DJI Mavic, Air and Mini Drones
Friendly, Helpful & Knowledgeable Community
Join Us Now

Testing camera without actually flying

Starcruiser

Member
Joined
Oct 18, 2020
Messages
5
Reactions
6
Location
USA
Hey everyone!

I'd like to spend some time navigating the settings/menu on the mavic 2 pro to become more familiar with the DJI go4 app layout and the features of the drone itself. I'd also like to do a few tests with the camera and the various recording modes.

Do you think its safe to run the Mavic 2 Pro with the props off indoors in a 78°F air conditioned environment so I can study the app/perform tests without the system overheating for the entire length of the battery to allow for enough time to check everything out?

I ask this because I see the DJI go4 app allows a flight training simulator where you can connect to the mavic 2 pro and use the remote controller/phone to learn how to fly. I did use this simulator for a few minutes just to see what it was all about, and noticed the Mavic 2 Pro fans were spinning pretty loud, and a decent bit of hot was coming out of the vents leading me to believe this may not be the best of ideas... I mean, the fans did sound like they were working great, and the heat was definitely being vented out but that was only about 5 minutes of using the simulator. I'd like to spend approx 30 minutes navigating and running tests with the camera.

I can imagine it'd be safe to do seeing as DJI implemented this training simulator feature into the go4 app/mavic 2 pro system, but I figured I'd try to get some opinions from other fellow pilots.

(I searched in the forums to see if this was already a topic posted but could not find one relevant to this particular situation. If I missed something and this topic was already posted I do apologize.)
 
You don't need to run the motors, they can be left off while you check out the camera. It has been suggested to use a fan to help keep the drone cool. Being as the air intakes face forward, I'd position the fan facing the front of the drone.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Oakley75
I'd like to spend approx 30 minutes navigating and running tests with the camera.
It sounds like you are taking things too seriously.
It's much easier to fly than you imagine.
You can do all you want without any risk of overheating with the drone in the air.
The Mavic will happily just sit there while you doodle around with settings as much as you like.
Just make sure you do your early flights in an open area, well away from trees, buildings or other obstacles.
When there's nothing to hit, it's very difficult to get into trouble.
 
If you power on your M2 & run it stationary for any length of time it’s best to blow a fan over it to replicate it’s flight movement through the air, giving it natural air cooling.
You only have to connect the controller to your PC when using the DJI flight simulator not the actual drone.
 
I’ve left my Mavic two on for extended periods while doing updates and never had any issue.
Once when I was taking pictures off I left it on for the entire length of the battery no issue.
 
Processing unit need to be cooled, Just like on your computer the CPU fan runs to keep it from over heating. When ever the internal cooling fan kicks on I personally
want to know the core board temp. Which kicks on any where from 100 degrees to 116 degrees to keep the drone cool enough to avoid over heating. I keep a laser temp gun handy all the time even when checking my motor temps with laser gun to detect motor failure before takeoff. Heat sink temp should never get above 125 degrees or you risk frying your FC ESC Board. Using fans is a great idea, but when its not flying it generates much more heat. I like filming with no props, turning at all, have the drone on a tripod, filming from 50 feet away, controlling the camera movements, to capture ducks, and their young, as a example.
 
The drone will shut itself down if overheated.

Do you have documentation to this. I am not doubting you. It just seems like it may be kind of a safety thing. Or will an overheat just shut it down when not flying. Any warnings before hand?

As for me, I have gone through several batteries with it just sitting on the table playing around with no problems. Fan comes on fan goes off. Just like my computer.
 
Do you have documentation to this. I am not doubting you. It just seems like it may be kind of a safety thing. Or will an overheat just shut it down when not flying. Any warnings before hand?

My M2P has once had the cooling fan stopped working and an overheating warning message showed up on the GO app. I was inaccurate when I said the craft shut down. It just refused to takeoff.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Otisangb
My M2P has once had the cooling fan stopped working and an overheating warning message showed up on the GO app. I was inaccurate when I said the craft shut down. It just refused to takeoff.

That go to know,
I did have a computer fan go on me and the computer did shut down on high temp.

I will have to keep an eye out for the warning with the drone when playing on the kitchen table.
 
