DJI Mavic 3 Pro – TOP 10 Things To Know Before Buying!

This is the DJI Mavic 3 Pro, DJI’s most powerful, foldable, consumer camera drone, boasting an amazing triple-lens camera system that allows you to quickly switch between three completely different focal lengths without ever needing to land, swap lenses, and lose time.

DJI Mavic 3 Pro Before You Buy Video

DJI states this drone completely replaces their Inspire 2 with an X5S camera, giving you a lot more control over how you want to capture your shots and tell your story in a more convenient and portable way.

The majority of the features we’ve seen from the DJI Mavic 3 drone are exactly the same here as well, besides the camera system, of course, which we have a lot to talk about, and a few other small changes, which I’ll mention later in the Video.

All-new medium telephoto camera

So first, let’s start with the all-new medium telephoto camera, which is in the upper right corner of the drone and has a 1/1.3-inch CMOS sensor with a fixed aperture of f/2.8. It shoots 10-bit video and 4K 60 frames per second in D-log M and HLG color profiles.

The purpose of this camera is to help viewers focus their attention on a specific object in the frame, as because of the longer focal length, there are fewer elements in the shot, and they grab your attention more easily. I actually really like the look of the footage coming out of this new lens, as it gives you that more premium, cinematic look where you still have some compression between the foreground and the background elements of your shots, but not to the point that you can only focus on one thing only.

It’s a great middle ground between the wide-angle look of the 24mm camera of the DJI Mavic 3, which by now is super standard and serves well for establishing shots. But when you want to point the viewer’s attention towards a specific object, for example, this lens can give you that perfect punch in without sacrificing any quality.

The three-times medium telephoto lens also supports all the cool features that it needs to, such as hyperlapse, active track, spotlight, and point of interest, so there are tons of possibilities for you to create even more interesting footage.

166mm, seven times telephoto camera

Now, next, we have the 166mm seven times telephoto camera, which we’ve seen in the Mavic 3 lineup, but this time it has actually been completely reworked in order to record in better quality and correspond to that Pro name of the drone.

So now, the sensor of this 166mm equivalent lens is a half-inch CMOS sensor with a fixed aperture of f/3.4, which allows you to shoot in 4K 60 frames per second and H.264, H.265, and ProRes if you have the Mavic 3 Pro Cine. But the caveat is that it only shoots in a normal color profile.

However, the compression this lens creates is just out of this world, and I’m super happy to have this on board so I can easily punch in and get into some seriously detailed shots with lots of information and great quality.

This lens is particularly useful when combined with the other two lenses if you want to completely cover the whole range of the focal length this drone has to offer. So, you can enrich your storytelling by including different looks of the same area and provoke different emotions.

For example, the 7x lens is perfect to showcase a specific object like a person, an animal, a piece of architecture, or a natural element that you specifically want to focus on to better tell a story. I also found this lens super useful in situations where you don’t want to, or simply cannot, get closer to the object that you want to film, like, for example, this ship that sails right on the edge of a no-fly zone, and a shot like this wouldn’t have been possible with a regular lens.

Now, if you want to really take advantage of that triple-lens camera system, you’ll have two choices to make when it comes to shooting with it. First, you can set everything to a normal color profile, so regardless of whether you’re using the wide-angle, the 3x, or the 7x lens, you will have a normal color profile selected. So, it will be much easier for you to combine the footage out of all these three lenses and use it in one video.

However, this will limit the amount of detail and dynamic range that you’ll be getting out of this drone, so it’s not really ideal.

Your second option is to use the flattest color profile each of these lenses has to offer. In that case, this is D-log on the wide-angle camera lens, D-log M on the 3x camera lens, and normal color profile on the 7x lens. As you can see, it’s a little bit less than ideal to combine D-log, D-log M, and also a normal color profile to mix it all together into one video.

However, this is something that you will have to deal with if you want to take advantage of all these three lenses and just extract the most out of them.

I have noticed that D-log M is very similar to what we had previously on the Mavic 2 Pro, and D-log is the same, of course, as we had on the regular Mavic 3. So, if you’ve had any of these drones before, then you will probably feel very comfortable grading the footage coming out of them. When it comes to the 7x lens, though, it’s a little bit more tricky, as it only shoots in normal color profile.

