- For me, one of the most important features
on a drone is how well does the tracking work,
so on the DJI Mini 3, you now have tracking,
which makes this such a powerful drone,
and we're gonna go out to the widest field of view,
and the drone is gonna track me
as we do this walk and talk where we talk about tracking.
So in this drone, there's a few different ways
that you can use the tracking to be able to follow you,
whether it's in front, to the sides, behind,
but there definitely are some limitations
when it comes to the tracking as well,
and I want to talk about some of those limitations
and how this drone will track you in different scenarios.
That is really bright right up there in the sun.
Now, one thing you do have to keep in mind
is that on the Mini 3, you have sensors on the front,
on the back, and on the bottom,
but you don't have side to side sensors,
so that's gonna be limiting
when it comes to actually tracking yourself,
but there are still a lot of situations
that you can use the tracking
and it's still gonna work perfectly fine.
So to see how well this tracking works,
I want to go through how you actually use the tracking
in this drone, and through this
you'll see all of these limitations that I'm talking about.
So the firmware that I'm using is right here on the screen.
This is the current firmware
at the time of recording this video,
and if there is major updates
that completely change how this tracking works,
then I'll do another video all about it.
But in its current state, DJI is using the older tracking
that you used to find on drones.
The new DJI Mavic 3 has a completely redesigned interface
that allows you to set the direction
of where you want the drone pointing,
and then it's gonna automatically find the sides,
to the front, to the corners, any direction,
whereas with the Mini 3 Pro,
you can only trace from the front or the back,
and then in the parallel mode,
you have to actually fly the drone
to where you want it positioned
when you activate the parallel.
They don't have the diagram
that allows you to set which side you want the drone on
for either of these modes.
So right now, I'm in the trace mode,
and trace basically allows you to follow
from behind or in front.
Now if you move too much to one side or to the other,
the drone will automatically swing to the back.
So really, this mode is more for tracking behind
and just basically following you
and turning with you wherever you go.
Now it does work in front,
and that's what I've been using this entire time.
However, I have been making adjustments on the controller
to make sure that the drone
stays somewhere in the front of me,
because as I kind of veer off to a side,
it doesn't necessarily follow perfectly right in front.
So I've been kind of pushing the drone left and right
as I've been doing this walk and talk.
I've also had to bring it down a few times
because this drone does track you up and down hills,
but sometimes it's not perfect,
especially I've noticed when it's following in this way.
When it's behind you, it seems to work perfect,
like it works flawlessly going up and down hills,
but when it's tracking in front,
it seems to not work as well.
Now in what's active track
there's another mode called parallel.
Now parallel's a little bit different
because you're gonna set the heading
at which you want the drone to be facing,
and then the drone is always gonna be facing that direction
no matter which way you move.
In the trace, it's gonna follow you.
So if it's behind, it's gonna weave through
and if I go this way,
well it's gonna swing around and always find your back end,
whereas in the parallel mode,
if I set it to front here and then I start walking this way,
well what's gonna happen is that the drone is gonna stay
in that direction facing that way,
and it's always gonna follow.
And so an easy way to think about it
is when you're in the trace mode,
your drone is able to rotate and follow with rotation,
whereas in the parallel mode,
once it's set the heading that you want to move,
well it doesn't rotate at all.
It's just gonna go forwards, backwards, left to right,
but it's not gonna rotate the drone to try and follow you.
It's a cool spot, so I'm gonna spin around,
and you'll see what happens with this trace mode.
It's gonna find what's back behind,
and then it's just gonna follow me,
and what's great about the tracking on a DJI drone,
if the framing's off, you can actually adjust it
by using your joysticks and recentering your subject,
or, if you do want it off to like a third,
you could put your subject in one of the thirds.
And so you could constantly be reframing and readjusting
and moving your gimbal to get the shot that you want,
and then the drone will continue to track
with your framing offset in a one way or the other.
Let's center me back up, and let's swing around.
So I'm gonna pull on the right joystick.
I'm gonna fly the drone around back to in front of me.
It's still in trace mode.
I'm gonna pause right in front,
and now it's gonna continue to track me from the front.
So what happens in this trace mode
is if I go too far left or right,
it will swing around and start following me from behind.
And you could see it's right now trying to dodge
some different plants that are in its way.