Why not just hover as suggested above. Then you’ll have settings close to what you neeed to get your desired effects. I personally set up vids or pics as separate entities since conditions are controlled by Mother Nature... have fun with it.
 
Why not just hover as suggested above. Then you’ll have settings close to what you neeed to get your desired effects. I personally set up vids or pics as separate entities since conditions are controlled by Mother Nature... have fun with it.
Well for me, I have never messed around with a camera before other than a cheap cell phone camera. With it on the table I can take a picture with different settings and pop it into the computer. So sitting there with the beginner photography book I got I can read and mess around. I tried learning the photography while flying but attention span becomes limited. Your right though I should probably steal my wife's dslr for a bit instead of using the drone.
 
Thank you so much for all of your replies! You all have made stellar points, these suggestions have helped me gain a lot of awesome perspective into how everyone is running their Mavics, and their own personal operational conditions. This is making me feel a bit more comfortable to do what is needed. I never had thought or realized the fans could stop spinning out of a potential error or physical defect, though this may seem more of a rarity than anything; it at least is still possible and its good to know these things for general awareness!

I love flying the Mavic 2 Pro, and it is incredibly easy to fly. Normally I would just take it outside and however at like 5 feet while I tweaked with the camera settings, but my area has lots of humidity and rain lately, and is fairly hot. My general thought process behind this was instead of flying the Mavic 2 Pro in humid hot outdoor air, maybe I could simulate cooler operating conditions for the Mavic indoors with air conditioning at 78°F. Naturally, I feel like colder/drier operating conditions would be safer for the internals than hotter/humid conditions.

It appears the intake vents are fairly close to being directly underneath the air stream of the propellers, allowing for ample clean air to be sucked in. It also appears the exhaust vents are also located where the rear propellers would be swatting the exiting hot air away from the exhaust vents. It is a rather cool design! The suggestion of placing a fan in front of the quad to help simulate wind flowing through is AWESOME! I will absolutely do this during my testing.

I understand this may be me overthinking things, but I'd rather think too much about something and have the extra knowledge for dealing with any unknowns than go into a situation unprepared. Thinking is free, a damaged Mavic is not. lol Thank you to everyone who replied.



@Otisangb , if you have access to a DSLR, I highly recommend snagging it for a weekend or so! My recommendation is to find a subject to shoot pictures of, (such as an action figure on a table) and run some simple and easy tests through the 3 basic camera controls;

1. "Apeture"
2. "Shutter speed" and
3. "ISO"

Those are the 3 settings that make up the "exposure triangle" △ of photography. They all work in conjunction with each other to provide custom photo results according to the settings you have dialed in during that shot.... (For these tests, be sure the "Focus" setting is set to "Auto Focus" for now. Manual focus is a variable that can be learned after getting familiar with the exposure triangle of photography.)

Place your action figure on one end of the table, and sit down on the other end of the table to keep your subject distance the same for each picture. Set your camera to Manual Mode so you have full creative control over the aperture, shutter speed and ISO.

Aperture is the setting that has the most noticeable visual effects on your pictures. This is the setting I recommend experimenting with first; then shutter speed next, and ISO would be last.
Shutter speed controls how fast your shutter moves, heavily controlling the amount of light allowed into your camera's sensor.
ISO is a way to digitally and artificially increase the amount of light that touches your cameras sensor. This setting I'd say is the least important.

Aperture and Shutter speed allow you the most creative control, where as ISO just simply helps to inflate light when you need it. Too high of an ISO, will lead to very grainy looking photo, especially in low light conditions. Try to always keep your ISO value at 100, especially for these tests.


Aperture determines how blurry or sharp the background will be. A low aperture value will give you a blurry background with your subject in focus, and a high aperture value will give you more clarity in the background with your subject still in focus. For testing how aperture works, choose a constant variable of a shutter speed (I'd recommend 1/200th to start with) and take a picture of your action figure at the lowest possible aperture, then another picture at the highest possible aperture. Review both your pictures and you will see a clear difference in the background. Now try taking 3 photos of your action figure with a low, medium and high aperture value, and again review the results. Low aperture is usually dreamy looking in the background, and high aperture is great for capturing all of the details of the shot with clarity.

