Earlier in the summer (it’s September 2 as I write this) I mentioned that I bought a DJI Osmo Pocket 3 camera (http://radiantcomics.com/art-writing-photos-bryant-park-and-time/). That’s a small 3-Axis stabilized camera that I’ve mostly used to shoot video as I walk on the streets of NYC. The video it shoots is really clear because the camera has a one inch sensor. All of my other digital cameras have smaller sensors so the video on the DJI really stands out for me.
Though it’s mainly designed for shooting video the camera can also take still photos as well. I’ve taken some photos with the camera but not really a lot of them. I mostly take street photos these days and I like a big zoom for taking those. I have a 40x zoom on my pocket camera that I carry so the DJI’s 2x zoom is pointless compared to that. But this Labor Day weekend my friends had a get together so I decided to try out the DJI’s photo abilities and see how good they were. Here is how it went.
A photo taken right from the DJI.
First off this camera is weird looking. My friends kept making references to “Men in Black” and getting their minds wiped. So people are going to notice it. They are especially going to notice it because with only a little bit of zoom and short lens you have to get right up in their faces with the camera. Often I like to take candid photos of my friends so I’m in the background a bit with my camera. Not with the DJI. With that one I’m up in everyone’s’ business.
I’m also not used to the interface of this camera. I’m used to a regular camera that has a menu but also has a physical dial so that I can check the settings at a glance. The DJI only has on screen settings and it’s a fairly small screen. It’s also a touch screen so that makes things easier but I’d have no hope of changing any settings without my reading glasses.
Not knowing the settings very well got me into a little trouble late in the day. There is a small joystick on the camera that can move the lens on the gimbal up, down, or side to side. That’s how I like it but you an also change the up and down on the joystick to work the tiny 2x zoom. Sometime duty the picnic I accidentally changed the setting and then I couldn’t move the camera down as I was trying to do. It was annoying because I was in the middle of taking photos and couldn’t stop and fiddle with the camera.
What tied into that problem was me trying to take photos in selfie mode. When the camera goes into selfie mode the lens spins around 180º to face me and it kicks on a facial lock mode too. So the camera’s lens will follow my face around. When this happened I’d use the joystick to move the lens up or down a little to get my friends in the selfie too. But with the joystick in Zoom Mode I couldn’t do this and was stuck. As I learn the controls better this will only be a minor inconvenience but yesterday it was a real pain in the neck.
One feature I really miss on this camera is burst shooting. That’s when I press the shutter button once and it continues to take photos as long as I hold it down. That is good for candid photos especially. If I hold the shutter button down on the DJI then the camera powers down. That can be a bit of a problem. I don’t know if there is a setting I can change so that doesn’t happen. I just don’t know the menus that well. I almost always shoot in burst mode on my other cameras.
I mentioned before that this camera has a big one inch sensor. As my friends were checking out the camera one of them asked if it took better photos than his new iPhone. That’s a tough question to answer. I haven’t seen the photos from a new iPhone to compare them side by side but I know that the latest version of iPhones, in general, take nice photos. But they often also use automatic software to make the photos even nicer than they are. The one inch sensor in the DJI really adds a clarity to the photos that my other cameras can’t match but is that good? Or are software enhancements better?
When I got home I transferred my photos to my computer and backed them up. Then I looked at the photos with my iPad. One of the things I’ve said over the years as I’ve gotten older (I turned 58 this summer) is that low resolution is my friend. Seeing myself if full HD with that one inch sensor can be a little bit startling. In my head I don’t look 58 but in the hires photos I sure do. I could probably use a little bit of the automatic iPhone software to make myself look better.
I actually have some plans to take the photos and edit them a bit on my iPad but that hasn’t happened yet. On first glance I can see that the candid ones I took were full of awkward facial expressions and questionable composition. What’s good about burst shooting is that if a person has their eyes closed in one photo they might be open on photo four. It gives me choices. What’s good about the one inch sensor is that I can re-crop the photos and still have a lot of detail to work with.
Of course sometimes there is too much detail in our now old faces. That’s the story of life though and I can always give us all a little bit of a blur to take some of that detail away. But usually I don’t edit every photo I take. I edit the ones I eventually do something with. So maybe we’ll all just have to stay old for now just like in real life.