DJI Air 3S – The Flying Camera Review
The last time I filmed here was for my
Mavic 3 review three years ago, so it's nice to be back somewhere familiar, but a place
I haven't used for a while in my reviews. And I'm lucky with the weather
because it's going to turn tomorrow. It's going to be chucking it down
with rain. Of course. Almost everything shot in
this video has the sharpness set to minus
two and noise reduction to minus two. It looks the most natural,
and if you need to make your footage sharper or remove noise, then do this
in post, as the results are always superior. In camera sharpness rarely looks good. Remember, sharpness in detail
are not the same thing.
Most shots were shot in 10-bit D-LOG M,
but I did a few in HLG but as this edit is SDR
had to convert them all to log anyway. If I get any technical facts
wrong in this video, I will correct them in the pinned comment. Likewise, if there are any changes,
I put them in there, too. I know I’ve filmed at this tree in so many different videos,
but there's continuity about it. I love this spot here. It is visually interesting,
and it means you can look back at the other videos
and see how the shots compare, because this is a very, very good drone
with a really lovely new 1" sensor. But the key thing that everyone
wants to know, well not everybody as I don’t think my mum cares,
but people who are interested in drones.
Want to know,
is it worth getting this over the Air 3? Is this a better drone? And how does it stack up
to the more expensive Mavic 3 Pro? The Air 3 was released in the summer of 2023,
and the single biggest change over the Air 2 and 2S was the addition of a second
camera, a 70mm one. The same 70mm that the Mavic 3 Pro
came out with a few months earlier.
The single most significant change
between the Air 3 and the Air 3S is the sensor
size of the 24mm wide camera. It has a larger one-inch sensor compared
to the 1/1.3” sensor on the Air 3. The 70mm camera on the Air 3
is the same as the Air 3S, both use the same 1/1.3” sensor. The sensor size increase
from the Air 2's 1/2" one to the Air 2S's
1" sensor was substantial. That's four times bigger. And the difference was very noticeable, but also the image in the Air 2S
is less processed.
The Air 2S's image still stands up today,
unlike the Air 2's. But how much of a difference
are the sensors in the Air 3 and the Air 3S through us when it comes
to image quality and performance? In these side by side
that I filmed with Sarah Seal. So thank you Sarah. The image on the main
camera looks identical with them both, but these were graded to match. When you look at them in D-Log M and start
pixel peeping. There is a difference. It's not huge, but it's there. The Air 3S has slightly more dynamic
range exposes brighter. Despite me setting the Air
3S to a higher shutter speed to get closer to the Air
3's shots, it's still noticeably brighter. The Air 3S has that larger sensor
with larger pixels, so it's more sensitive to light. So, taking them both into the catio,
these were at identical settings because he was exposed
is brighter at the same settings.
It looks better. The dynamic range
is very challenging here. And yes the Air 3S
definitely wins over the Air 3. Highlights are clipped
and the shadows are noticeably darker. The Air 3S held on to the highlights. The noise was less in this shot
with the Air 3S, which isn't surprising as the more light you give the sensor,
the less noise you have in the shadows. Detail wise, and don't forget I'm at minus
two sharpness here, the Air 3S has slightly more than
the Air 3.
So yes, the 1" sensor of the Air 3S definitely produces
a better image than the Air 3's 1/1.3" The sensor size names are silly
and really should change. They're based on an obsolete measurement
for tubes and TV cameras going back to before even I was born. I've got a whole video about it if you would like to know more. Sensors should be measured in millimetres,
diagonally or in height and width. These days, the smallest sensor I use is the 1/2” one. It's what the Neo, the Mavic 3 Pro's 166mm
telephoto camera, and the Air 2 have, All the 70mm cameras in the drones
that I mentioned have the larger 1/1.3”, which is also in the Mini 3 Pro, Mini 4 Pro and Avata 2. So how much bigger is one inch? Well, here you go.
