I am new to flying and have only had my air for 1 week. I am a still photographer and a trained pilot so a drone sounded like the next fun hobby to get into
. I am doing this more for fun than making money. I was wondering what people like to do with them? I love flying it but trying to find some fun things to do with it (fun videos and photos to take). I am used to using 20+ MP cameras and making great prints. Shotting raw on the drone what would be a good size i could print?
Also I have registered the drone and got state farm insurance but if i am not doing this commercial would the faa license make sense. The test is kind of expensive.
The camera on the Mavic Air is honestly pretty average for stills, nothing even remotely close to the cameras you are likely used to using (I assume DSLRs).
It uses an extremely tiny, low resolution (12MP) 1/2.3" sensor, identical to one you would find in a cheap $100 point & shoot camera. Of course this is necessary to maintain it's awesomely compact form factor, but you pay for it with image quality.
Shooting RAW and processing after the fact is still your best bet (just like with your other photography), but the file malleability is extremely limited, and noise gets pretty bad at anything over ISO 100 (can't overcome physics
) Aperture and focal length equivalent is also fixed at F2.8/24mm.
Maximum print size depends on the print medium, viewing distance, and your processing skills (same applies to your other photography). The subjective "gold standard" is 300ppi which would be about 13.5" X 10.1" from the Mavic Air, but you can certainly go bigger if you lower your standards or increase viewing distance. Just don't expect the print quality to be anything near your DSLR (again that is the type of camera I assume you are used to). Anything poster-sized is going show the limitations of the 1/2.3" sensor and plastic lens pretty fast. Just keep your expectations in-line with the camera hardware. It's more than fine for fun/casual shots but I wouldn't be printing too big with it. If you are really interested in the photography side (and big prints) you'll want to look at a
Mavic 2 Pro or
Phantom 4 Pro/2 to get the Sony 20MP 1" sensor, a variable aperture, and a better lens.
Topaz Gigapixel AI 4.0 is excellent up-res software if you do want to try push the print size boundaries with the Mavic Air, but it is still no replacement for native resolution on a good sensor. I use the software mostly for my smartphone photos, and old scanned photographs my parents send me.
Video is another story, the Air is actually quite excellent all things considered, and much better than even the original Mavic Pro in that regard. Same sensor is used in the
Mavic 2 Zoom to my knowledge. You will probably want to be shooting in D-Cinelike most of the time so you have the most grading flexibility after the fact. If you don't want to pay for Adobe Premiere, most people use DaVinci Resolve (free) or LumaFusion (~$20, iPad).
I liked my Air so much I so far have decided to keep it alongside my
Mavic 2 Pro - it is just so much smaller/lighter than the
Pro2, and very capable still. Congrats on the purchase.
