DJI FPV - Ridiculously FUN but Legal to Fly?

i thought about titling this video dji fpv so fun to fly seriously if you've ever dreamed of being a jet fighter pilot but the idea of wearing government-issued underwear or well the fear of death held you back this is the drone for you it is so much fun to fly but there are a few things we need to talk about and one pretty big issue no one is talking about maybe because technically it's illegal [Music] this video is sponsored by squarespace their easy website building and blogging tools are going to allow you to easily document all of the crashes you're going to experience with this dgi fpv drone they make it so easy to build an engaging website squarespace offers a free 14-day trial no credit card required start at squarespace.com photorectv and you can save 10 off your purchase yes this is a fun drone to fly but as a photography videography tool how does it stack up well we'll get to the reality check discussion soon first let's talk about why people buy drones i think most drone buyers can be separated into two groups you want aerial photos and or videos or you like the idea flying and enjoy the view from the camera see this first group they might not enjoy flying so much as what they can capture during the flight the second group less concerned with what they're capturing and more the fun of it in the moment for me it's mostly been about what i'm capturing being able to show our travels and our workshops from an aerial perspective that's awesome i can talk about exploring the alaska coast in our little chartered boat or i can put the drone up to provide a sense of scale that you feel when you're there in person and dji has made drones that are so easy to fly i'm not some expert pilot you basically take off by pushing a button then you just try to be subtle with your movements if you get in trouble you can take your hands off the sticks and the drone is just going to stop and hover in place want it to return and land where it took off well that's another one button press watch out for that when you're flying from boats now these drones and the cameras on them have gotten so good that honestly most of what i need to accomplish can be done with the mini 2 this is an affordable and incredibly travel friendly drone i'll put my review of that down below i won't go as far as to say that the mavic series is unfun to fly but they certainly don't make you feel like a jet fighter pilot maybe more of a cessna pilot it is still flying but this the dji fpv i think this makes you feel more like an f-22 pilot now this category of drones fpv drones they're not new people have been racing fpv drones for years but it's only been more recently that as cameras and electronic stabilization has gotten smaller and more improved that they've become useful for photos and videos mostly videos that recent bowling alley shoot that is one amazing example but these fpv drones are not easy to fly when you let go of the sticks they usually fall out of the sky and to create these smooth movements takes practice so dgi has swept in no has swooped in to create a hybrid drone one that has elements of the mavics easy to fly stays in place when you let go of the sticks but also offers a full manual mode that's the mode where if you don't know what you're doing you're gonna crash definitely luckily they have both a flight simulator that helps you practice and a sport mode that you can use that offers more maneuverability but still with some of the safety features and hand-holding that beginner fpv pilots will appreciate and in all modes you've got the oh button it's also known as the brake this stops the drone very quickly puts it into normal mode it just hovers gives you time to clean your pants and work your way back up those modes and this is a good time to mention that this is not a subtle drone from the sound it makes when it starts up to the sound it makes when pulling a sharp turn or hitting that emergency brake button this is a drone that people are gonna hear [Music] now the standard dji fpv combo costs 12.99 it comes with the drone the goggles the remote one battery spare props and a spare chassis cover let's take a quick look at this body if you're coming from any of the recent dgi drones you're probably disappointed that there's no folding what you see is what you get it doesn't become more travel friendly and while i'm not going to call it large it is large enough and awkward enough in shape that you're going to need to dedicate a bag to it or significant space in a decently sized bag if you plan to bring it along on travels it does feel incredibly sturdy and the chunky battery clips in the back in a very satisfactory manner i like that on the front you do have a one axis gimbal that's very different from the three axis gimbals you usually find on mavic's the fpv really relies on tronic stabilization and your maneuverability in the maneuverability of the drone to turn around your subject it's important to note that the feed you get in the goggles is not stabilized they did this to keep the latency down it's going to take you some time to gauge the type of movements that are going to be smoothed out and those that are going to require a reshoot as someone coming from a mavic where the footage almost always looks like it's on a tripod it's it's amazing it really is it does it takes me some time to get used