Shutter speed is cool. It allows you to control how fast you want the shutter to open and close, giving you complete control of how much light you want to enter into your sensor. Too much light, and your picture will be overexposed (blown out), not enough light and your picture will be underexposed (way too dark). For testing how shutter speed works, choose a constant aperture value to work with, and set your shutter speed to 1/600 of a second. Take a picture. Now set your shutter speed to 1/200 of a second, and take another picture. Now set your shutter speed to 1/40 of a second and take a picture. You can audibly hear the shutter "click" decreasing in speed the lower you go in speed! Of course, the higher (faster) the shutter speed, the less light is allowed into your camera which will make for a darker picture. The lower (slower) the shutter speed, more light will be allowed in which will increase the brightness of your picture.

ISO is a helpful tool in the exposure triangle, but you always want to run the lowest possible ISO (which is 100) UNLESS its really dark and you have no additional light sources to help light up your subject. Then you can increase your ISO to artificially create light for your sensor. Think of ISO as a light booster for low light conditions. But once again, the higher the ISO value, more grainy looking noise will be visible in your pictures and will reduce the overall quality of your photos. Increasing ISO is mainly only useful at nighttime/ or in a very dark room IMO.


If your subject is still and not moving, such as your action figure or a house, Aperture will usually be the primary creative setting to dial in first. (How blurry do you want your background to be?)... You then will set your shutter speed to match the proper lighting conditions. There is a little exposure meter on most all DSLRs in the view finder. You want the exposure indicator to be set to the dead center of this exposure meter to help and guide you to choosing the proper shutter speed to match the current lighting conditions provided. This exposure meter tool is very useful, and I use it with every photograph I take.

If your subject is moving, such as a flower in the wind, or a person riding a bicycle, then things change a little bit. Shutter Speed would be the primary creative setting to dial in first. Too low (slow) of a shutter speed and your moving subject will have motion blur (which is okay if that's the creative effect you are going for). But if you want your moving subject to be photographed without any motion blur and looking nice and crispy, then you must select a higher (faster) shutter speed to quickly lock in and capture the subject.

Taking pictures of moving subjects is much harder, but over time you will get used to how fast of a shutter speed you would need in order to capture the moving subject perfectly. Usually when photographing fast moving subjects we don't have that much time to control aperture and shutter speed, which is why DSLR cameras have modes called Shutter Priority mode and Aperture Priority mode, to help aid us in controlling these variables under time restrictive circumstances. For example, if you have ONE CHANCE to photograph a rare bird about to take off and fly away, shutter priority mode would be useful because manually adjusting the Aperture, Shutter Speed, AND Focus would potenially take too long, causing you to miss your perfect opportunity to take the award winning shot of the rare bird. Over time, once you become familiar with these controls, taking photos in manual mode with manual focus will be way less daunting.

I hope These tips help out a little bit. I recommend learning the basics of photography on the DSLR simply because with the Mavic 2 Pro, there are so many flight settings to worry about already on top of a pre-flight checklist and basic controls of flight itself, learning how to take pictures of top of all of that is just a lot to take in. Practicing on a DSLR will help you to sit down, and focus on the basics of photography itself vs dealing with all of the other distractions the Mavic 2 Pro comes with. Once you dial in a basic understanding on the DSLR, it will become much easier to translate these skills to the Mavic 2 Pro. Practice makes perfect! Also, once you learn the basics of photography, you can then improve your understanding of cinematography with a much more solid foundation of knowledge to work with. Ultimately you will get better and better results the more time you spend with it all.

Feel free to let me know if you have any questions on any of this. I am by all means not a pro in photography, but I was new at one point with it as well, and we all have to start somewhere so I know what it's like to be in the dark about photography lol Rome wasn't built in a day, but it got built eventually lol.
 
Last edited:
Thank you so much for all of your replies! You all have made stellar points, these suggestions have helped me gain a lot of awesome perspective into how everyone is running their Mavics, and their own personal operational conditions. This is making me feel a bit more comfortable to do what is needed. I never had thought or realized the fans could stop spinning out of a potential error or physical defect, though this may seem more of a rarity than anything; it at least is still possible and its good to know these things for general awareness!

