I like cars, as anyone who knows me will attest, I even cut my journalistic teeth as a motorsport photo journo (and I am still accredited) w-a-y back in the late 70s when Brock, Moffat, Grice and Bond were household names.
Back then I even owned a Torana A9X (which I later sold – sob!), and had a succession of desirable cars ever since, culminating in my current weapon of choice, a Holden Monaro 5.7 litre 6 speed owned from new.
If my cars were drones, then my first, a genuine Mini Cooper S would be the DJI Mini 2, lightweight, quick and nimble. My second last car, an Opel (Holden) Calibra, a DJI Mini 3, with lots of features, but still small and agile. In terms of power, I guess the Monaro would be an Air2S, – plenty of grunt and stamina.
But the one that arrived today, would surely be a Lamborghini Guillardo. And this is the DJI Mavic 3 Pro.
The Mavic 3 Pro is the flagship of the DJI consumer range of drones and is simply bursting at the seams with features. The most notable of course, is not one, not two but three onboard cameras. This adds a 70mm medium telephoto lens to the existing 24mm Hasselblad and 166mm telephoto that were in the standard Mavic 3.
This means you have extraordinary control, with shooting capabilities up to 5.1K / 50 frames per second and 4K / 120 frames per second video, and up to 48 megapixel stills. To get the best from these cameras, you have access to ActiveTrack, MasterShots and Hyperlapse to play with too.
For the technically minded, the Hasselblad camera supports 10-biut D-Log, 12-bit RAW and 12.8 stops of dynamic range. This puts it in the company of cameras such as the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K by way of comparison, which puts it in exalted company indeed.
Flying time is an impressive 43 minutes according to DJI but of course this is dependent on factors such as current windspeed. You do get a Cruise Control, access to Waypoint Flying and of course Return to Home (RTH) if something goes wrong.
I find Cruise Control especially interesting as it means you can effortlessly get smooth pans and movement-oriented footage. My Mini 2 and Air2S being controlled by smartphone would only do Waypoints – programmed flying if you will – by using the 3rd party Litchi software, so having Waypoints built into the controller for the Mavic 3 Pro is most welcome, as the smartphone as a controller becomes pretty well useless in bright sunlight. The RC controller mostly solves this issue.
Top speed is stated to be 74 Km/hour so in terms or power to weight, we are well inside Lambo supercar territory here!
In consumer world it’s a bit of a moot point due to the CASA regulation of making sure your drone is in line of sight at all times, but for the licenced professional – which let’s face it, at whom the Mavic 3 Pro is aimed – a range of 15Km with stable HD footage is mouth-watering.
To keep the Mavic 3 Pro in one piece, it sports full omnidirectional obstacle avoidance, which is a fancy way of saying it will automatically detect and then avoid anything in its way on all axes and in all directions. This is taken advantage of in the RTH functionality too, as while flying, it will pre-plan a safe return to home based on this data. There is some serious computing power going on here.
I haven’t flown the Mavic 3 Pro as yet; the batteries are on charge and as I started writing this, our freak November hot spell (in the 40°C area which is causing catastrophic bush fires, but thankfully away from here 200Km north) has been at least slightly broken by a roaring sea breeze.
So, it will (hopefully) be tomorrow. But on paper, the Mavic 3 Pro looks awesome and I cannot wait!
If you are interested, this particular version, the DJI Mavic 3 Pro with the DJI RC controller is on special right now at the D1 store with $200 off the list of AUD$3099.