It may not look like it,
but the Air 3S's 1" sensor has 1.6x
more surface area than the Air 3's. This is the same sensor that we have
inside the excellent Pocket 3. Whilst here, let's see how much bigger
the other sensors inside DJI drones are. The 5.1K Mavic 3’s four-thirds primary camera, the 6K S35 of the X7, and the full frame of the X9.
Bigger sensors at the same resolution mean larger pixels,
which are generally better in low light. I will show you some later in the video. What I really
like about the two cameras on the Air 3 is that they use the same 1/1.3” sensor,
so they match perfectly. Other than the focal length difference,
the main one is that the 24mm has an F/1.7 aperture, and the 70mm has an F/2.8. The 24mm of the Air 3S has an ever so slightly smaller aperture of F/1.8, but this is more than made up for
by the larger sensors sensitivity. Both the Air 3 and Air 3S
have the aperture difference of 1.3 stops, so when switching between the two cameras,
you need to make adjustments to match the exposure
when filming the same subject.
If you have DJI NDI filters for the Air 3S,
they have split strengths, with the 70mm filter having a stop
less light reduction than the 24mm It would be so nice
to have adjustable apertures on Air drones is by far the best way
to change your exposure in the air. However, this is still only available
on the main camera of the Mavic 3 line, One thing to note is
the Air 2S was capable of shooting 5.4K video up to 30p,
which neither the Air 3 or Air 3S can do. It's a really useful resolution
to shoot in for reframing, but it's a shame that 4K is the maximum
with their next generation Air drones. It's good to see the autofocus subject
tracking on this. Something
that's missing on the other drones. And it really does help on the larger
sensors not large sensors but larger sensors. Not that you can tell at this point, but you could close up. They call it subject-focusing
and will lock on to certain subjects such as me,
whether in manual flight or tracking. If you don't do this
or you aren't tracking a specific subject, let's say I go past a tree
which is in the foreground.
It will often quickly shift
the focus onto it and then back again. So for these situations,
I use manual focus and set it to infinity. This is a good location to test out
the tracking as well with all these trees. The Mavic 3 didn't do so well. I'm hoping this will be better. It should be. I just hope
I brought enough props with me. Whether I use spotlight tracking modes
or just flying manually, I have the obstacle avoidance sensors
set to bypass and it does a terrific job. I don't think there's any major
improvements here beside the Lidar sensor, but I'll talk about that more
when the sun has gone down. But did I have a crash? Yeah, a number of times. Unfortunately,
the skinny twigs still got it occasionally way less than I did with the Mavic 3,
but I still went through more props and I would have liked to
as they aren't cheap, but it was worth it for the results that I got.
This is a very, very challenging shot for it. Maybe. Come on, you've got this. I mean, makes a difference
to what lens you're using for the tracking
because it's using the sensors. So it should track just as well. It's just less forgiving
than the wide angle will be for any little jerky movements. But I think it's doing pretty well. Isn't it really…. in spotlight mode? Nice. I don't like active track
because I want a specific movement, so I like to be in at least semi
manual control. Active track does what it wants
and rarely looks good. For me. What's it doing? Supposed to be behind me. It doesn't like it. I don't like active track. Not for walking, anyway. It's probably more forgiving on faster
moving subjects. But for this. Nah. A nice improvement is the internal
storage of the Air 3S is up from 8GB to 42GB, but I still recommend
you always shoot using a micro SD card.
And every time you come down to swap
batteries, you should swap cards, too, just in case something bad happens
to your drone that's replaceable, but your footage isn't. Battery life is very similar
to that of the Air 3. They are physically the same batteries,
just with a different capacity. I was getting around 32 minutes on average
per battery, which is pretty decent.