I love flying the Mavic 2 Pro, and it is incredibly easy to fly. Normally I would just take it outside and however at like 5 feet while I tweaked with the camera settings, but my area has lots of humidity and rain lately, and is fairly hot. My general thought process behind this was instead of flying the Mavic 2 Pro in humid hot outdoor air, maybe I could simulate cooler operating conditions for the Mavic indoors with air conditioning at 78°F. Naturally, I feel like colder/drier operating conditions would be safer for the internals than hotter/humid conditions.

It appears the intake vents are fairly close to being directly underneath the air stream of the propellers, allowing for ample clean air to be sucked in. It also appears the exhaust vents are also located where the rear propellers would be swatting the exiting hot air away from the exhaust vents. It is a rather cool design! The suggestion of placing a fan in front of the quad to help simulate wind flowing through is AWESOME! I will absolutely do this during my testing.

I understand this may be me overthinking things, but I'd rather think too much about something and have the extra knowledge for dealing with any unknowns than go into a situation unprepared. Thinking is free, a damaged Mavic is not. lol Thank you to everyone who replied.



@Otisangb , if you have access to a DSLR, I highly recommend snagging it for a weekend or so! My recommendation is to find a subject to shoot pictures of, (such as an action figure on a table) and run some simple and easy tests through the 3 basic camera controls;

1. "Apeture"
2. "Shutter speed" and
3. "ISO"

Those are the 3 settings that make up the "exposure triangle" △ of photography. They all work in conjunction with each other to provide custom photo results according to the settings you have dialed in during that shot.... (For these tests, be sure the "Focus" setting is set to "Auto Focus" for now. Manual focus is a variable that can be learned after getting familiar with the exposure triangle of photography.)

Place your action figure on one end of the table, and sit down on the other end of the table to keep your subject distance the same for each picture. Set your camera to Manual Mode so you have full creative control over the aperture, shutter speed and ISO.

Aperture is the setting that has the most noticeable visual effects on your pictures. This is the setting I recommend experimenting with first; then shutter speed next, and ISO would be last.
Shutter speed controls how fast your shutter moves, heavily controlling the amount of light allowed into your camera's sensor.
ISO is a way to digitally and artificially increase the amount of light that touches your cameras sensor. This setting I'd say is the least important.

Aperture and Shutter speed allow you the most creative control, where as ISO just simply helps to inflate light when you need it. Too high of an ISO, will lead to very grainy looking photo, especially in low light conditions. Try to always keep your ISO value at 100, especially for these tests.


Aperture determines how blurry or sharp the background will be. A low aperture value will give you a blurry background with your subject in focus, and a high aperture value will give you more clarity in the background with your subject still in focus. For testing how aperture works, choose a constant variable of a shutter speed (I'd recommend 1/200th to start with) and take a picture of your action figure at the lowest possible aperture, then another picture at the highest possible aperture. Review both your pictures and you will see a clear difference in the background. Now try taking 3 photos of your action figure with a low, medium and high aperture value, and again review the results. Low aperture is usually dreamy looking in the background, and high aperture is great for capturing all of the details of the shot with clarity.

Shutter speed is cool. It allows you to control how fast you want the shutter to open and close, giving you complete control of how much light you want to enter into your sensor. Too much light, and your picture will be overexposed (blown out), not enough light and your picture will be underexposed (way too dark). For testing how shutter speed works, choose a constant aperture value to work with, and set your shutter speed to 1/600 of a second. Take a picture. Now set your shutter speed to 1/200 of a second, and take another picture. Now set your shutter speed to 1/40 of a second and take a picture. You can audibly hear the shutter "click" decreasing in speed the lower you go in speed! Of course, the higher (faster) the shutter speed, the less light is allowed into your camera which will make for a darker picture. The lower (slower) the shutter speed, more light will be allowed in which will increase the brightness of your picture.

ISO is a helpful tool in the exposure triangle, but you always want to run the lowest possible ISO (which is 100) UNLESS its really dark and you have no additional light sources to help light up your subject. Then you can increase your ISO to artificially create light for your sensor. Think of ISO as a light booster for low light conditions. But once again, the higher the ISO value, more grainy looking noise will be visible in your pictures and will reduce the overall quality of your photos. Increasing ISO is mainly only useful at nighttime/ or in a very dark room IMO.