to the additional movements and be okay with a little bit more movement in the frame it's also important to note that the props show up in the capture footage unless you're going really fast until you get to that fast point you can punch in a little bit when editing the footage but even then i still saw the props a little bit more often than i wanted to in the shots you can pair an extra set of goggles to the drone to share your feed and right now you can use a usbc connection to a mobile device to share the feed dgi is going to add some additional options for sharing the feed in the future and the goggles can record to a micro sd card there's a little slot in here too that's really the backup of footage that's non-stabilized and it's not quite as clean it's not as clean as what you get directly to the drone notice the remote does not offer a place to attach your phone because everything is done through the goggles i found this remote to be very comfortable in hand appreciate that they have a little lanyard clip peel back the rubber and you're going to find a set of small screws on both sides that'll allow you to adjust the springs on the remote sticks you see when flying full manual pilots usually want little to no spring in the sticks when you put full throttle down it's not going to suddenly spring back up to 50 throttle you do have gimbal control through this wheel or the switch over here which you could customize to something else you've got emergency brake cruise control and that return to home button as well the mode switch and a customizable button here that can be programmed for different tasks including turtle mode which flips the drone over tries to flip the drone over if it's crashed and upside down let's demo i've assigned it to c1 i've got an upside down drone i'm in full manual mode but i can't get it to work i have tried lots of times i've even quasi tried to simulate crashes i have had one actual crash but in that case the drone got stuck in a soccer net so we'll talk more about that in a second i'm not the only one it seems that can't get turtle mode to work you read the forums and there's lots and lots of people i'll link to flightpath's video he's the only person i've seen to successfully get it to work so far so that is linked right down below this video now i want to talk a little bit about squarespace because they make videos like this possible and then we're gonna fly this video is brought to you by squarespace i personally moved to squarespace a few years ago for photorec.tv and my own personal portfolio i am so happy with this decision their automated tools made it really easy to and now i'm on a platform that looks beautiful on any device that i use to look at it it's so easy to add content to and it is secure now many of you watching this are photographers and videographers squarespace provides beautiful portfolios and gallery pages all you need to do is pick a template and drag and drop it really is that easy but if for any reason you get stuck they provide 24 7 customer support if you want to sell your work the integrated ecommerce system is incredibly simple to set up they also offer an online booking tool email campaign system and analytics so you can track visits it truly is a fantastic all-in-one platform as i said i moved to squarespace a few years ago all of the stress of making sure my site was secure plugins were up to date and the time spent tracking down weird formatting errors gone and that makes me so happy you can try squarespace for free for 14 days no credit card required start at squarespace.com photorectv to save 10 off your first purchase all right let's actually talk about flying this drone for a few moments i want to point out something obvious i'm sitting down in this nice little folding camp chair i've seen fpv pilots sit down before and i thought it's just because they're maybe lazy or they're flying a lot and a lot and their legs get tired no i've actually found two very compelling reasons for having a seat when flying one i do get slightly motion sick a little queasy at times and i find myself leaning as i'm flying being a little bit more stable in a seat actually helps with that and the other thing that happens i've actually leaned so much i've started to fall over and there was one time where i scared myself so bad i thought i was gonna crash this drone that my knees started to give out a little bit on me so this is a little insight into me but in both of those cases sitting down has actually helped so just like all dji products it's a push and then a push and hold to start and you place it down at a reasonable distance from you facing away that's the recommendation and then you turn the remote on press and press and hold flip up the little antenna and again just a reminder there's no place to put your phone on this and on the front of the remote you have this little switch that allows you to switch between your normal sport and manual mode the nice thing about this drone is that no matter what mode you last flew in no matter what mode the switch is on it's always going to start in normal mode i like to switch it back to normal mode anyway though so that as you use that switch it does what you expect if you have it on manual mode and you're flying around and you go to put it on manual mode nothing's going to happen and then while you're in the air you're going to have to switch