And there we go.
It's swinging behind because of that big bush.
Now what I've found with this drone
is that the tracking works well,
and so when you're doing this kind of a walk and talk
or you wanna track yourself doing something,
well as long as something is in front or back,
it's gonna avoid it,
and it's gonna go up and around it or move around.
I've actually seen it dip down and around as well,
and so for obstacle avoidance, this is solid.
I like it.
Works great.
Limitation, though, is side to side.
All right, so now I'm following back from the front,
and let's talk about some of the other modes.
So, those are the two main functions of active track.
Now you also have spotlight mode
and you have point of interest.
So spotlight mode is basically like a tripod in the sky
but it's still tracking you.
So wherever the drone is, it's gonna be in that one spot,
and then as you move,
the drone is gonna track and follow you around.
Now that's not the only function of spotlight mode,
but that is the easiest way to think about it.
The drone doesn't move unless you move it on the controller,
and the cool thing about spotlight mode
is if you want to control the drone,
you put it in spotlight mode,
it will always keep your subject centered,
and then you could control the controller
and do moves all over the place.
Like you could fly this way, that way,
you could fly over there,
and it's always gonna keep your subject centered.
And so this is super powerful to create very dynamic shots
without a lot of effort.
You just center up your subject by using the tracking,
and then push the joysticks in different directions,
and you could do some really cool stuff.
I mean this footage is just from me hiking over there.
I had it in spotlight mode and I was just flying the drone
in different directions and going up and down,
and you could see how it keeps me centered the entire time.
It's a really powerful tool to use,
and you could really get creative with it.
Now, the last tracking mode you have is point of interest.
Point of interest is simple.
It's orbit.
It's basically taking your subject,
whatever you have tracked,
and it's gonna go in a complete circle around that subject,
and you have the option to speed up
or slow down that tracking,
and you could pick which direction.
So if you want it to go left or if you want it to go right,
you could spin in that circle.
Now what is cool about using point of interest
is that you can be moving,
and it will still circle around you.
So if you're hiking down a trail,
it will continually circle around you,
so you get more dynamic footage when you fly in this way.
Now here's one of the big limitations,
no side to side sensors.
So, if you're flying in an orbit,
you gotta make sure that you have a clear line of sight
from side to side because the drone is not gonna stop
if it runs sideways into something.
It'll stop if something's right in front of it,
like this bush right here.
It's kind of dancing up and down trying to find it.
There we go.
It found the nice hole of where it could fly,
and it's gonna circle back around.
It lost me.
Oh, there it is.
Hi.
And so when you're using point of interest,
you just need to make sure
that you have a clear line of sight where you're flying.
You don't wanna get in a situation where it circles around
and then hits a tree, a bush, or a hillside,
which hopefully it's not gonna do that here.
Drone is trying to find behind me
because the way I was moving, and there we go,
it swung back around to behind me
because I'm in the trace mode.
And so this is one limitation with the current firmware
is that you have no way to keep the drone in front of you
or like in the front third and still track.
On like the Mavic 3, you have that cool little dial
where you could say I want to track from the front,
and the drone will pivot and move
and always stay in front of you,
whereas this, it's pivoting,
but it's only doing it from the back.
If it goes from the front, it's not as reliable.
So I'm gonna get down here,
and I wanna swing the drone back around,
and when you're using tracking,
you could use the full width of your sensor
or like I showed you at the beginning, you could zoom in.
So I could go into two times zoom
and get this very zoomed in cropped in shot,
or I could go back out to the full width of the sensor.
I'm gonna fly up and over all this
so it doesn't hit any of it.
One limitation with this drone
is you are stuck to line of sight.
If you go behind an object,
I just went behind one of these bushes here, it lost me.
Now it will work if it goes behind an object
and you pop back out,
but there's no guarantee and it's not perfect.
If you pop back out on the other side,
there's a chance that the drone will grab you,
but if you take too long
or it's going behind too big of an object,
well it probably will just lose you all together,
and then it's gonna do some erratic flying
because it can't find you.
Overall, I think this tracking does work well.
It's a solid addition to this size drone
and I'm gonna be using it all the time.
Now if you wanna see another video
where I actually show you how to shoot audio and video
like I've been doing in this entire video,
make sure you check out this one right here,
and I'll see you on that video.