 4K
up to 120 frames per second.
I'm over the moon
that we can now shoot 120 frames per second in 4K,
but there is a little bit of cropping.
And don't get me wrong, the footage still looks really good.
Just know that you're not using the entire sensor
when you're in this mode.
And honestly,
I can't get enough of these silky smooth waves.
If 60 frames per second is enough for you,
then there won't be any cropping there.
(upbeat music)
When it comes to the photos,
the differences between the two drones
are not as obvious at first.
You might find it surprising that
the Mavic 3 dynamic range is rated for 12.8 stops
compared to Mavic 2 Pro's 14 stops of dynamic range.
But that doesn't tell the whole story.
First, let's take a look at that dynamic range
that you get out of a single image
with some very quick Lightroom adjustments.
So here's a more challenging sunset photo,
shooting straight into the sun.
We're gonna by just the exposure, lifting shadows,
dragging down the highlights.
And you can get a really nice photo out of it.
Lifting those shadows does reveal a lot of noise,
but it's really not that bad.
You can clean that up manually.
So yeah, you can still get a good photo
without it looking too artificial.
So looking at the side-by-side photos
taken with the Mavic 3 and the Mavic 2 Pro,
you will start noticing the differences,
but only if you look really closely.
First, the Mavic 3 is a little bit wider
because of that 24 millimeter lens.
And the color straight out of the camera
are wildly different here.
So I'm just going to match the white balance values first.
Both of these photos are shot at relatively high ISO.
At 1600 ISO.
And if we zoom in at like 300%,
you will see how much clearer the sky is in the background.
And also how much smaller the noise grains are too.
I'll give you one more example here.
Both of these photos again were shot at 1600 ISO,
and it just looks so much cleaner.
Upon hearing the photo specs for this camera,
I was a little bit worried
that we're not getting much of an improvement
between the Mavic 3, Mavic 2 Pro, or even the Air 2S.
It was still just 20 megapixels
and it was rated for less dynamic range than before.
But there's a lot more detail available,
even if you have to go hunting to find it.
(gentle music)
Okay, lastly,
this brings me to the final thing I want to talk about,
and that is the hybrid lens.
So, okay, I don't love it.
I understand why it exists,
but I'm not convinced it's entirely necessary.
It's fun, sure.
And sometimes you can find some cool things
or just look around,
but don't expect miracles
in terms of just pure image quality.
It's a separate lens
with a separate half an inch CMOS sensor
sitting above the main camera.
It escapable 28 times zoom,
or 162 millimeters in focal length.
You can't shoot in ProRes with it, which is understandable.
And you cannot shoot in DLOG,
which is a little bit less understandable.
And you're locked in at 4K or 1080P at 30 frames per second.
So when you enter the explore mode
by tapping on these binoculars here,
you enable digital zoom.
Okay, at first,
that digital zoom is happening on the main lens.
And I think that the 2X zoom looks really decent.
Once you get to 7X zoom,
that's when the switch happens
and the hybrid lens takes over.
And the 7X looks pretty good too.
See how much clear the Wells Fargo sign is over here?
But once you start going to 14 times or 28 times,
it's really not something you'd just proudly post
on your portfolio.
Also, you cannot take raw photos while in the explore mode.
Just 12 megapixel JPEGs, and some of them look pretty good.
Okay, few last quick things regarding photos.
The minimal shutter speed is two seconds.
Long exposure drone photos are often hard to pull off,
but I do wish that shutter speed was a little bit longer.
And lastly, aperture is adjustable from f2.8
all the way to f11,
which works for both photos and video, of course.
All right. I threw a lot of information at you.
So what I want to do next is go through my notes app
and just read some of the key takeaways
that I've written down as I was reviewing this drone.
So video quality is incredible.
5.1K is a decent resolution bump.
ProRes is really not for everyone.
4K60 without cropping is fantastic.
4K120 even with cropping is incredible.
Photos on paper didn't get much of a spec update,
but that sensor does make for big quality bump.
Battery life is noticeably better.
Vertical descent is much faster than before.
APAS is also better,
and thus the return to home is improved.
But 99% of the time,
I just fly back manually because it's just faster.
So DJI's Lightspeed USB-C cable is actually amazing
and sort of necessary when transferring these big files.
The provided ND filters are okay.
I did notice some green color casts,
especially with longer exposure photos.
But also the Mavic 3 feel a little bit unfinished.
A lot of the features weren't available.
ActiveTrack wasn't available.
MasterShots were not available.
Panoramic photos, which I use all the time,
they were not available during my testing.
Hyperlapse is also not available.
The wide angle lens attachment
apparently is coming down the line.
I'm very curious to see how that works.
Also not available.
So all the core features
that were available during my testing
worked exceptionally well.
But the list of things that is not ready is quite long.
There's the new remote controller in the cine bundle.
It is the DJI RC Pro,
which is very similar to the smart controller
that came out a couple of years ago.
It has a great screen,
operating system built on top of the OS.
Has decent but not exceptional battery life.
I can get anywhere from three to six hours,
depending mostly on the screen brightness.
So there are new obstacle avoidance sensor on this drone,
they're still omnidirectional,
and they're finally not as sensitive
or as obnoxiously loud in the software as before.
Also, the controller numerically tells you
how close you are to objects.
So that really helps when you're flying near trees
or buildings and stuff like that.
Okay, OcuSync 3+ is fantastic.
I didn't anticipate a big change here,
but I really did notice a difference.
Not in range, but overall steadiness of the connection,
especially when going behind buildings or trees.
It wasn't as big of a problem as before
and I would not lose signal whatsoever.
Okay, last two things.
APAS 5 and ActiveTrack,
I didn't actually have time to test these
because these features were not available
during my testing period.
APAS has got enabled a few days ago,
but ActiveTrack is still not ready
and it's probably going to be ready in January
from what DJI tells me.
I still fly with sensors off, but when I did turn them on,
they were far less aggressive and annoying them before.
I'm expecting some major improvement from DJI
in this category.
Everyone is waiting for them to catch up with Skydio.
And that is a very high bar.
So we're just going to have to wait and see.
So there are things I was hoping to see with this drone
after years of rumors.
One which was built in NDs.
It's not here.
That's fine, I guess.
Part of me was hoping for interchangeable lenses.
And I still think those would be far more useful
than the hybrid lens,
but I do agree with a lot of the choices that DJI made here.
Increasing the sensor size
instead of simply increasing resolution for one.
Enabling 4K up to 120 frames per second,
and adding ProRes video is going to be tempting
for a lot of people.
This drone is now very close to being an Inspire 2
and it's just this big.
So do I recommend this drone?
Yes, I said it on top.
It is the best drone you can find.
And if you can afford it and know you'll use it for,
just go for it.
$5,000 is a lot of money.
And if you add warranty on top of that,
and if you live in a place
where you've got to pay high sales taxes,
that price can go up really quickly.
If you're a hobbyist or a prosumer
mostly posting on your social feeds,
you can probably get away with an Air 2 or 2S
or even a Mini 2.
If you're a bit more sensitive about image quality,
do this professionally,
want the best of the best in a relatively small package
and have enough computing power
to edit these massive files, and storage,
you really can't go wrong with the Mavic 3
or the Mavic 3 Cine.
But I still strongly recommend
that you be honest with yourself
and see if you're actually going to benefit
from those ProRes files or built-in storage.
And you'll likely save yourself a lot of money.
Okay, everyone, thank you so much for watching.
A lot of you sent in questions
and I hope I answered most of them.
But if you still have more questions,
just drop them below and we'll have a chat.
Cool.