it so it's nice to just go ahead and get that ready the goggles get turned on with a little button at the end of the battery that attaches them same type of deal click and hold and press and you hear their little fan come on now this is where you get all of your information and it takes a minute or two for it to display one of the things that's important here is make sure you wait until you have a clear gps lock you'll see that little gps icon it'll go orange as it's starting to get satellites and it will go white when it has enough satellites that it has an accurate lock and it's set to home point and in this case we're close enough to some airports that i get a couple of different warnings letting me know that i may be close enough to airports that the drone could fly into that and then in this case with dji products it's going to stop flying not fall out of the sky but it's going to stop going in that direction so i just quickly acknowledge those with a little click on top of the goggles everything looks good there's two ways to start this drone you can double click the start stop button or like all dji drones but push both sticks down and center and when you're ready to take off you push up now in the bottom left corner it tells me that i'm in normal mode it tells me my speed tells me my distance above the ground as well bottom right corner we have the goggle battery percentage the satellite we have the rc which is the remote control to drone connection which i'll talk more about that signal and how important it is soon and we have our time to empty battery estimated based on our current flying and of course the battery percentage itself now when you're in normal mode you do get these little yellow and red obstacle avoidance and actually the drone will greatly slow down and eventually stop uh or come to a crawl would be a better way to say that if you're about to run into an object that's helpful that's one of those things that can really help out a beginner flyer when you're in sport mode it still gives you that warning but the drone doesn't do anything about it now slightly heart attack inducing at times when you get that warning there's nothing that i can tell if it saw a shadow or i don't know what but there's been multiple times where i've been flying in open air and i've gotten a warning about about to run into something now we'll tell you that power lines are your enemy it does seem to see them sometimes but there are a lot of times where it might not see those and they can certainly take out your drone so anytime you're planning some faster more acrobatic maneuvers take the time to do a slow walk through of the area with or without the drone i mean literally walk the area or fly the drone very slowly paying attention to anything that you might run into those are keys that are going to save you from crashing and wrecking this drone now switching into manual mode is a little bit trickier and you should really practice with the virtual flight simulator prior but that is where you're going to get your very top speeds now you switch the switch to manual mode but then you still need to place the sticks in a very particular pattern for a moment before it's actually going to allow you to fly in manual mode and this is where you're going to get the most control the most responsiveness from this drone but i also find it's where i am still not quite able to fly as smoothly as i do in sport mode i can keep it in control to some degree but not as smoothly as a sport mode it's going to take some more practice now the good news is if you get into any kind of trouble with any mode that you're working in you've got a break button that's going to just suddenly break the drone for you and it stops it instantly close to it even if it's going 60 to close to 100 miles an hour and then it puts it back into normal mode so you can then start flying in you can take your couple of deep breaths from whatever scare you and then you can start flying in slowly work your way back up to that manual mode but that's what's really interesting about this drone is that this is the first first person flying system that i've tried and it really feels like it offers a lot of that ability to kind of grow into it as an excellent flying tool another thing that's really nice like all dji products is that when you're ready to land it you can press the button and it's going to come home and land right where it took off i like to usually just bring it home myself though so in normal mode you've got a max ascent speed of 8 meters a second sport mode 15 meters a second manual mode no limit just to put that in perspective the mavic air 2 max ascent speed in any mode is 4 meters a second so in sport mode the fpv is almost four times more maneuverable max descent speed normal mode 5 meters a second sport mode 10 meters a second manual mode no limit there and max speed normal mode 33 miles per hour sport mode 60 miles per hour manual mode almost 90 miles per hour and it can reach these top speeds in about two seconds i wish this little thing had a g-force meter because some of the movements and speeds you can achieve are just insane and again to compare to the mavic air 2 in its fastest mode it's max is 42 miles per hour and the mini tops out at 35 miles per hour the rated flight time is about 20 minutes in reality you're going to get closer to 15 depending on when