If your subject is still and not moving, such as your action figure or a house, Aperture will usually be the primary creative setting to dial in first. (How blurry do you want your background to be?)... You then will set your shutter speed to match the proper lighting conditions. There is a little exposure meter on most all DSLRs in the view finder. You want the exposure indicator to be set to the dead center of this exposure meter to help and guide you to choosing the proper shutter speed to match the current lighting conditions provided. This exposure meter tool is very useful, and I use it with every photograph I take.

If your subject is moving, such as a flower in the wind, or a person riding a bicycle, then things change a little bit. Shutter Speed would be the primary creative setting to dial in first. Too low (slow) of a shutter speed and your moving subject will have motion blur (which is okay if that's the creative effect you are going for). But if you want your moving subject to be photographed without any motion blur and looking nice and crispy, then you must select a higher (faster) shutter speed to quickly lock in and capture the subject.

Taking pictures of moving subjects is much harder, but over time you will get used to how fast of a shutter speed you would need in order to capture the moving subject perfectly. Usually when photographing fast moving subjects we don't have that much time to control aperture and shutter speed, which is why DSLR cameras have modes called Shutter Priority mode and Aperture Priority mode, to help aid us in controlling these variables under time restrictive circumstances. For example, if you have ONE CHANCE to photograph a rare bird about to take off and fly away, shutter priority mode would be useful because manually adjusting the Aperture, Shutter Speed, AND Focus would potenially take too long, causing you to miss your perfect opportunity to take the award winning shot of the rare bird. ;-) Over time, once you become familiar with these controls, taking photos in manual mode with manual focus will be way less daunting.

I hope These tips help out a little bit. I recommend learning the basics of photography on the DSLR simply because with the Mavic 2 Pro, there are so many flight settings to worry about already on top of a pre-flight checklist and basic controls of flight itself, learning how to take pictures of top of all of that is just a lot to take in. Practicing on a DSLR will help you to sit down, and focus on the basics of photography itself vs dealing with all of the other distractions the Mavic 2 Pro comes with. Once you dial in a basic understanding on the DSLR, it will become much easier to translate these skills to the Mavic 2 Pro. Practice makes perfect! Also, once you learn the basics of photography, you can then improve your understanding of cinematography with a much more solid foundation of knowledge to work with. Ultimately you will get better and better results the more time you spend with it all.

Feel free to let me know if you have any questions on any of this. I am by all means not a pro in photography, but I was new at one point with it as well, and we all have to start somewhere so I know what it's like to be in the dark about photography lol Rome wasn't built in a day, but it got built eventually lol.
Skynectar,
Thank you very much. You obviously know what what your talking about because you just perfectly summarized the first 73 pages of the book I am reading written by Chris Gatcum,The beginners guide to photography. Yep, I am going to acquire my wife's dslr. Thanks again.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Starcruiser
Hey everyone!

I'd like to spend some time navigating the settings/menu on the mavic 2 pro to become more familiar with the DJI go4 app layout and the features of the drone itself. I'd also like to do a few tests with the camera and the various recording modes.

Do you think its safe to run the Mavic 2 Pro with the props off indoors in a 78°F air conditioned environment so I can study the app/perform tests without the system overheating for the entire length of the battery to allow for enough time to check everything out?

I ask this because I see the DJI go4 app allows a flight training simulator where you can connect to the mavic 2 pro and use the remote controller/phone to learn how to fly. I did use this simulator for a few minutes just to see what it was all about, and noticed the Mavic 2 Pro fans were spinning pretty loud, and a decent bit of hot was coming out of the vents leading me to believe this may not be the best of ideas... I mean, the fans did sound like they were working great, and the heat was definitely being vented out but that was only about 5 minutes of using the simulator. I'd like to spend approx 30 minutes navigating and running tests with the camera.

I can imagine it'd be safe to do seeing as DJI implemented this training simulator feature into the go4 app/mavic 2 pro system, but I figured I'd try to get some opinions from other fellow pilots.

(I searched in the forums to see if this was already a topic posted but could not find one relevant to this particular situation. If I missed something and this topic was already posted I do apologize.)

I take hyperlapse videos using the M2P as a camera. For safety, I remove the props first. So far, no overheating problems.
 
Lycus Tech Mavic Air 3 Case

DJI Drone Deals

New Threads

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
130,598
Messages
1,554,236
Members
159,603
Latest member
refrigasketscanada