Owner of Multiple Business Drones take on the new 2S

[RazorV]

I only wish I could understand 20% of what you wrote...but, I'll learn!

Me too!

 

[mavicn00b]

I thought the lack of SDK support is what's keeping most professional flyers from adopting the 2S? That and aperture control, mechanical shutter, lower wind resistance etc

If I flew professionally if just have it was another tool in the toolbox.

 

[Dan AISCF]

Thanks for the post.
Love to know more about how you like the capabilities of the camera. I being a cinematographer am always wanting the most control in post. Dynamic range is a must esp in the highlights - have you tried master shots or prefer to fly manual all the time?

Thanks for taking the time to read the post, it's appreciated.

Like you, I use my drones for a LOT of video and I'm thinking the 2S is going to get a lot of usage in that area. From what I'm just seeing based on the images it takes, the dynamic range is pretty good...for a drone with a 1" sensor. Sadly, outside of only "test" footage in very bright Florida light, with filters on, the video was great, but I didn't get any REAL footage, like deliverables for clients... The 10 bit color didn't break apart nearly as early as, say, 8 bit on our phantom and other drones. The shadows and highlights retained as much information as I would expect and looked good with filters on running the 180 rule.

In regards to the master shots, or any flight mode for that matter, I fly all manual all the time. When I first started flying, for practice, I would manually run every pattern I could think of on a daily basis (parallax, orbits, chasing boats, jetskis and cars - all willing participants). When doing shoots for clients, either around their property or bigger shoots in public, I just can't bring myself to let go of the sticks and let the drone do all of the work.

Soon, the spouse and I are supposed to be heading back to the Gulf Coast of Florida for a little in-state get away and I'm thinking of doing a bit of white sand beach filming. If I get to film, I'll post it

 

[Canada Goose]

Like so many here, I own multiple drones for my wife's and my business and recently decided to retire our workhorse, the Phantom 4 Pro+, in favor of the Air 2S.

Long story short, we have/had a Mavic Air, Phantom 4, Phantom 4 Pro+ and an Autel Evo I (our backup). The P4P+ was our workhorse and we loved it because it did everything well (4k60, 20mp 1" sensor camera, etc.). We never used any of the flight modes or "advanced features". I never liked letting go of the sticks when flying, everything was manual for me. The thing that initially attracted me to the P4P+ was eventually its downfall. It just caught too many peoples attention. I was pretty caught up on "looking professional" back then. As curiosity has turned to disdain for drones, we like to get in, shoot and get out before we attract too much attention.

Because of this, we started using our Evo more and more. A bit quieter and had a much smaller footprint (our OG Air had a TERRIBLE pitch, so we used that just for tight flythroughs). As time went on, we were getting a little tired of having to run the Evo for all of our video shoots and then quickly throw the P4P+ up for stills. Yeah, I know, most people don't see the difference between the 2 drones cameras for still photos, but I do and want to give our clients what I think is the best deliverable.

We contemplated the Mavic 2 Pro, but that's getting old. So when we saw the specs of the Air 2S, I was intrigued. Like many I watched all the YT vids I could and TRIED to find unbiased, non-DJI supplied, non-DJI fanboy reviewers to get an honest opinion. I found quite a few that personally purchased the Air 2S and had more positives then negatives to say.

I bought the drone on the 29th and set it up. Coming from the Go 4 app, I was slightly taken aback at the simplicity of the new Fly app. BUT, it had everything I needed access to, in order to do a job this past Saturday. I'm not going to get into specs and all that, I'm simply going to relate my experience as the owner of a small photography and videography company.

