Quick few flights with DJI Mavic Mini – photographer’s perspective

I received the DJI Mavic Mini fly more combo set last week. So now I’m trying to figure out – is it a tool or a toy?

I’m sure there are some of you who got caught by the beautiful sceneries of wintery Latvia, but I am also sure that many of you are here because you’re wondering if the DJI Mavic Mini is any good for taking photographs? To answer you in short – yes it is. Not in a way photographers are used to taking photos though. It’s way simpler than that. As a camera, it lacks most of the functionality we’re used to. Just press the button, that’s literary it. Yes, you can make the picture look lighter or darker, and then again, that’s about it. The photos are JPEGs only, ready to use, perfectly sharp and detailed files.  There’s a thing I never cared about, the white balance, have it on AUTO on all my cameras, shoot in RAW (NEF) and adjust it in postprocessing, so I usually get a sequence of similarly balanced files. Not here though. Here you make a shot, WB applied. Few degrees left, a different WB applied, and so you get a sequence of JPEG files, many of them balanced differently and you need to adjust the balance for each of them. Then again, just get the Mavic Mini up in the air, press the button, hear the click on your remote and consider it done.

Since the dynamic range is not what I’m used to, the zebra for blown-out highlights comes in handy (you can turn it darker, remember?). Yes, I know it’s not meant for professional photographers, but you just have to admire the small size and lightness of it. Yes, I will definitely be having it in my camera bag for most of my destination weddings. So be sure to expect tons of aerial shots of Villas and Chateaus in coming wedding season.

The video – it’s nice.

 

An update on the video quality:

It was nice. Then it got wobbly, just as described all ower forums, then I re-calibrated the gimball and updated firmware and it’s all ok now. It’s been a few weeks since the update and everything is still fine.

 

An update on propellers:

DJI Mavic mini started showing ma that there’s an error with propellers. Have no idea of what happened, changed in 5 mins, everything is working now. It’s good to have the extra set of propellers you have with fly more combo.

As a drone, it’s small and light, so it fights the wind fiercely, but it fights it. Some video guys my want something “smoother”, well, you’ll need something heavier then, like DJI Mavic 2 Pro. But for photos, it doesn’t matter.

 

To be honest, I’m not an expert in drones at all, I consider myself (and some might say am regarded as) an expert when it comes to wedding photography, so I’m looking to use this machine as a tool for adding some angles to my creative work and effectively replace the step ladder that I never have.

That’s it, it just works. If you’re enjoying my views on cameras, here’s what I think of Nikon Z6.

Enjoy the gallery below, if you have any questions about my experience flying the DJI Mavic Mini, post them below.

 

Well spotted, these few photographs have been taken a few days ago.

So the girl in red is my wife, Inese, she’s the fab one who retouches all the photographs. And the guy in blue is me, pretending the sand is dry.

 

Flying the Mavic Mini in cold

Updated in January 2021

So, it was -17C (1.4F) the other morning, so I decided to go out for the sunrise and take some photos in the cold, as it looked spectacular in the woods. Decided to see, how it all looks from up above, so took the Mavic Mini drone with me as well.

Started it up – first alert, the drone is getting ready… still getting ready…and it said it was too cold for him.

Then it took off successfully and everything was all right for the first 30 seconds. I was able to take some shots while it climbed up. While having every possible error message, like too cold, propellers spinning too fast, automatic return home disabled, gimbal motor overload… just about everything I could think of – it had gained 110m altitude.

Then, of course, the phone went all black. I still had visual contact with the drone and steered it back above me and started to land it. Then it all went back to normal, so I took some photos and even started taking a video above the river. The drone felt like it was lagging so I decided it’s time to return. Arrived for a landing position, but instead of landing, it crashed down in full speed into the soft snow. Propellers were still spinning at full speed while grounded in the snow, so it looked like a blender had gone loose. Then it stopped. I removed the battery. Dried it at home and it’s back to normal. Just need to replace two rear propellers (one of them needed a change prior to the flight anyway)

The total flight time was 3 minutes.

I downloaded photos and the ones from the first 30 sec. of the flight were usable, ones from later in the flight were all blurry as there was the gimbal overload alert on my phone and both the drone and gimbal were shaking throughout the flight. The video that included the crash landing was corrupt, so there’s nothing to see there.

Conclusion: I do know that the user manual says not to fly the Mavic Mini below zero degrees C, so I still find it remarkable, that the drone didn’t die on me and that it was able to fly at all. So the flight by itself was backed by a human curiosity that drives me, and I’m quite pleased with the experience and result, so go figure.

I also had a Nikon D850 with me for photos – no problems there, -17C for an hour and a half hike and the camera worked as expected. The LCD became a little slow but other than that it worked all right.