What's the point of buying a Mavic 2 Zoom actually?

[Imnotsure_YT]

honestly what’s the difference between mechanical and digital zoom?

 

[pross]

honestly what’s the difference between mechanical and digital zoom?

Well a real camera has a lens where the actual glass moves in and out, so you zoom without losing any quality, and a phone for example has a minute lens that is fixed and zoom is done by cropping a large image smaller, or using digital algorithms to fake the zoom.

 

[Rattydude77]

I love my mavic zoom with smart controller.Iv owned many drones and built a few and not just a kit like the flamewheel and I can honestly say it's the best drone I my self have flown.People say you can edit your pictures to make it look as good as the mavic zoom but theres no way DJI is gonna make a 700/800 drone be as good as an 1800.00 drone nor top it. BUT THATS MY OPINION

 

[Otisangb]

Plus vote for the optical zoom. Primarily for wildlife. I would only uprade if they increased the optical zoom.

 

[zappy54]

well the Zoom as been out now is it 2 year and its definitely proven its self to be a cracking Drone to me.

 

[Greekislandlover]

I have ran a commercial / editorial photo biz for nearly 33 years now, aerials have been a part of that for at least 25 years. I own and use a MP2 because of the camera, in fact I was not at all interested in drones until it came along. I can easily afford a complex inspire setup but it is frankly too bulky and heavy to bring to the places I go in the manner in which I go there.

Through processing and professional technique I extract amazing amounts of detail and range out of my Mavic Pro 2 files and shoot only in DNG. But if I had a choice, it would be more like a 35mm FOV lens rather than 28mm. So I am interested in the Mavic 2 Zoom to a degree but I need at least some amount of control. I need to be able to shoot RAW / DNG format and to manually control exposure and white balance. I understand that adjusting the aperture is not an option but if the image quality is decent on the long end, then I am going to be manually stitching out soft corners like I do on the MP2 anyway.

So what is the deal with the zoom, can you shoot in DNG and manually control things like exposure, white balance and focus?? And at 48mm F3.8, how is the lens's image quality? I have seen a couple posts on the lens exceeding a diffraction limit at 3.8 which is kind of false since it is a variable aperture zoom, the aperture is not closing down at all, it is just letting in less light as the lens is zoomed out so the effective aperture is less than when set at 24mm.

The software will capture in either .jpg .dng or both. It's the same drone as a Mavic 2 Pro, same control software but with a different camera. You can change the shutter speed with ND filters as the aperture is fixed. So certainly for exposure control / white balance it's all in the same Go4 app as the M2P.

My personal comment is that I like to use ND filters to achieve the 180 rule of shutter twice the speed of the FPS. The only problem I have encountered is that if you zoom in or out then exposure changes. It gets darker as it zooms in. I guess auto exposure would compensate for that, but as I mostly use manual exposure then the zoom feature is something I use less of than I thought I would.

 

[Dakarenduro]

Ran across this review, comparing the M2 Air with the Mavic Pro. The video is good (my opinion) for pointing out the failures of the Mavic Air 2. These are enough for me to be glad I have not sprung for the Air 2 and will stick with my Air 1 and M2Z. Big points for me - why is the RC so **** big? 17 min average flight before RTH. Flying forward fast the gimbal drops the cam.

Brutally Honest Mavic Air 2 Review

 

[bigswifty]

Ran across this review, comparing the M2 Air with the Mavic Pro. The video is good (my opinion) for pointing out the failures of the Mavic Air 2. These are enough for me to be glad I have not sprung for the Air 2 and will stick with my Air 1 and M2Z. Big points for me - why is the RC so **** big? 17 min average flight before RTH. Flying forward fast the gimbal drops the cam.

Brutally Honest Mavic Air 2 Review

That's a refreshingly straightforward review. I hadn't realised how huge the controller is. If you take the drone + controller it's actually bigger than a Pro. Good to see it side by side.

 

[Dakarenduro]

For me, it was the size of the drone itself. If you compare the Air1 and Air2, the Air1 is still significantly smaller. For packing that is still my number 1 drone to pick. I dont have a Mini and dont want one, it simply is not wind capable in my normal flying environment.