My main camera with drones
is the wide one, the 24mm, which is the better camera,
a better sensor on this drone. But I really love having this second
camera, the 70mm, giving us a 3X zoom
effectively on a main camera. But I do miss the 166mm that we have on the Mavic 3 Pro because it's so good. But can you get anything like that
using this drone and Topaz video AI? There’s only one way to find out,
isn't there? I love the perspective that you get
with the 7x camera on the Mavic 3 and 3 Pro, the shots I can get on anything
I've ever captured with a drone, this is one of my earliest and
favourite shots showing the London skyline 9 miles away in the distance. My aim was to at least get a shot
with the quality of the original Mavic 3's 7x lens with my Air 3S. So I filmed the shot with the 70mm, making sure to set manual focus to infinity
just to be safe.
And in the edit by cropping in to 200%, I was getting the equivalent of 140mm. Topaz Video AI
is needed to get the shot to look good. I tried two different methods
exporting the full uncropped shot and upscaling to 8K,
and also exporting the cropped shot in premiere as 1080p
and then upscaling the 4K. They both look pretty good. Not as good as what you can get
from the Mavic 3 Pro's superior 7x, but on a par with the original Mavic 3’s The 70mm focal length
is perfect for a second camera, and if you love this camera on the Mavic 3 Pro
or Air 3, you will love it here as it’s exactly the same. I think these shots are probably
my favourite ones of all of that. They were actually shot on the Air 3 as
just as I took her up to get some shots. The light became magical
combined with the mist, but of course it would have looked exactly the same had I been using the Air 3S.
With the light that we have today. You've got the sun behind me. Not many clouds. It's a great time to be using
the diffusion plugin from Film Convert. I'm sure you've spotted
the graphics on screen stating Hazy or Halation on some of the shots. These are the new standalone
plugins for Premiere or DaVinci resolve from Film Convert,
who have very kindly sponsored this video.
Hazy is for digital diffusion,
and it has a very nice job of emulating different types of diffusion filters
that are presets, but you can also dial in exactly what you want
via strengths, intensity, and spread. Using the diffusion map,
you can see exactly what's being affected by your settings. You can also set your picture profile
for your camera, but I tend to use it after grading.So I just select Rec 709. I like to keep it relatively subtle,
as what I generally want is a subtle and delicate diffusion
and bloom of the highlights.
It's really nice to use a drone footage,
especially because if you are using an optical diffusion filter, if it's the wrong strength,
then you have to bring the drone back and swap it out
as if you even have a different strength. Also, buying diffusion filters for drones
means getting them for each new model, and that's expensive. For normal cameras lenses,
you buy them once and that's it. Halation is now available
as a standalone plugin or as part of Film Convert Nitrate.
This is designed to emulate the elation
byproduct that you get when shooting on film. This is something you can't replicate
optically when using digital cameras. You'll see this on highlights
and get a red edge effect. And unlike when shooting on film, you can fine-tune it to the strength
and even the saturation that you want. What's so nice about both of these plugins
is you can go back to your old work that wasn't shot with any diffusion
filters and add it to them. I did this to the re-edit of the film
about my late dad early this year. I use Halation to give the highlights
a subtle blooming effect, but I didn't want the red,
so I put the saturation down and also to smooth
out his skin a little bit.
Most people I come across seem to seem to like me. Naturally, I still believe in optical
diffusion filters where appropriate, but sometimes, you don't want to commit to baking it in, but not the benefit of using
it digitally is getting that constant diffusion
across all focal lengths. That's probably the most challenging thing about using optical ones,
especially with zoom lenses. There are free trials for all film
convert plug-ins at this link, as well as a 10% discount. The recording bitrate is lower in the Air
3S than in the Air 3 and Mini 4 Pro,
which both have the same bit rate. DJI say their compression
algorithm has been optimized by over 30%. The specs say to a maximum bitrate
for both H.264 and H.265 as 150Mbps on the Air 3, but with the Air 3S, it's 130Mbps. I've never got close
to either of those figures. When shooting in 25P with the Air 3, I was getting about 90Mbps, Air 3S 75mbps.
