Footage out of the DJI Mavic Is Much Worse Than the Phantom 4 [Update: There Is Still Hope]

DJI recently announced the new Mavic drone which appeared to be the greatest aerial product ever created. It's extremely portable with all of the incredible features of the Phantom 4. Today though my dreams have been shattered because the footage out of the Mavic looks pretty bad, especially when you compare it to the P4. Update: Wait! There is still hope!

Casey Neistat just tweeted that he failed to focus the Mavic correctly and this test is not legitimate. 

 

 

After watching the promo for the Mavic I was extremely excited. The hardware itself for this drone is incredible and I couldn't wait to conveniently travel around the world with a drone without getting hassled in every airport. One thing worried me though. The footage in the promo video looked muddy. The colors looked bland and at times I might even say the footage looked blurry. I put these thoughts out of my mind and hoped that it was all in my head. Sadly, my fears have become a reality. The Mavic's camera is pretty bad.

Casey Neistat has once again created another video with the Mavic, this time comparing it to the Phantom 4. It's pretty easy to see how much better the P4's camera is. Had the Phantom series never existed I'm sure the Mavic would be beyond acceptable, but I'm so used to the incredible quality out of the Phantom 4, I'm not sure I can ever be happy with anything significantly worse.

Although Casey didn't have a GoPro Karma to compare to the P4 and Mavic, I'm not sure he needs to. I've personally flown a Phantom 2 with a GoPro 4 Silver for years and the footage is great, although arguably a bit too wide. You can see some of the footage shot at 2.7k and downscaled to 1080p totally ungraded in the video below. 

This leads me to believe that the Gopro Karma will have significantly better footage, but I can't imagine the Karma will fly as well as the Mavic. DJI has such a head start when it comes to drone technology, I'm assuming that it will take GoPro years to catch up. 

As Casey says in the video above, he creates a video every single day of his life and he is happy to give up image quality in return for the convenience of the Mavic. I am also, to an extent. But from what I've seen, the Mavic's footage is so much worse that I may wait for the second version to buy it. At this point I'm putting all of my hope in the GoPro Karma

Update: At this point it looks like the Mavic still may be a reasonable replacement for the Phantom 4. We need to wait for a new test.

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Lee Morris is a professional photographer based in Charleston SC, and is the co-owner of Fstoppers.com

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I have a phantom 3 advanced with 2.7K video, how would you compare that to the 4K video of the mavic since the quality is not as sharp as the phantom 4.

The phantom 4 footage looks way too sharp. The moire makes it unwatchable for me especially when you get into those city buildings. It's all I could focus on.

Has Casey ever mentioned getting a license to fly? Aren't his videos considered a business if they are monetized?

I think he generally lives by the principle "it is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission"

On the subject of drones and other capture devices that use microSD, I'd like to suggest a portable backup device that will work directly with microSd to make sure that the footage is safe before putting the gear away.

Flash Porter was just launched on Kickstarter today. https://goo.gl/IE7nzr

I think the jury is out on both the Mavic as well as the Karma. Casey is right being small enough to easily carry and use is very important. But making something that folds in a new way does not a good aerial platform make. They both look promising in that respect, but once you've got 4k quality, you can't go back, unless of course you want more fps. I think it might be wise to wait until a consensus forms from user reviews. In my case I will wait until next April when the weather warms up enough to experiment with these in my neighborhood. Both the Mavic and the Karma need to be taught a lesson about releasing something new as winter approaches.

Clearly aiming for the Christmas market- nothing'll change that!

Calm down! Mavics image quality is great! youtu.be/1Tthf4guYCo

There you go - comparison with Out of focused Mavic and Focused :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Tthf4guYCo

You have to tab the screen of your phone to get it in focus:

https://youtu.be/1Tthf4guYCo

Footage looks good to me

Casey didn't set the focus correctly. He posted on twitter, later, mentioning his mistake and with an updated image: http://i.imgur.com/MFecrrn.png

Even with all the shots in focus by touching the screen look soft. This could help gopro out in the long run?

You should change the title honestly after the focus issue has been clarified. The current one is misleading and like a clickbait

I think that Casey was trying to demonstrate how idiot-proof the DJI Mavic was to set up and fly. Sometimes, it pays to RTFM.