DJI Phantom buyers guide – Filming windsurfing action with drones has become more and more popular. We have seen awesome windsurfing drone sequences filmed with, more or less, standard drones. Film sequences that was impossible to achieve a few years back if your name wasn´t Naish, Dunkerbeck or Albeau.

Windsurfing quadracopter action – DJI Phantom 3

DJI Phantom in focus – Plug and play action

We will here focus on standard drones that offers plug and play action to an affordable price, yet packed with features like follow me and the return to home function that has become more or less standard.

DJI has dominated the drone market for quite some time now. We will start off checking out the range of drones that DJI offers.

DJI Phantom 3 Standard Drone – Cheep, still loaded with functions

Despite that the DJi 3 Phantom Standard is a stripped version of its siblings it’s a very competent drone with functions like “Follow me”. You film 2,7K HD video and take 12 mp still pictures, and with a flight time of 25 minutes. You don’t get the Glonass, Global Navigation Satellite System, nor the Light Bridge and live stream functions that you will find in the more high end versions off the DJi Phantoms. The DJi 3 Phantom Standard uses Wi-Fi for the video down link which gives a flying range of approx. 1000 m.

DJI Phantom 3 Advanced – Improved navigation and picture quality

The Advanced is equipped with the Sony EXMOR sensor, films in 2,7K HD video with a few extra options regarding frame rate compared to the standard version. The DJI 3 Phantom Advanced takes 12,76 mp still pictures. Surprisingly the estimated flight time is slightly shorter than for the standard version, 23 min. The drone navigates with GPS and Glonass, Global Navigation Satellite System which will give the drone more satellites to lock on i.e. improved performance when flying in areas with high buildings or mountains. The DJi 3 Phantom Advanced and Professional, is equipped with Vision positioning, for flying in-house when you are out of GPS connection. The DJi 3 Phantom advanced uses Lightbridge for the video down link which gives a flying range of approx. 5000 m.

DJI Phantom 3 Professional – Films in 4K

Also the Professional is equipped with the advanced Sony EXMOR sensor, but films in 4K and has a few extra frame rate options compared to the DJI Phantom 3 Advanced. Another difference is the more powerful charger that allows charging the battery in 1 hour instead of 1 hour and 20 minutes. In all other aspects the DJI Phantom 3 Professional is identical to the DJI 3 Phantom Advanced.

All the DJI Phantom 3 offers:

Follow me, point of Interest, waypoints, course lock, home lock, return to home, real-time battery monitoring with flight time estimation, stabilized video and photos, and manual camera exposure controls.

DJI Phantom 4 – Films in 4K

The DJI Phantom 4 comes with quite a few upgrades.

Obstacle Sensing System

The all new Obstacle Sensing System will help the pilot to avoid the most common crash situations and will be very useful when using the all new Tracking function. The transmitter will warn you if you fly to close to an Obstacle and will also force you to stop if you don´t show attention to the warnings.

Tracking

As a complement to the follow me function, standard on all the DJi Phantom 3 drones, there is a tracking function on the Phantom 4. You draw a square around the object and lock on the object you want to track/follow. You can also combine this with the “circle around the object” function. The use of the all new Obstacle Sensing System is pretty obvious.

Point of interest

Point of interest is another awesome function. You choose the point of interest/subject and set the height, speed and radius and the drone will circle around the point of interest. This will give you the opportunity focus on fine tuning the camera angles.

New camera functions on the DJI Phantom 4

New Full HD option 120p (60p) for super smooth slow motion
HDR option – High dynamic range images that is closer to the “images” that the human eye produces
RAW format – The camera can save the raw file that have not been processes by the camera

Additional upgrades – DJI Phantom 4 vs (Phantom 3)

More powerful battery 5350 mAh (4480 mAh)
Theoretical time in air 28 min (23 min)
Higher top speed 20 m/s (16 m/s)
Snap on propellers

Windsurfing action filmed with DJI Phantom 3 quadracopter