In 50p or 60p, around 130Mbps with the Air 3,
but only 90Mbps on the Air 3S. The slow motion
bit rate is far too low on both drones. What's odd is how it records them. The Air 3 4K slow
motion is 100fps and records that is 25p, which is good for me,
but not for lots of people. The Air 3S slow motion is 120fps,
and records that in 30p,
which isn't very ideal for me. You can't change the recorded frame rate
for either. It would be nice if you could. I would much rather DJI use a new algorithm
to improve the image quality by keeping the bitrate
the same as the Air 3.
I don't care about smaller file sizes. It's not like micro SD cards are expensive
and drone shots tend to be moving, so you want as little compression
as possible. You can take 12 or 50 megapixel photos
with main camera, or 12
or 48 megapixels with the 70mm camera. By combining the pixels
to create the lower megapixel count. You get better dynamic range
and less noise, but in good light, the higher megapixel ones do look good
with that extra detail.
There's a new panorama mode that lets
you select the top left and bottom right of what you want it to photograph,
which is very nice. I always shooting raw, of course,
especially as there's no sharpness control in stills for JPEGs or all the auto
panoramas are shot using 12 megapixels, but you can shoot manually in 50
or 48 megapixel depending on the camera, like I did here. So I'm pretty happy with all I got today. I've gone through a few more props
than I would ideally have liked to. I would love it if I could actually have
the tracking at this sort of height, but you know, other than that, it's
a great drone.
Now that the sun's gone, you can see
what the Air 3S is like in low light. And there's going to be no light here very shortly
because there is no artificial light. I'm out in the woods. I don't expect too much anyway,
because it's only a one-inch sensor. I need to be realistic about these things. A micro 4/3 sensor is not going to be great in low light, but, well,
I think it's going to be a little bit better than the Air 3, of course, but not massively so. It's my last battery anyway,
I've gone through five, out here filming. I've been filming for 2.5 hours. Okay.
I think I should probably take her up. You got this. There we go. The Air 3S is better in no light
for two main reasons: the larger sensor with the larger pixels, and you can now
shoot up to 3200 ISO in D-Log M. The Air 3 tops out at 1600 ISO. Is it noisy at 3200 ISO? Sure there's noise, but nothing
that can't be cleaned up in post.
Just don't do it in camera. The front facing Lidar did a good job
of not crashing into things. It's mostly there
for returning to home safely at night. Just remember, it's only front facing,
so don't start flying off sideways If you're wondering
what the marks on my forehead are. I walked into the drone yesterday,
as it was flying. Well, it was a stationary,
and I wasn't paying attention, and I stood up
and walked into it. It hurt, but it could’ve been a lot worse. So, yeah, be careful. And if it's really close to you. you know,
if you do any flying filming close up of yourself. Be very, very careful and buy some safety goggles or glasses. But you're not really,
because the close focus of the Air 3S in it's macro mode is stupidly close. No idea why it's that close, but
because it's that close, I will try it. Filming handheld with
the Air 3S is kind of daft, especially as I have the excellent Pocket 3,
but it's a really good way of seeing how the image looks
in different situations.
And of course, in low light. Plus I can see how much bokeh
I can get out of it, so why not? Plus it gets some festive shots
into this video, which will date it very quickly! If you already have an Air 3
you should keep that. It's already a fantastic drone. This is better
because of the internal memory, the Lidar. But the main reason is, of course,
the one inch sensor of the main camera. The image from it improves the dynamic
range and has a bit more detail and a bit less noise. Whilst it's not the massive jump
that the Air 2 to the Air 2S was,
the Air 3S is now my favourite drone. Not including the Mini 4 Pro as that sub
250g weight is invaluable, but we won't be seeing a Mini with a second
camera any time soon, that's for sure.
And when I fly my Mini
4 Pro, I really miss that 70mm A lot..
