DJI has been a major innovator in the drone market with its ready-to-go Phantom series. The most important enhancement in the Phantom 4, however, is the new object detection and avoidance feature. The pitch is that the Phantom 4 will stop you from flying your drone into trees, and will somehow miraculously make it possible for anyone to fly no matter what their skill level. The obstacle detection features only work when you’re flying forward. It relies on forward-facing cameras that can recognize large objects. Those cameras cannot warn you about obstacles when you’re flying in any other direction.
The inclusion of RAW format for a sensor of this size and quality doesn’t appear to mean much with the . You are still very limited as to what you can achieve with the files in post, and even without any editing, the dynamic range of the image is certainly lacking. It’s worth remembering at this point that we are talking about images coming from a tiny camera housed beneath a quadcopter which is capable of hovering hundreds of metres above the ground.
The 1” CMOS sensor increased the capability of the camera to 20MP stills and 4K video at 60fps. We are a service provider of aviation labels, ID cards and other products and services. Drone-Registration.net provides a simplified process to help our clients obtain a drone registration with the U.S. Government and properly label drones and other radio controlled aircraft systems as mandated by the FAA. We are an independent site that was designed to assist in obtaining a registration number for you and supply labels and other products. If you have any questions or need more information, please contact us anytime.
Short battery life has been an issue with previous Phantoms, and DJI has moved to address this in the Phantom 4 with a battery that extends flight times by a quoted 25%. All this makes the Phantom 4 an appealing option for jobbing photographers who need a solid, easy to use drone that will enable them to capture great aerial shots . DJI claims the Phantom 4 is five times more stable than previous models, and while I have not empirical way to test this, it sounds correct based on my time with it. When watching footage where the Phantom 4 was just hovering, I frequently found myself thinking I had accidentally paused playback because the video shot did not change or shake at all. Even in moderate wind, the Phantom 4 managed to hold its position with hardly a waver.
Like other Vietnam War Phantoms, the F-4Ds were urgently fitted with radar warning receivers to detect the Soviet-built S-75 Dvina SAMs. The lack of an internal gun “was the biggest mistake on the F-4”, Chesire said; “Bullets are cheap and tend to go where you aim them. I needed a gun, and I really wished I had one”. Marine Corps general John R. Dailey recalled that “everyone in RF-4s wished they had a gun on the aircraft”.
It can also detect the ground to see whether there is suitable spot for landing. If any obstacles are found, or there is water on the ground, it will alert the pilot and hover at an appropriate height, helping the aircraft to land more safely. In Tripod Mode, the maximum flight speed is limited to 5.6 miles per hour and the braking distance is reduced to 6.6 feet.
The general rule is that when shooting video is that the shutter speed should always remain at 2 times the frame rate. So if you’re shooting at 30fps at 4k on the phantom 4 your shutter speed should remain as close to 60 as possible. The ND filters allow you to fix the shutter speed at 60, allow for buttery smooth cinematic footage.
In our testing, battery life averaged above 25 minutes, which is equal or better than comparably sized camera drones. The remote control can be charged at the same time as the battery and in our dji fly testing lasted through three full flights without a problem. The Phantom line was already the nimblest of the half dozen drones I’ve tested, but the sport mode puts it in a class all its own.
I’ll be doing some overseas travel later this year, and I know I’ll kick myself if I don’t have a drone to explore a little and view my location from overhead. Thanks to the compactness of the Phantom drones, including one in my check-in luggage would be quite feasible. That being said, the Phantom 4 is great fun to fly and the video footage is just so jaw-droppingly beautiful that you’ll never tire of looking at it.
TapFly, which lets you move the Phantom to a point in space by tapping on it in the Live View feed, is joined by Draw. Draw works in a similar manner, but lets you draw a flight path on your screen. The drone will fly along the path, avoiding obstacles using its forward and rear sensors along the way. The drone also has a Sport mode, which increases the maximum speed to 45mph, but absolutely no obstacle detection is enabled. It can go faster with help from the wind—the app told me that my Phantom 4 Pro was flying around 50mph in Sport mode for a good stretch of distance during one of my test flights.