jowlymonster
Standard Member
Hi all.
I've fancied a drone for a while, for a couple of reasons:
- experiment with new angles for photography (I do a lot of landscape/travel stuff)
- add some interesting bits of B-roll to spice up my occasional vlogs.
I'm not interested in drone racing, tracking me mountain biking through a forest or anything like that... just nicely composed aerial photos and the odd "gliding across a landscape" clips.
The issue is I don't want to spend a lot (at least until I know it's something I'm getting a lot of use out of, and SWMBO has denied dropping a grand on a full Mavic Air kit ) - however the Mavic Mini is within reason. There's a couple of limitations though- the lack of 4k doesn't bother me too much, I only output at 1080p still anyway. But the lack of RAW/DNG is putting me off - I like to postprocess my images a reasonable amount and I'm worried that with certain shots, JPG only will be limiting, with blown skies or land in completely black shadow... I also worry that because it's so light, it may get blown around rather easily, and I've also read the wifi-only connection can be flaky...
The 249g marketing trick isn't too important for me- I'm not averse to registering and paying a small fee- in fact I think this can only be a good thing for the hobby.
So, doing some googling I stumbled across the Hubsan Zino Pro. It sounds much better specced (4K, Raw, better connection/range, longer flight time) obviously at the expense of size and weight, but it's about the same price, if not less.
However, there seems to be very little information on it. There's lots of reference to a Zino 2 which is improved further, but it seems to be unavailable, and perhaps the Pro is discontinued? A saw a couple of YouTube reviews which made out that it was okay but the lack of much coverage / information / support is a worry.
So, thoughts? Are the limitations of the Mini actually that important in practice? Has anyone got the Hubsan and able to vouch for the quality? Or is it a cheap product dressed in a more impressive spec-sheet, and best avoided? Anything else to consider?
I've fancied a drone for a while, for a couple of reasons:
- experiment with new angles for photography (I do a lot of landscape/travel stuff)
- add some interesting bits of B-roll to spice up my occasional vlogs.
I'm not interested in drone racing, tracking me mountain biking through a forest or anything like that... just nicely composed aerial photos and the odd "gliding across a landscape" clips.
The issue is I don't want to spend a lot (at least until I know it's something I'm getting a lot of use out of, and SWMBO has denied dropping a grand on a full Mavic Air kit ) - however the Mavic Mini is within reason. There's a couple of limitations though- the lack of 4k doesn't bother me too much, I only output at 1080p still anyway. But the lack of RAW/DNG is putting me off - I like to postprocess my images a reasonable amount and I'm worried that with certain shots, JPG only will be limiting, with blown skies or land in completely black shadow... I also worry that because it's so light, it may get blown around rather easily, and I've also read the wifi-only connection can be flaky...
The 249g marketing trick isn't too important for me- I'm not averse to registering and paying a small fee- in fact I think this can only be a good thing for the hobby.
So, doing some googling I stumbled across the Hubsan Zino Pro. It sounds much better specced (4K, Raw, better connection/range, longer flight time) obviously at the expense of size and weight, but it's about the same price, if not less.
However, there seems to be very little information on it. There's lots of reference to a Zino 2 which is improved further, but it seems to be unavailable, and perhaps the Pro is discontinued? A saw a couple of YouTube reviews which made out that it was okay but the lack of much coverage / information / support is a worry.
So, thoughts? Are the limitations of the Mini actually that important in practice? Has anyone got the Hubsan and able to vouch for the quality? Or is it a cheap product dressed in a more impressive spec-sheet, and best avoided? Anything else to consider?