Is Avata 2 best drone for INSIDE real estate videography?

[qwerty53]

Is Avata 2 best drone for INSIDE real estate videography?

 

[mavic3usa]

Is Avata 2 best drone for INSIDE real estate videography?

It might be the best DJI drone for the job but there are lots of other brands available that work just as well.

 

[qwerty53]

It might be the best DJI drone for the job but there are lots of other brands available that work just as well.

I.e. ?

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

Is Avata 2 best drone for INSIDE real estate videography?

I would suggest not and that it would be far better to get one of the minis.
Why ?
1) The mini gimbals are stablizied about 2 relevant axes,pitch and roll. The Avata's gimbal is stabilized for pitch only.
A hovering Avata almost certainly wobbles in the same way as any other drone, a pitch and roll stabilized gimbal takes care of that, the Avata's gimbal will not take care of roll and 'be all over the place' as the drone rolls.
2) With an Avata customers might be concerned about you flying around a property with your eyes encased in the goggles and 'no' awareness of anything outside the camera's field of view.
3) With the mini 3 or 4 you have the option of a portrait view at full camera resolution, whereas with an Avata you would have to crop images.

 

[AeroJ]

Yep. The Avata series is focused on producing primarily footage suitable for Youtube channels where people want to rip it about a fly site, do their acrobatics and whatnot, get race footage - that kinda thing. I am guessing your clients don't wanna see you (either at the time or later in the footage) ripping round a property with banking on all the corners, with a very noisy and fairly bulky drone. literally the ONLY advantage I can think of of an Avata for this purpose is its integral prop guards.

Like YP above, I too would choose Mini 3/4 Pro instead. A tiny, quiet, unobtrusive drone, whose main objective is to get you stellar footage of stable, controlled cinematic flight. It is great for indoor flying. And you can get prop guards for it too, which, although they take it over 250g, doesn't matter if you are flying indoors.

Having said that, indoors you'd be relying chiefly on the non-GPS based sensors for stable flight, which are not exactly foolproof and don't work so well over certain types of flooring.

 

[BobaFut]

I mean, a mirrorless camera with a fast lens on a gimbal is probably the best solution for real estate videography and I would say that a DJI drone is a poor choice for the task for a multitude of reasons (small sensors, mostly fixed aperture lenses, fixed focal lengths to name a few). But I guess it depends on what you want to accomplish. If you wanted to do a seamless outdoor to indoor flythrough, then a legit FPV drone is probably the best tool. An Avata can do it, but at least the Avata 1 didn't have a proper arm/disarm switch and tended to go full throttle and lose its mind if it impacted an object in FPV mode. For anyone but a really experienced FPV pilot, I'd say the Avata is too heavy and too powerful for flying around inside a house.

Personally, I would use something like a GEPRC Cinelog25V2 (with the O3 Air Unit) that weighs a lot less and has a proper disarm switch. It's just a lot harder to fly, but that's the tradeoff with FPV.

 

[qwerty53]

I would suggest not and that it would be far better to get one of the minis.
Why ?
1) The mini gimbals are stablizied about 2 relevant axes,pitch and roll. The Avata's gimbal is stabilized for pitch only.
A hovering Avata almost certainly wobbles in the same way as any other drone, a pitch and roll stabilized gimbal takes care of that, the Avata's gimbal will not take care of roll and 'be all over the place' as the drone rolls.
2) With an Avata customers might be concerned about you flying around a property with your eyes encased in the goggles and 'no' awareness of anything outside the camera's field of view.
3) With the mini 3 or 4 you have the option of a portrait view at full camera resolution, whereas with an Avata you would have to crop images.

Thank you. My problem is that on smaller properties with the mini if you are near an object or a wall the wind from the props pushes the drone to the side

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

How close to a wall have you been hovering the drone?
I have just had my mavic mini hovering between 6 and 9 inches from a wall with no 'suck in'.
Which leads me to ask, how well lit was the floor beneath the drone and how distinctive was the pattern on that floor ?
Suck in happens with everY drone or appears to happen with ever drone I have flown and I would be somewhat surprised if it doesn't happen with an Avata 2 too.

 

[rjwmorrell]

I'd only consider using my Mini 3 for real estate if it were a large property with expansive rooms, where the fixed aperture and angle might work.

I have a hand gimbal for smoother work indoors.

 

[Droning on and on...]

Like YP above, I too would choose Mini 3/4 Pro instead. A tiny, quiet, unobtrusive drone, whose main objective is to get you stellar footage of stable, controlled cinematic flight. It is great for indoor flying. And you can get prop guards for it too, which, although they take it over 250g, doesn't matter if you are flying indoors.

I own an Avata, Avata 2, Mini 3, and Mini 4. I have logged dozens of hours on each of these drones, both indoors and out.

I'd choose the Avata 2 over the mini 3/4 any day, all day long.

This assumes a certain type of flying indoors - through small openings, underneath objects, close to stuff. Things you'd never do in your wildest dreams with exposed props. Otherwise, why bother?

Gimbal stabilization is a non-issue. Avata includes Gyro data in video, so it's easy to stabilize the video in post every bit as good as the mini 3/4. If you don't want to mess with it in post, HorizonSteady does an excellent job stabilizing footage right out of the drone.

The Avata 2 is better for indoor filming mainly because of the ducted props, and it's small size.

