Mavic 3 Cine - is it worth the upgrade

Having used our Mavic 2 Pro on a number of shoots, it has proved to be a useful and valuable solution where a client wants a small compact drone, but does not want to compromise too much on the quality of the footage.

However, as good as it was the Mavic 2 Pro when shooting 4k did not use the full sensor size and suffered line skipping and pixel binning issues. So images and video were sometimes compromised.

With the launch of the Mavic 3 and Mavic 3 Cine in early 2022, we thought it was time to upgrade our system to the new DJI Mavic 3 Cine drone.

So what is different?

It’s easy to look at the spec sheet and marvel at the new features, but we wanted to take it out and really put it through it’s paces!

Let’s forget battery time, and all the other technical features for a moment, and focus on the most important aspect - what are the benefits for the client.

A 20MP Four Thirds CMOS camera with a Hasselblad colour profile, 1TB of internal storage, and Apple's ProRes codec make the Cine fit for professional video production. DJI worked with Swedish camera maker Hasselblad to create a custom L2D-20c camera for the Mavic 3 series. Placed on the bottom, the main camera features a 20MP, Four Thirds CMOS sensor that has a 24mm (equiv.) lens with 84º FOV and variable F2.8-11 aperture. It can shoot still images in 12-bit Raw format. The entire dual-camera system is placed on a 3-axis mechanical gimbal.

The camera on the Mavic 3 also includes Hasselblad's HCNS technology which offers up enhanced color accuracy.

The benefits of the larger sensor can be clearly noticed. Images looked glorious, even before any editing or post production takes place.

The colour depth, and influence of Hasselblad could be clearly seen with the depth, quality and resolution of the images.

Even in low light and at night, the Mavic 3 Cine produced crisp good images.

For video, the camera support Apple Prores (4:2:2) HQ and D-LOG. For videographers, Apple's ProRes 422 HQ is one of the best practical HD format available for cinematography as it provides the best image quality at the best level of compression.

Conclusion

So in summary, The Mavic 3 Cine has been a worthwhile upgrade. Previously, for clients who valued image quality the only choice had been the DJI Inspire 2 with the X5s gimbal and 4/3 lenses. The Mavic 3 Cine can now do all of this, with the addition of the Hasselblad HCNS colour system which makes it better.

It’s a compact system with good image quality which will meet 90% of most peoples needs for corporate video and TV production.

For the remaining 10%, you will need our DJI Inspire 2 and X7 super 35 camera system. But that will be an article for another day!