THOUGHTS
Pics -- Like I mentioned, we had a chance this past Saturday to do a photo-only shoot on a typical $500,000 southwest beach town-home. It was 85+ degrees and super bright out. Gusts were up to 20 occasional because, well, it's Florida and storms materialize from nowhere. Anyway, I took pics of the home, pool and lanai from various heights and was not disappointed whatsoever. I wanted to try out 5 shot AEB and see how well it did in such windy weather. Even in constant 15 mph winds, only 1 picture came out slightly blurry. All the others were perfect. The little Air 2S planted like a rock in the air. I also tried out the Smartphoto. Again, I was surprised at how well the image was, on basically what could be considered auto. While I did not use those images as deliverables to our client, due to a slight lack in dynamic range and color, they could be usable in a pinch or even when quickly taking pics on vacation.

Video -- I also did some B-Roll video and it looked great. I shot the same videos in normal, DLOG and HLG at 4k 30fps, slowed to 80% and color graded them in Davinci Resolve. I didn't really care for the Normal profile. The DLOG with a Rec 709 natural LUT looked really nice for client work, whereas the HLG with the same LUT was SUPER PUNCHY...so much so I had to bring back a lot of the color. But, I loved the dynamic range and will probably shoot HLG soley. Sadly the DLOG profile matches our Sony cameras a bit more, but I'll work that out in time.

Flight Characteristics -- I was not prepared at how "snappy" the Air 2S flies, lol. Like, seriously. Even after having tested it out at home prior to the job, I was caught off guard a time or two during the shoot. I blame it on being a little tired from shooting the 4000 sqft homes interior on AEB and Flambient...and I'm sticking to it.... Anyway, when you get on the sticks, the drone MOVES...in normal mode. You touch the controls and it hops right to it. It has Cine mode, but I never like to fly that slow, ever. I had to avoid a pair of hawks (or was it ospreys???) by flying straight up and when I came back down, I could have sworn the motors cut off! It dropped like rock and a half. I admit, I loved it. My other drones took forever to descend. To me, the fast descend is a great feature, as when I'm flying in our hometown of Orlando, avoiding low-flying helicopters and small passenger planes is a frequent occurrence and dropping like a rock is a big plus... I do plan on digging through the Fly app more and deadening the sticks a bit, to perform like our "backup" Evo does, in all of its lumbering dump truck glory, lol.

Sound/Annoyance factor -- This has to be the quietest of the 5 drones we own/owned. It is seriously quiet when only a few dozen feet from the ground. Our job was in a pretty exclusive neighborhood, with many people out taking pics of the surroundings and sunset and not one person batted an eye or even turned in the direction of the drone...except for one gentleman that used to fly drones, before they pretty much became automated... He stopped flying after crashing some old Phantoms and Visions. He told me he didn't initially notice it until it flew through one of his wife's shots she was taking, lol. Nice... This is another plus for us. No more wearing the silly vest in private communities, trying to look all official.

All in all, so far, I'm loving the Air 2S. I don't use any smart or advanced features, so I can't speak to those. I do all of my own tracking, orbits and parallaxes and it works great for us. I'm glad we retired the P4P+ and only have to bring this and our Evo I around to jobs. Great purchase.

I could not agree more, although coming more from a professional stills side of things I had been using the P4P Obsidian which was retired due to frame structure failure the cause of which is entirely unknown. But for the exact same reasons as yourself I found it just drew way too much unwanted attention from it's bulk to it's noise and like yourself liked the professionalism it showed when showing up to a job but I'm long past that as the proof really is in the pudding! My friend had for months been trying to convince me to buy the Air 2 but I was not sold on the 1/2" sensor and definitely not a fan on the pathetic 48mp image hype which rendered IMO very poor RAW images. When the 1" sensor 20mb specs were announced I paid attention. I know the Mavic 3 was coming soon but I really did not need 6K video, side sensors and whatever features that it will have over the Air 2S so the latest edition to the DJI hangar for me was a no brainer and as DJSureshot rightly pointed out it is a very capable flyer indeed, the 20mp camera produces excellent crisp RAW files along with very capable 4K video. So if you don't need what will be the more expensive Mavic 3 but want stellar photo and video abilities that won't need a super computer then the Air 2S is certainly one to be looking on your short list

 

[Remote Pilots Australia]

I thought the lack of SDK support is what's keeping most professional flyers from adopting the 2S? That and aperture control, mechanical shutter, lower wind resistance etc

If I flew professionally if just have it was another tool in the toolbox.

