Affordable 90mm Lens for DJI Inspire 3: Insane Parallax and Safety – Don’t Miss This Steal!

Imagine getting helicopter-like parallax on your DJI drone without the hassle—enter the awesome Viltrox 90mm, but here’s what you need to know before buying.

The Viltrox 90mm for DJI DL, aka the DJI Inspire 3 and Ronin 4D, is out and it is awesome. But there’s a couple of things you need to know. One is it has a 52mm filter thread. So if you only have 55 or 46, you’re going to either need an adapter ring or 52mm filters.

And it has an aperture of f/3.5 up to f/16. So it’s a little bit more limited, especially when it comes to low light. But beyond that, this thing is pretty freaking incredible. It works just like any of DJI’s other DL lenses. You clip it on. You don’t need any counterweights to make this work. It flies exactly like it would if you were flying the 35, 50, or 24 millimeter or 18 mm lenses. And it communicates with the software, so it has autofocus when you’re flying.

Now, it does have weather sealing around the outside and it has a USB-C port for firmware updates and of course all the pins that it needs to communicate with everything. It does fit in the 18 mm slot of the lens case or the 75mm if you’ve got that one in there. And some other good news, it does actually fit on the gimbal in the case. Closes up just fine. But since I saw this on Josiah from the Make Art Now channel at NAB, I was super excited to try and get my hands on it.

And in full disclosure, Viltrox sent this lens to me. I get to keep it. They’re not seeing this video before it launches. They’re not paying or sponsoring this video in any other way. So these opinions are my own. I would have bought this lens even if they didn’t send it to me. But as luck would have it, they reached out, sent it to me, and I’ve been testing it for the last few weeks, and it is awesome.

Lens Calibration

Now, when you first get it, you’re going to have to calibrate the lens. So, you go into the menu, go down to pro, go to other, lens profile, lens focus calibration, and then we’re going to want to set this to infinity focus. So, I’m going to find a spot way over here that’s really, really far away. Put it in manual focus. And then I’m using the DJI monitor because it can zoom in a bit and find exactly where the sharpest focus is. Right there. Hit record. And then I like to do a second one. That looks nice and in focus. Yeah, that looks good. And then I’m going to figure out exactly how far away that is. And now the lens is calibrated. So our focus is good.

Performance and Use Cases

But the real question is how does it perform? I will say it has an insanely close focus distance. So if you want to get very close to a subject and you have somebody pulling focus, you can get some really, really tight shots and get a really close focus. And because it’s 90 millimeter, if your background is quite a ways away, you can get some really great subject separation, even at f/3.5, which is really fun on a drone like this. I have started to fall in love with tighter lenses on drones because you can get more of what it feels like when you’re doing something with a helicopter. Now, it’s not quite the same, but you can get these wild parallax shots and just tons of movement and motion in the image and really crazy wild reveals and some just really spectacular parallax shots with a lens like this.

Beyond being able to get these wild parallax shots and tons of movement and motion and reveals, what is a 90 mm good for? I mean, honestly, it’s really nice to be able to get tight into something without having to be that close. And this is where I hope, Viltrox, that you keep putting out more lenses for the DL system because I love this thing. It’s amazing. I would love to see a 135 or something like 130, 135, 140, 150 millimeter. Anything in there on a drone like this would be fantastic because then you could crop in two times, still have a full 4K image and be able to get close enough to stuff without putting the drone in danger or without disturbing something like wildlife.

But that’s where a 90 millimeter comes in super handy is being able to get really close to stuff, really tight to stuff, but without putting the drone that close to something or that tight to something so you can get some really really tight detail shots. But the drone is actually still plenty far away to be safe. Like me on this bridge, this is insanely tight. There’s almost no GPS signal down in this area. And so it could be very dangerous to try and film down here cuz I’ve done it before with white water rafting in this particular spot. It’s really scary to try and fly the drone down around in this area, especially if you’re flying all by yourself and operating the camera by yourself.

But with the 90 mm now, you can get extremely tight, really nice detail shots, but not get too close or too deep down inside of this canyon where the drone completely loses GPS signal and starts drifting like crazy because it’s in atti mode and the wind’s running through here and on and on it goes. It just you can get some really nice detail shots with the 90 mm without having to put the drone in as great a jeopardy.

Sharpness and Flaring

Here you can see I did some really quick sharpness tests and while it is pretty dang sharp at f/3.5, it definitely sharpens up a little bit when you stop down. You know, f/5.6, f/8 in there seems to be the sharpest even out on the edges. But overall, this lens is really good out of the box. Even wide open at f/3.5, it’s definitely sharp. You just have to watch that focus cuz it is quite a bit tighter lens and it definitely will you’ll see it if you’re a little bit out of focus.

Now, when it comes to flaring, I’m blocking it here. You can see like there is some veiling flare a little bit, but it’s not terrible. But it’s not terrible. You’ll just have to be mindful of the direction. And I’m not sure if they’re going to make a lens hood for this. Really not even sure how a lens hood would perform on something like this. So, we’re going to just leave it as is.

Pricing and Final Thoughts

Another thing that makes me super excited about this lens is that it’s going to come in at about $500 US which means it’s extremely affordable compared to some of the other well DJI’s lenses. And the performance is pretty dang close to those as well. And the fact that you don’t need counterweights to get a much longer focal length is really sweet. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love that 75 millimeter, especially in low light. It’s incredible. But having something that’s a little longer that I don’t have to mess with counterweights is really nice. And coming in at $500. That’s a steal.

Now, there are links in the description. Yes, they’re affiliate links. If you want to help support the channel, click those. Otherwise, go check out Viltrox’s new 90mm for the DJI Inspire 3 and Ronin 4D. And Viltrox just let me know that for the first 5 days, if you use the code Jake Sloan, when you use the links in the description and check out, you’ll save 8% on your order.

So, use the links and use the code Jake Sloan. It’ll help you out and it’ll help me out. But next, you’re going to want to check out this video right here. I’ll see you over there. As always, if you have questions, ask me in the comments below or join my live stream, which happens most Wednesday nights at 4:00 p.m. Alaska time, 8:00 p.m. Eastern, where we can have more of a conversation and I can answer questions that maybe I didn’t get to in this video. I’ll see you again soon in the next one. Cheers.

Photos courtesy of Jake Sloan.