So, matching the footage to the rest of the footage shot with the wide-angle lens in D-log and with the medium telephoto lens in D-log M is a little bit more tricky. It’s a bit hard to match the colors; however, it’s not impossible.

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working really hard to create a LUT bundle for the Mavic 3 that solves this issue. So, I wanted to create a LUT that matches the look of the wide-angle, the medium telephoto, and the long telephoto cameras into one look that you can all use to avoid dealing with that issue of having different colors and different looks in your footage. I will link it down below if you want to check it out.

It’s a Mavic 3-specific, Mavic 3 Pro-specific LUT bundle that solves that issue and creates a nice overall look, whether you’re shooting with the 1x, the 3x, or the 7x lenses.

How does the DJI Mavic 3 Pro fly?

Now, because we have this massive new camera system here on the front, it takes up a whole lot more space, and I was nervous to see how much bulkier the drone would be. And it’s actually not that bad when you look at it from the front. Unfortunately, though, this severely affects the weight of the drone, and by severely, I mean it’s only a couple of grams.

However, these grams are really important to the point that now this drone is in a whole different category. That’s why it’s again a pro drone because it’s over 900 grams; it’s about 937 on my scale, which might not be the most accurate scale out there. However, this puts it in a category over 900 grams, and as you may remember, the regular Mavic 3 and even the Mavic 3 Cine were both under 900 grams, so they were able to be flown with just the regular A1 category.

But now, you need to take an exam and pass it to enter the A2 category for flying a drone which is over 900 grams, which is a big deal. And now, if you want to legally fly the Mavic 3 Pro, you need to pass an exam so you can get that A2 certificate and fly it without any problems.

When it comes to the flight time, DJI states that it’s dropping down from 46 minutes for the Mavic 3 to 43 minutes, or up to 43 minutes, for the Mavic 3 Pro. This is the maximum flight time that you can expect, and of course, it’s never achievable.

However, in my tests, I didn’t really notice a big difference in the performance of the drone or even in the flight time. Of course, because of that increased weight that I just mentioned, which is now over 900 grams (it’s about 937), the drone is, of course, heavier, so the performance is slightly worse, and of course, the flight time is also affected by that. But especially if you get the Fly More package, which comes with two additional batteries and a total of three batteries, you will probably not notice any big, severe differences between the Mavic 3 and the Mavic 3 Pro. So, I personally can’t say there is a big impact on my personal experience with the Mavic 3 Pro because of that slightly lower flight time.

If you put the Mavic 3 Pro in the air next to the Mavic 3, you might notice a slight difference in the pitch of the sounds they make. It’s not a big difference; it’s just a small difference because of the weight that these aircraft have, and because the Mavic 3 Pro is slightly heavier, of course, it also changes the pitch of the sound it makes. However, I wouldn’t say I noticed any difference in the sound levels. I wouldn’t say the Mavic 3 Pro is quieter; it just has a slightly different tone.

Luckily, since the Mavic 3 Pro is based on the same platform, it means that all the other accessories from the Mavic 3 series, such as battery chargers, remote controllers, batteries, and props, are exactly the same. So, if you have any of those, you can use them on the 3 Pro as well. I’m really happy to see that they haven’t made a specific new prop for this model, or for example, a new Pro remote controller that only works with this specific drone. So you can use pretty much any remote you like, from the basic RC-N1 to the DJI RC and, of course, even the RC Pro.

ND filters for the DJI Mavic 3 Pro

Now, I was really pleasantly surprised to see this brand-new design of the ND Filters from DJI for the Mavic 3 Pro. They come bundled with the Fly More kit, and they look amazing.

So obviously, when you have three lenses on board, you have to get creative and think about a new design. I’m really glad to see that DJI has come up with this design, which actually corresponds to the three different lenses that you have on the drone.

So you have three filters in one, so depending on which lens you’re using, you have a different glass in front of it. This is the ND64 that I grabbed from the filter kit, and as you can see, you might be able to actually see when I set it like this, you have three different, or should I say two different, levels of dimming on the glass of this filter. These two have the same strength, so this is ND64, and this actually corresponds to ND64 but for the 7x lens, which has a different aperture.

