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NIKON Z 7 + NIKKOR Z 20mm f/1.8 S @ 20 mm, 10 sec at f/1.8, ISO 3200

Yesterday Gerry and I travelled 3 hours south of Sydney to Jervis Bay to aim to seem and photograph the Bioluminescence

Alas although there were images from the previous day(s)… we had no such luck with barely a glimmer to be seen

We checked out a couple of beaches with a number of other groups also in search of the fabled blue stuff. All everyone had was much disappointment

Of the number of images where Gerry and I attempted to capture literally anything… this was the best of my bunch. The milky way and astro was proving to be MUCH better. The stars are well out of focus here because I’m shooting at f/1.8 and focused on the foreground for the blue stuff…

Astro was actually our Plan B anyway – no moon, predictions of completely clear skies, astro goodness

We actually turned around right here and shot some initial milky way goodness facing away from the water :). Then headed off to our Plan B location – more to come…

Note: These photographs (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger. To see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer click any of the images.

River Sunset 360

Another of the DJI Mini 3 Pro’s automatic panorama modes. This time the 26 frame 360˚ panorama

and the flattened rectilinear view below

River Sunset 360

DJI Mini 3 Pro FC3582 + 6.7 mm f/1.7 @ 6.72 mm, 1/100 sec at f/1.7, ISO 100 x 26 Frames

Note: These photographs (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger. To see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer click any of the images.

Where There’s Smoke

DJI Mini 3 Pro FC3582 + 6.7 mm f/1.7 @ 6.72 mm, 1/50 sec at f/1.7, ISO 100 x 5 Frames

and another of the DJI Mini 3 Pro’s pano modes – this time a vertical pano

Normally this is a 3 shot pano (one straight out, one tilting up and one tilting down). So the “normal” built in pano has the horizon centred

For compositions like this I’d prefer more shots taken downward all the way to facing straight down. So to get this result I let the drone take it’s normal 3 shots and then I took three more manually. Starting facing straight down and then slowly angling up for the other two. In the end I used 5 of the 6 frames available

I wish DJI would implement this as one of it’s automatic pano modes. i.e. from facing straight down all the way out to facing forward (and maybe even tilting up). This is not specific to the Mini 3 Pro. It’s a feature available on all their newer drones in the past 4 or 5 years

Note that one unique feature of the new Mini 3 Pro is that the drone can tilt it’s camera upward more than previous drones. This is due to the unique “notch” at the front of the drone where the gimbal sits. This allows an upward tilt of up to 60˚. This should allow even better 360˚ panoramas (include more of the sky above). I believe the latest DJI firmware release now makes use of this capability with the panorama modes. In theory it should also allow better/extended vertical panoramas should DJI implement that

In To The Blazing Sun

DJI Mini 3 Pro FC3582 + 6.7 mm f/1.7 @ 6.72 mm, 1/120 sec at f/1.7, ISO 100 x 9 Frames

and trying another one of the built in pano modes on the DJI Mini 3 Pro. (pretty epic sunset on this particular evening too :))

This one’s a 3×3 (9 shot) panorama. This time pretty much facing directly in to the blazing sun

I restitched this in Lightroom (using the 9 source RAW files) and cropped the end result to a 2:1 pano format (removing the top and bottom). The reason I did a restitch wasn’t just to use the RAW source files and avoid DJI’s JPEG pano. The DJI stitching output for the 3×3 pano just seems wrong. It looks too distorted and off (like the sides have been dramatically squeezed in). Anyway Lightroom I feel did a much better job with this

Note: These photographs (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger. To see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer click any of the images.

Unsurprisingly it looks pretty dark down the bottom in this smaller image. But if you open the larger version you can see I can easily pull a lot more detail out of the RAW files

I don’t really ever shoot video with my drones so I can’t really tell you how good they are for video purposes. But for stills the DJI Mini 3 Pro is pretty damn good. Plus controlling all the settings and so on are very familiar for a Mavic 2 Pro user

The lens doesn’t have a variable aperture like the M2P has. It does however have a very bright f/1.7 aperture which is great for darker conditions so you don’t need to pump the ISO as much

River Dancing

DJI Mini 3 Pro FC3582 + 6.7 mm f/1.7 @ 6.72 mm, 1/120 sec at f/1.7, ISO 100 x 21 Frames

Got a crazy good sunset the evening I took this. This is the automatic 180˚ pano generated from the DJI Mini 3 Pro

This shot is facing directly away from the setting sun. I also did another facing towards the setting sun (which didn’t turn out as well). I also tried the 360˚ pano as well

Note: These photographs (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger. To see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer click any of the images.

Having flown the Mini 3 Pro a few times now I’m very impressed with how good the drone is. Especially relative to the small size and weight. The image quality is surprisingly good from the slightly larger 1/1.3″  sensor. Personally I wish it had a 3:2 aspect ratio rather than the 4:3 more typical of micro four thirds style cameras

The drone with it’s tiny size and weight doesn’t handle quite as well in windy conditions as my Mavic 2 Pro. It’s camera sensor maybe isn’t quite as good (as the Mavic 2 Pro’s 1″ sensor) either but that’s probably being picky. It handles very well in normal conditions tho, and the range is excellent thanks to Occusync

My previous DJI Spark with it’s wifi style connection was atrocious but Occusync is a marvel. With rock solid connections at good distance and with interference. It’s not that I need or want to fly 10km away, it’s just that I want to be able to rely on an excellent stable connection at any distances I do fly. The Spark could inexplicably randomly loose it at 50-100m away