conditions and how much time you spend in manual mode maxed out at 90 miles an hour the sensor behind this camera is just 8 megapixels that's enough for 4k video maxed out at 60 frames per second it can also do cool slow-mo at 1080 that's 120 frames per second now photos you know you should not be buying this for photos again something like the mavic mini 2 is going to give you better photo and it's much cheaper you are buying this for the creative videography and or fun though you do have manual controls over your settings for the camera you also shouldn't buy this for those one button fun shots like asteroid boomerang or any of those pre-programmed shots because it's not in there it's not a huge miss but there isn't any tracking either now if you want to follow somebody on the move you need to pilot the drone to follow them this is a bit of a bummer you have a very fast very maneuverable drone but i could see object tracking fitting in quite nicely here nope maybe version 2 will include those features you do have obstacle avoidance in normal mode front facing sensors warn you if you're about to smack into something and slow the drone down never completely stops it just really really really slows it down when you switch into sport mode it only warns you so you can ignore those warnings and smack into something now over the last couple of weeks of flying i've been flying this drone a ton because it's really fun and it's been a really smooth experience which is impressive it arrived with beta firmware and i have no real complaints except there's a couple of times where obstacle avoidance has warned me that something was there and nothing now it's only happened a few times i don't know what it thought it saw it was flying through clear space not even even birds nearby so i really um thank you dgi for those heart attacks those are great i'll send you my hospital bill now i do fly fairly cautiously in my opinion the obstacle avoidance is even more of a cautious wimp seriously it is warning you about stuff that is really far away so that takes some getting used to you also have downward facing sensors that give you a reading above the height above the ground which i really appreciate when you're trying to go fast and low i mean going low and going fast is a really good way to increase the feeling of speed though i do notice some issues with the video at your fastest speeds when you're just a foot or two off the ground and this is the first dji drone to have cruise control it works just like it does in a car start flying at a speed that works for you turn it on and you can let go of the throttle this lets you really focus on steering and creating repeatable tricks or maneuvers that well you might need some practice to successfully pull off and make your friends go now it has occusync 3.0 they're calling it oc3 now this is the wireless connection between you and the drone it's got a 10 kilometer range six mile range and this new version lowers the latency did you know actually that fpv drones use a lower quality analog feed for ultra low latency now it looks like crap but there's no lag what you get with a dji fpv it's digital it's hd and it looks gorgeous most of the time and i don't see a lag i mean hardcore racing drone pilots might disagree with me but i found that when you turn the drone you immediately see the turn of the drone and the other thing that's nice dji uses the same camera for capture and your feed many fpv drones have a small low quality camera for piloting and a gopro for capture of actual footage so you never actually know what you're getting with the fpv what you see is what's getting captured just with that additional stabilization but now let's talk about a serious issue you have great range with line of sight six miles technically this drone should always be in your line of sight but if you're having a little fun with it flying around your house just talking about outside right now or flying in a little valley following terrain as soon as you get a few objects that break that line of sight the quality drops and it's even pretty easy to lose connection and you think about the speeds that you can reach with this drone that can happen fast you can go from a clear beautiful feed and perfect control of the drone to pixel mush to no control to lost signal now the good news is when it does lose signal it breaks and then it will start a return to home flight if that connection doesn't re-establish this is where i take a break to remind you an important drone rule when flying drones in the us and most of the world you should have the drone in your sight at all times when you put on the goggles you break that seeing what the drone sees does not count as seeing the drone so you actually need a second person to be your visual observer to be legal somebody must keep the drone in visual sight at all times that's with you i don't expect everyone's going to always follow this rule i mean i've already seen reviewers flying solo and it's not like the faa is going to come swooping out of the sky and handcuff you but if there is an incident you're just going to be in that much more trouble so keep that in mind now helping to keep you out of trouble is dji's geofencing this is that gps unit built in that knows where it is and so then knows whether or not you're allowed to fly there this has actually improved over the last few years and