The Minis will have to have prop cages to keep from crashing, damaging things, or the drone itself. All it takes is a few seconds loss of VPS, which happens quite easily indoors, and you can drift into something before you regain control.

You simply can't shoot very interesting video indoors with a camera drone because it's so delicate. It's what cinewhoops were designed for.

 

[qwerty53]

I own an Avata, Avata 2, Mini 3, and Mini 4. I have logged dozens of hours on each of these drones, both indoors and out.

I'd choose the Avata 2 over the mini 3/4 any day, all day long.

This assumes a certain type of flying indoors - through small openings, underneath objects, close to stuff. Things you'd never do in your wildest dreams with exposed props. Otherwise, why bother?

Gimbal stabilization is a non-issue. Avata includes Gyro data in video, so it's easy to stabilize the video in post every bit as good as the mini 3/4. If you don't want to mess with it in post, HorizonSteady does an excellent job stabilizing footage right out of the drone.

The Avata 2 is better for indoor filming mainly because of the ducted props, and it's small size.

The Minis will have to have prop cages to keep from crashing, damaging things, or the drone itself. All it takes is a few seconds loss of VPS, which happens quite easily indoors, and you can drift into something before you regain control.

You simply can't shoot very interesting video indoors with a camera drone because it's so delicate. It's what cinewhoops were designed for.

Thanks. Any competition to avata 2 outside of dji?

 

[AeroJ]

This assumes a certain type of flying indoors - through small openings, underneath objects, close to stuff. Things you'd never do in your wildest dreams with exposed props. Otherwise, why bother?

Yeah, but I don't think the sort of flying you are thinking of IS what is required for a sensible real estate video, unless OP is trying to break dramatically new ground or go viral with some novelty extreme skills-based flying ! You just don't get a useful impression of a kitchen by diving between salt cellars and spice racks and through loads of narrow gaps !

Camera on a tripod / rails etc etc is gonna get the information people actually want I would have thought... and save the drone stuff for the exteriors, where IMHO the non FPV based ones are still gonna win simply by virtue of the fact that they are optimised for very low speed manoeuvres.

 

[Droning on and on...]

Can only speak to my own experience and impressions.

A very common, routine bit of video in RE walk-throughs transitions through ordinary doorways.

Have any of you tried flying a Mini through an inside doorway? If you guys can do that easily and control speed, yaw, etc. such that you get the smooth, cinematic flight with your attention on the imagery, you're much more skilled than me.

Speaking only for me, with a Mini with exposed props, all I can focus on is not hitting the door frame. With the Avata, I'm 100% focused on the camera view and what I'm recording.

 

[anotherlab]

Wouldn't it be both easier and cheaper to use a gimbal-stabilized camera or phone? And you don't have a Part 107 to walk around and film.

 

[rjwmorrell]

Wouldn't it be both easier and cheaper to use a gimbal-stabilized camera or phone? And you don't have a Part 107 to walk around and film.

I don't believe you need a Part 107 to fly indoors anyway. I could be mistaken. But our air laws have a lot of similarities in Canada and an aircraft flown indoors is not considered an aircraft, and that's not considered airspace.

 

[anotherlab]

I don't believe you need a Part 107 to fly indoors anyway. I could be mistaken. But our air laws have a lot of similarities in Canada and an aircraft flown indoors is not considered an aircraft, and that's not considered airspace.

Even if it's allowed, it seems like it would be easier to use a stabilized camera for that work. You could also use a 360° camera and allow the user to control what they see.

 

[Droning on and on...]

Wouldn't it be both easier and cheaper to use a gimbal-stabilized camera or phone? And you don't have a Part 107 to walk around and film.

Makes sense where applicable. However, there are all sorts of shots only a drone, or small crane can do.

For example, consider this open curved staircase:



A great shot is ascending in the open space to the left turning and following the stairs up, then continuing to yaw left as you reach the top to look down the hallway, the move through that passage.

 

[anotherlab]

Makes sense where applicable. However, there are all sorts of shots only a drone, or small crane can do.

For example, consider this open curved staircase:

View attachment 176199

A great shot is ascending in the open space to the left turning and following the stairs up, then continuing to yaw left as you reach the top to look down the hallway, the move through that passage.

You could do that easily with an Insta 360. And be able to change the POV when you edit it.

 

[Droning on and on...]

You could do that easily with an Insta 360. And be able to change the POV when you edit it.

No, you can not do it easily with an Insta 360. I've tried, on the end of a pole. It's much harder than you think to smoothly raise a 10' pole than you think, and walking up the stairs holding the pole out in the empty space is a no-go – you'll never eliminate all the movements that come with climing stairs.

Like I've said, I tried. We just sold my mother's house in April, and I produced exactly this clip for the REA. Tried it with an Insta360 and a pole. It was impossible.

One take with the Avata.

 

[GerdS]

Today I have adressed the biggest missing feature of my Avata 2 for flying within buildings or lost places: an illumination for both the position cameras and the main camera. I have seen ready-made but overpriced solutions for firefighters and so I made my own system.
I got two STARTRC Strobe Drone Lights (Amazon) and 3D-printed a clip-on attachment for them, one oriented downwards and the other oriented to the front side. Total weight is just 28 grams.
Just the extensive real world test during night or in a lost place is pending now.