These are valid concerns in commercial operations depending on your use case. I'm a commercial operator as well and a great deal of my operations are mapping and orthomosaics so I have three P4P V2.0s in the hanger and will continue to operate them due to the hardware shutter. I would guess that's why they are still in production and will remain so until something else comes along that has that capability.

I won't say you can't map with a rolling software shutter but you need to come to a complete halt for each frame which reduces the amount of area per battery you can cover by about 75%. If your primary business case is mostly images or movies this is nothing like an issue, at worst a little fish eye distortion which can be fixed in post. I do some film and photography work but I already own two Mavic 2 aircraft so it's pointless me buying an Air 2S as it would mostly be replication with a few points on either side but no clear winner.

Likewise extended waypoint mission support is an absolute must if you are mapping and none of the DJI aircraft that operate on the Fly App support it and it's looking like DJI have no intention of doing so. Once the SDKs are all released it'll be available as a virtual sticks affair but it's not the same thing from where I am sitting.

I suspect that people like me who need to map will continue with the Phantom 4 Pro, People who already own a M2Pro will stick with what they have and people who don't fit into the above will buy the Air 2S in droves.

Regards

Ari

 

[Dan AISCF]

Finally got a chance to "go somewhere" and get some actual non-client, video footage with the 2S. Headed to my old stomping grounds, Lido Key in Sarasota Fl. It was a SUPER bright, cloudless sky, with gusts off and on, up to 15mph. I shot in DLOG, 60fps 1080p, shutter 120, Iso 100, ND 32 filter. It was a time I wish I had an adjustable aperture, lol...or higher ND filter. Edited in Davinci Resolve on a 23 timeline, footage slowed to 40%.

 

[FuzzyDice]

Dronelink relies on the DJI Mobile SDK. I haven't looked into the others, but they probably rely on the same SDK. The SDK was updated a few months ago to support the MA2, and it takes time for these companies to work through their dev and test cycles. In addition, these companies are going to base their development decisions on demand and the other projects/features they are currently working on. You might want to contact them and ask if an update to support the MA2 is imminent.

Unfortunately still no luck on the MA2S as companies say DJI hasn’t updated their SDK for that yet.

 

[FuzzyDice]

Finally got a chance to "go somewhere" and get some actual non-client, video footage with the 2S. Headed to my old stomping grounds, Lido Key in Sarasota Fl. It was a SUPER bright, cloudless sky, with gusts off and on, up to 15mph. I shot in DLOG, 60fps 1080p, shutter 120, Iso 100, ND 32 filter. It was a time I wish I had an adjustable aperture, lol...or higher ND filter. Edited in Davinci Resolve on a 23 timeline, footage slowed to 40%.

What is a 23 timeline? I use Final Cut Pro x and I’m new to this, so not sure what that means.

 

[Remote Pilots Australia]

Unfortunately still no luck on the MA2S as companies say DJI hasn’t updated their SDK for that yet.

It’s worth while to register in the DJI developer program to keep track of these sorts of things. I can confirm there is no Mini 2 or Air 2S support planned for the SDK due for release June 21st so we’ll habe to hope for the next one.

 

[Dan AISCF]

What is a 23 timeline? I use Final Cut Pro x and I’m new to this, so not sure what that means.

I use a 23.97fps timeline. All my footage is 30 or 60fps, slowed to either 80% (30fps) or 40% (60fps) and then placed on the 23 timeline.

 

[life.in.nb]

How does the air 2s fly in comparison to the mavic 3?

I have a mavic 3. Very little time with it. I usually just fly my mini 2