While in Brooklyn for a weekend shoot with Sony on World Photography Day, I also got my hands on the new DJI drones: Mavic 2 Pro and Mavic 2 Zoom.
The TL;DR on #mavicpro2 is this…they’re now flying around with Hasselblad cameras on the gimbal and that means resulted in significantly improved optics and a zoom camera.
The zoom is 96mm by combing 2 x optical with 2 x digital and captured in full HD lossless video. And, that’s not all…Hybrid auto-focus combines phase and contrast detection for higher focus accuracy with a 40% faster focus speed.
Positioning the Mavics as floating cinematography tools, the Pro is for capturing video with utmost video quality and the Zoom is for, well, zooming.
That hasn’t been possible in a drone camera until now.
The fit and finish of the drones is much improved and you can’t miss the the Hasselblad logo. Also important in this release, is the drones have 10 sensors on all sides to avoid collisions.
While the photos looks clandestine on a truck dashboard, what happened was a DJI rep picked me up at my hotel. We were supposed to find a spot to fly the drones but the weather didn’t cooperate. We ended up driving around, talking spec, and the positioning of the new flagships.
I eventually left for the Sony shoot, and DJI shot video from the drones when the weather cleared and shared it with me.
Admittedly a skeptic when it comes to drones, I’m now convinced they should be in a creative’s toolkit and where I’m using them is to set the location for the bicycle-related videos I create. See this
It’s cars in their promo, but whatever, in my mind that’s you riding a bike down a mountain and recording the next sick edit.
Mavic 2 Pro and Mavic 2 Zoom Technical Highlights
These are consumer drones but with pro features for aerial content creation. Both shoot in 4K recording at 100MBP using H.265, for photographers the stills can be shot in HDR with 14 stops of dynamic range for the Pro and the Zoom has 13. The preprogrammed flight modes include
- Hyperlapse—a sequences of stills
- Free—manual flight with a sequence of stills
- Circle—the drone circles for all the stills
- Course Lock—it’ll follow a predertimed course
- ActiveTrack— It’ll track a subject and with the Zoom, zoom in.
- More Aero with Extended Flight time—Body drag has been reduced by 19%, and flight time is up to 31 minutes, and the blades are quieter.
There’s much more, but know this is pretty much a pro drone at consumer pricing.
Mavic 2 Pro and Mavic 2 Zoom Pricing
The Mavic 2 Zoom will retail for $1249 USD and the Mavic 2 Pro is $1449. Available now direct and at their stores, the drones ship with battery, remote controller, charger, and four pairs of propellers. A Fly More Kit, including two additional batteries, a multi-battery charging hub, a car charger, a battery to power bank adapter, two pairs of propellers and a carrying bag, retails at $319 USD. A gimbal replacement service exclusively for Mavic 2 was also mentioned. That’s a service that will swap lenses between the drones.
Amazon hasn’t listed the 2s yet, but when they do you’ll get free shipping.
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