DJI MINI 3 PRO - Everything You Need To Know!

This is the DJI Mini 3 Pro, and this drone is pretty incredible. So in this video, I wanna go through 10 different things that you need to know about the DJI Mini 3 Pro, and I'm gonna show you why I think this is gonna be the go-to drone for a lot of creators. So I'm sure some of you are wondering where this sits in DJI's lineup. Is it like a Mini 2, or is it more like an Air 2 or Air 2S? Well, I see it sitting somewhere in the middle, because it's tiny, it's super small, it's the same size as the Mini 2, completely redesigned, but the same weight class, but it has all the features of the Air 2, plus some extra features. So I wouldn't say that this is a complete replacement for the Mini 2, but if you had limitations working with the Mini 2, then this is gonna be the drone that you're gonna wanna get. Number one, let's talk about frame rates and resolutions. So I shoot a lot of video content, and this drone has 4K 60 frames per second. And the big thing for me is that the drone doesn't crop in on the footage when you switch it to 4K 60. On this drone, you get the same width no matter which frame rate or resolution that you work with. Now the majority of what I've been flying in has been 4K 60 and 4K 30. And in this drone, in 4K 30, 25, or 24, you have a high quality mode. So your footage is gonna look even better when you shoot in those frame rates. Number two is active track. And this is a huge one for me, because I like to go out and film myself, and I'm usually solo, so I wanna have good tracking in a drone. Now the drone that I've been using up until this point has been the Mavic 3, and that one has awesome tracking. And in the Mini 2, you never had access to real tracking. You could do it from a third-party app, but it never really worked that good. I found some solutions that could work with the Mini 2, but the Mini 3 Pro actually has good tracking built in. And what I found is that when you maintain a clear line of sight between the drone and you, the drone will stay locked on, and it's gonna continue to track. And it has all the same tracking features that you can find in other DJI drones. You can move the drone around in the sky while it's tracking you, and be able to reframe. And also you could track from the front, from behind. You could do a full orbit around yourself while you're tracking. And you could also use the parallel mode, set it in any direction, and it's gonna continually track you with the drone facing in that one direction. Now because of the new controller, I haven't mounted this to my bike yet, but most of my tracking has been hiking or walking, and the tracking has worked great. One of the things that I'm gonna do is play around with this tracking on faster moving objects and really test it. But from my experience working with other DJI drones and working with the Mini 3 for the last couple of weeks, the tracking works great, and it works just like the other drones. Now one thing I've noticed they've added in the menu is a way for it to auto-select a person. So as you can see here on the screen, it knows that there's a person, and then you can click the plus icon and it's gonna lock onto that subject. And it's easier to lock onto your subject than dragging corner to corner. Number three is obstacle avoidance. With ActiveTrack, you need some sort of obstacle avoidance because a lot of times your drone is gonna be moving itself in the sky. And also when you're flying, you wanna have this sense of security so that you don't hit an object. When I first got this drone, none of the obstacle avoidance was working because I was using beta firmware and I crashed it a few times. But now that the obstacle avoidance is working, I haven't run into anything. And this has been a huge help when it's locked on and it's tracking me and I'm doing like a walk and talk, walking forward. Well, the Mini 3 Pro is able to sense the trees and the ground moving up and down. And I found that it's worked really well in being able to avoid any obstacles. Now one thing with this drone is that it only has obstacle avoidance in the front, in the back, and on the bottom. So you don't have those side to side sensors. Now this comes into play if you're flying the drone sideways or you're doing something like an orbit around yourself. So you can track a subject and spin in a 360. However, it might run into something when you do that. You just have to pay attention that you're not gonna run into something on the side. The obstacle avoidance will work well if it's front to back or the ground moving up or down, but it's not gonna work side to side because there's no sensors. Number four is the Pro Controller. This thing is pretty amazing because it has everything that you need to control the drone and it's in a small, lightweight package. It's got a screen on the bottom, it's got your joysticks, you have custom buttons on the back, and you have zoom and gimbal controls on the top along with your shutter button for your video and your photo. Everything you need to fly your drone is here and if you go into the menu, you can set the two custom buttons in the back to do some extra functions so that you never have to dig into the menus when you're actually out flying. I've found that this controller is lightweight, it's easy to hold, and it's just thought out. This works super well. Your thumbsticks go right in the back of the controller. Nothing sticks out, so it's easy to pack into a backpack and it's just super clean. Now, you have a micro SD card slot on the controller so you can download your footage from the drone directly to your card in the controller and you don't have to take the card out of the drone. You could also do screen records if you're making videos where you wanna show your screen. Now, this controller has four hours of battery life so you can run through multiple batteries with your drone and you don't have to worry about charging your controller. It just makes the whole process super easy working with this pro