become much more granular i live just about two miles from a major airport and i can fly right here in my backyard just not to the full 400 feet that's allowed in clear airspace now before investing in one of these drones you might want to double check that you won't have to drive miles to fly air map or before you fly is a great option for that and this is a good time to make some quick comparisons with other fpv systems on the market typically they are smaller lighter and somewhat cheaper i say somewhat because you usually need to bring your own high quality camera for recording and from the beginning these drones require real skill to use there's no hand-holding modes basically you're in manual mode from the beginning and at all times not only is it on you to keep them in the air but it's also on you to fly it back home before the battery runs out their range and fly times are significantly shorter which as we said range of about six miles you know you have about 20 minutes fly time is what dgi states i think it's going to be closer to 15 most of the time and the true fpv drones the non-hybrid ones the ones not from dgi they're usually down the range of less than 10 minutes however these small drones are well suited for indoor flying i mean technically you could do that with the fpv especially if you add the optional prop guards but it's not going to be as it's going to be a scary experience unless you really know what you're doing and of course it's not going to fit in the tight spaces as well but those little fpv ones don't have any gps so you can fly without worrying about geo-fencing but they're also less suited to getting up high and just getting some standard aerial shots and footage again if that is your goal the mini 2 is going to be a better drone for you and the little ones are pretty crash proof or at least the spare props and parts are pretty cheap and that's good because you are going to crash you will probably crash this drone too and this is the first drone from dji where they'll sell you parts the gimbal camera the arms the landing gears the chassis cover and of course the props they're all on their website and available for sale although i wouldn't necessarily call it cheap all right we can start to wrap this up i've been intrigued with the fpv drones for a while and i wondered what the experience was like the dji fpv provides an easy way to experience the thrill of flying with less crashing yeah let's talk a little bit about that crash so i've been looking for any excuses at all to continue flying this drone the review is basically done everything that you've been watching i recorded prior to yesterday's flight and then i realized i had this open soccer field football field near me completely available for flying i thought that was a really cool place to fly and kind of show how quickly it breaks and then i was doing some recording through the goggles and didn't realize just how fast i was going and how close i was to the soccer net it hit the net at about 35 miles an hour 34 miles an hour if you look closely down at that poor recording and that was fast enough that it actually disconnected the battery the impact now i made a point in this review to talk about how satisfying it clicked in there is a chance that i had not seeded it as uh securely as you should but i don't think so so that's something to watch out for the good news is the drone is absolutely fine and there's actually one slight uh fence nick prior to that and the drone is completely fine so this is a tough little drone i'm sure people are going to be smashing it into the sides of brick walls and other harder surfaces that are going to require some of those spare parts but in general i'm pretty impressed with the sturdiness of this drone and of the props because i've certainly clipped a few tree branches here and there as well i haven't crashed yet just clipped a few trees honestly i wish i had an excuse to buy this because it's just so much fun to fly but the style of footage and the much better portability that i get from my mavic pro or even the mavic mini and the travel friendliness of that that's going to be staying in my bag for now but i really look forward to watching some practice pilots create some amazing footage and maybe at some point in the future i'll add one too i'd love to know if you plan to buy you can comment down below and you of course can use my links to purchase that really does help this channel and hit that thumbs up button if you found this useful plus don't forget to subscribe along with tapping that little bell to be notified of future videos thanks so much for watching bye [Music] you

Channel: PhotoRec TV

Views: 96,434

Keywords: canon, nikon, dslr, photography help, sony, portrait photography, photography podcast, photography tutorials, digital photography, photography rumors, digital cameras, photography gear, learn photography, lightroom

Id: L3DEKMyAfqQ

Length: 28min 17sec (1697 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 29 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/StankySeal]

It's always fun to see folks that act like the LOS law is gospel and they'd never fly without a spotter.

[u/TheDrainPlug]

You're probably already aware of this by now, but you can change camera settings to remove the props from the footage. It basically crops them out, so you won't even see them while piloting.