So if you want to correspond to the same level of dimness, you have to actually have a little bit of a brighter glass in front of that lens because it has a darker or, should I say, a more closed aperture of 3.4.

This is really clever, and since you will most probably use all of these three lenses together when you’re flying and shooting, you don’t want to constantly take your drone down to the ground, switch those filters, and come back up simply to use another lens. So if you want to easily switch from 1x to 3x to 7x without having to constantly adjust your settings, this is the perfect design for that.

Pricing on the DJI Mavic 3 Pro bundles

Here, I have the price list for all the different bundles for the Mavic 3 Pro, and I also compare them to the Mavic 3 und Mavic 3 Classic bundles with the Fly More package for your convenience by also adjusting the prices if you want to buy those specific drones with the RC-N1, with the DJI RC, or with the DJI RC Pro. We have so many different possibilities, so of course, the prices will vary.

So I would advise you to check the link in the description if you want to see the latest prices that we have right now. But the current prices are the following: we have the Mavic 3 Pro with the RC Pro Controller and the Fly More kit, which of course includes a carrying bag, a charger, two additional batteries, and some other accessories, and that is going to cost $3,889 USD.

We have the same package, but if you don’t want to use the RC Pro, you can get it for a little bit cheaper with the DJI RC, which still has that built-in screen and is great to use; that’s going to be $2,999 USD. We have the Mavic 3 Pro Cine Combo with the RC Pro and that’s again with the Fly More package, and that’s the most expensive option out there; that’s going to be $4,799 USD.

And if you just want to buy the drone and the DJI RC together without any combos, that’s going to cost $2,199 USD. To compare that with the Mavic 3 Classic and the regular Mavic 3, we will actually see that, especially if we opt for the DJI RC remote controller, it’s actually cheaper to buy the Mavic 3 Pro than it is to buy the regular Mavic 3.

My impressions on flying the Mavic 3 Pro camera drone

Now, outside of these 10 things that you need to know about the Mavic 3 Pro, I want to quickly share my impressions of flying this drone for the past couple of weeks. As we all know, the Mavic 3 is a super stable and amazing platform that we’ve seen before.

Of course, I’m very familiar with what the Mavic 3 does and what it’s capable of, but now with this new camera system, featuring the triple-lens camera system, I’ve seen it in a new light that is actually making me really want to fly a lot.

This is just a fantastic way to explore, be creative again, and have a lot more freedom in your hands when you’re flying. Because of those lenses, you have so much more control over what you want to shoot and how you want to shoot it.

And even if you just go to one single location, you have so much more freedom to add variety to your shots and create more interesting-looking shots that previously have never been possible, with much better quality and a much-improved overall look. I would say that DJI has done a fantastic job when it comes to combining the look of these three lenses.

They are super immersive and they definitely don’t take you out of the story when you look at a different shot. The quality is definitely up there, and I’m enjoying the look of these three lenses together.

That brings me to my final impression of the drone: it is now a super versatile drone. I think this is what the Mavic 3 should have been from day one. But now that we have the Pro version, it really is a pro drone because you can do so many things without ever approaching the location too much. When you switch to the X7 lens, you have so much more flexibility to explore and actually get those shots that are really far away with the compression.

I was shooting in the middle of the city, and I just turned the camera around and was able to get a shot of something that is kilometers away, and it still looked super sharp and really good. You don’t really have to fly close to the object anymore because you have that lens that provides great quality footage and it gives you so much more flexibility.

I’m excited for the future and to continue using the Mavic 3 Pro. I’m super happy with it, and obviously, I will keep flying and keep making videos on it here on this channel.

So if you have enjoyed this video, please do me a huge favor by hitting the thumbs-up button, subscribing if you want to see more videos like this one. I’ve put a lot of work into making this video, so I would really appreciate it if you drop me a comment down below and like the video to show some support.

This is Mike from Vorherrschaft der Drohnen. Take care, and I’ll see you in the next one. Ciao!