controller. Number five, let's talk about photography. So in this drone, you have the ability to shoot a 48 megapixel photo. So there's two different modes. You could either do regular photos or 48 megapixel photos, which are much bigger. You could also shoot in JPEG or RAW. So if you're someone who shoots more photography, you'll get a lot of resolution out of this little camera. And also one of the big features is now you can do vertical shooting. So DJI has redesigned the gimbal to make it much more stable so you don't have the horizon shift. But with this redesign, the camera can also flip vertically. So if you wanna shoot more vertical photos, well, now you can do it with this drone and you don't have to crop in on a horizontal photo. Now, number six, let's talk about the controls you have over your camera. So you have access to auto or pro settings, which allow you to basically control everything, ISO, shutter speed, white balance. You can do it all easily on the screen. Now, a huge advantage over the Mini 2 is that you now have access to D-Cinelike. And this is a mode that flattens out your image, pulls out the saturation, so you have more ability to do color grading in your editing software. With the Mini 2, you basically have one look. You have the standard look. Now, you could shoot that way in this drone, and I've shot a lot of footage with the standard look and it looks great. But if you are someone who wants to process your footage even more, well, you can set it in D-Cinelike. It's gonna flatten out your image, which gives you a little bit more room for your dynamic range so you don't blow out your highlights. And then you could create a look for your footage when you bring it through your editing software. Now, this drone has a fixed aperture at 1.7, but you can get ND filters. I don't have a set of ND filters for this drone yet, so I can't speak on working with them with this drone, but the lens itself is very easy to pop off. So once they're available, that's gonna be one thing that I'm gonna get so that I can bring down my shutter speed when I'm out flying. Now, one of the other things that's coming out is a wide lens for this. So if you want an even wider field of view, you'll be able to put it on the front of this lens and be able to get a wider field of view. Once I have access to those filters and the lens, I'll do a follow-up video to show how they work. Number seven, let's talk about the flight time. So DJI states in ideal conditions, this drone will last 34 minutes. And I found that when I'm out flying, it definitely feels longer than other drones that I've worked with. So it does push more towards 30 minutes of flight time. Now I need to go do some side-by-side tests with the Mavic 3, the Mini 3, the Air 2S, and really see how they all perform. But one thing that I've noticed is when I'm out flying, I haven't needed to rush the drone back. Every time I look down at the controller, it'll have plenty of battery, and I'll be able to stay up there and get a lot more shots. I was flying out in the desert, and I only had to switch the battery once to get a ton of footage from this valley that I was filming in. Number eight is the 60 degree upward angle. With the redesign of this front end of the drone, you can actually tell there's a notch cut out on the top, and that allows the camera to rotate up, and you don't see the propellers. So you could get these shots where you're looking straight up at a building or straight up at a tree, because you could go 60 degrees up. It's pretty wild to be able to have this ability to look straight down, and then basically look straight up. You have a ton of flexibility with this gimbal. I think there's gonna be a lot of creative potential with this ability to point your camera 60 degrees up. Number nine is zoom features. So depending on the mode that you're in, you have access to different zoom features. In 4K, you could zoom up to two times. In HD, you can zoom up to four times, and this gives you more creative potential because you can zoom in and do some different shots with a little bit more parallax in the background. Now, this isn't an optical zoom, so it's not the lens actually zooming in. It's a digital zoom, but it doesn't look as good as if you just shot the wide lens with a 1X zoom. And as I said earlier, on the new controller, you now have access to zooming on the controller itself. So you have a gimbal wheel and a zoom wheel. And this makes it a lot easier to use your zooming when you're out filming. Number 10 is the redesign of the drone. With this drone, it looks completely different. You have these two big sensors, but then like I said, you have this horseshoe cutout so you can point the gimbal up. And then also on the bottom, you have your landing gear right here on the body itself so that your arms can be a little bit further off the ground when you take off. And then for the battery, it's just the whole back end and you have this release on either side of the drone where you have to press in to pull out. So there's really no chance of the battery accidentally popping out of this drone. I think overall, this redesign makes it a much more functional drone. So who is this drone for? I think there's a lot of creators who are gonna love the features that this has, and it just gives you more creative potential, especially having the obstacle avoidance, the active track, the D-Cine-like, and of course, the ability to shoot high-res photos and vertical shooting. I think for creators who do a lot of short-form content, this vertical feature is gonna be super useful. I know for me, this is probably gonna be the drone that I keep with me wherever I go. It packs super small in a backpack and it gives me all the features that I need when I'm out making videos. Now next, make sure you check out this video right here, which goes through some different drone moves that you can use when you're flying the Mini 3. And I'm gonna show you exactly how to perform these moves when you're out flying. I'll see you over there.