DJI Mavic Pro Drone - My New Hobby

[steve310002 1,198]

Two hobbies I am passionate about are flight simming and photography/film. Over the past few months I have been eyeing up a new drone called the DJI Mavic Pro which comes with a 4K camera mounted on a gimbal capable of some incredible footage and photographs. I had always kept an eye on drone technology but never was very interested before now. Well, what can I say after 3 weeks of flying the Mavic Pro? If you like flying and photography then it's a must have. It's a bit pricey (not so much compared to our simming hobby) but I can say if you can afford it, then it's completely worth the cash. The tech inside it is simply incredible. There all sorts of fancy features built in like a follow-me mode, active tracking in a variety of ways (profile, 360 around the target etc.), elevation tracking (the drone can follow the elevation of the landscape for smooth footage), a retrun to home function if you mess up, self landing once you are 1 m above the ground and trigger it, waypoint tracking, points of interest rotation, and the ability to fly up to 8km away whilst transmitting a 1080p stream to your mobile device which plugs into a nifty controller. Of course, you need to follow a ton of rules and keep line of sight (so forget the potential 8km flying distance) but once you are careful and responsible, it's a ton of fun to fly. I made the video below at the weekend testing out some ND filters I bought for the lens. I'm curious how many flight simmers on here fly drones for fun and what is your expierience and opinion of them?

 

[n4gix 4,947]

Thanks for the informative post about your "newest hobby." It looks like a lot of fun, albeit an expensive bit of kit! My hobby budget is blown for the next few years, having just laid out several grand on a new amateur radio and accessories...

[WingZ 547]

Great video, thanks for posting.

I share the flightsimming and photography passion, but came to droning from RC helicopters. Between crashes 😊 I had strapped on a little 640 pixel cam and thought: “This might get interesting”. I graduated to a Parrot AR drone, but stopped for a while after losing it to the greedy forest,

The Parrot was fun, but no aerial photography tool. DJI’s were (then) too expensive for a casual hobby, so there it languished.

When the Mavic was announced, I was intrigued, and two things happened: the delivery time was extended beyond the Christmas rush due to demand, and the prices of the legacy DJI’s started dropping. You can now get a DJI Pantom 4 Pro for the same price as a Mavic.

You can see the dilemma: I am wondering if the Mavic, apart from its form factor, is the better deal.

It looks a little fragile to me, and from experience you want the most rugged flyer you can get. And the Phantom 4 is a serious camera unit.

I’d be interested in user feedback, especially about limitations of the Mavic in practice.