DJI Inspire 3 FINALLY Gets a New Lens – DJI DL 75mm F1.8 Review

So it feels really weird doing a of a lens for a drone. Usually drones have fixed cameras, which means they have fixed lenses. This leads most of my reviews to be about a drone itself or the camera itself, but never about just a lens. This landscape is also a little bit weird because we know that DJI’s Zenmuse X9 8K Air is a beast of a camera, but we only have a specific amount of lenses that we can choose from, all of which are made by the manufacturer. Now there are a couple of other third-party lenses that have been made to fit this camera, but it’s not like we’re shopping for a new lens for our camera that has various third-party options to choose from. We really only have a couple of options from DJI themselves.

With that said, this review is going to be based on my experience using the 75mm lens on my DJi Inspire 3 to help you determine if this would be a good lens to add to your kit to help you achieve different shots you might not have been able to with DJI’s other available lenses. Also, this video is sponsored by Squarespace, but more from them later.

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The First Impressions: 75mm on the DJI Inspire 3

So earlier this year when I started seeing the leaks for this lens, I started craving having a longer focal length than just 50mm on my Inspire 3. Once it became available, I picked one up almost immediately directly through DJI and was shocked at how fast it shipped and was delivered. I placed my order on Monday, September 9th – it shipped the same day and got to my house two days later on the 11th.

The reason I got this lens in the first place was for a video shoot with a local hospital where they wanted to capture their helicopter taking off and landing from the helipad of one of their newer hospitals. Being a higher production shoot, they of course wanted the best camera I could fly, so my Mavic 3 Pro wasn’t going to cut it. I knew that safety was going to be one of the most important things for this shoot. Staying as far away from the helicopter as I could to avoid any sort of incident was my biggest priority. I also thought that a tighter focal length would help focus on the helicopter, the pilot and medics, as well as the branding of the building. This specific hospital was recently acquired by this company, and the top of the building wasn’t all that much to look at as there were AC units and other commercial equipment.

I think my favorite thing to do is when I have an upcoming shoot, I try to justify buying gear that would be necessary for that shoot as if I can’t just use what I already own. And I’m sure everybody watching this video is guilty of the same thing – like hey, if I go out and if I buy this lens to do this shoot and I make enough money to pay this lens off and then some, the lens was technically free, right?

Look, I know that most people are here for images captured from the lens, so I’m going to give that to you right off the bat and then follow up with some miscellaneous things that I want to discuss about using the 75mm on the Inspire 3. While we look at these images though, why don’t I share with you some of my thoughts?

Performance and Image Quality

It’s no surprise that the images from this lens are insanely detailed and sharp. This is mostly thanks to the Zenmuse X9 just being a powerhouse of a camera. I can’t rave about the image quality enough, no matter which lens I’m using. I would love to shoot with this drone more if I could get over the general bulkiness that comes with it – carrying the gear, setting up, the massive file sizes. I’m unfortunately lazy and would rather just bring my Mavic 3 Pro on most jobs, but when the client calls for better image quality or if I’m out shooting on my own time and decide to break this drone out, I am so happy that I did. When I start editing the images, it’s seriously unmatched and has made me think about ditching my Sony A1 for the Ronin 4D plenty of times as my ground camera because it uses the same camera.

The Inspire 3 Finally Gets A New Lens - Dji Dl 75Mm F1.8 Review
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To get on topic here about the lens though, I think that 75mm is a very niche focal length when it comes to flying it on a drone. I’ve come to two major realizations in my time using such a tight focal length. The first is when getting up-close detail shots, controlling the drone and camera at the same time can be difficult as the tighter focal length will really exaggerate anytime that you mess up on the sticks. Trying to keep your frame steady regardless of how stable the Inspire 3 is and how rugged the gimbal on the Zenmuse X9 is can be a challenge. Dealing with wind, slight movements from the camera, and worrying about how flying the actual drone can lead to jumps in your footage that you’d prefer not to be there. These clips can be smoothed out after the fact using warp stabilizer as I’ll show you here in a few minutes, but I think using this lens in coordination with the dual operator setup, so having a dedicated camera operator, is probably going to be your best bet. Having someone dedicated to controlling your frame is super helpful on higher intensity shoots like the one that I had for the hospital, even though I handled that job on my own.

Where I think that you’ll get away with flying as a solo operator when using this lens is when you’re shooting a city skyline or if you’re just capturing landscapes, as there isn’t a bunch of things happening at once. If you’re instead filming a moving subject like a boat or a car, getting someone to operate the camera would be very helpful.

This brings us right to the second realization that I had when I was out filming the Philadelphia skyline with the 75mm lens. When you get these types of shots that are so far away, they just feel like they were done with a helicopter or they resemble those blimp shots of the stadiums before a football game. Like way back when, before drones were a thing, helicopters were used for all aerial photography and cinematography, and the lens of choice was usually a tighter focal length to capture subjects in greater detail while remaining a safe distance away. Now though, with a small unmanned aircraft, you can do things and fly in areas a helicopter couldn’t, which I think makes wider angle focal lengths a cool look from an aerial perspective.

Now look, I don’t think these far away compressed shots look bad – in fact, I am a huge fan of being able to take off outside of the city in a big park but still get close-up shots of the big buildings. And hey, there is no saying that you need to be far away when using this lens. It was really fun getting up close and personal capturing details of buildings up close with such a high-resolution camera.

Low-Light Performance

Now finally, I wanted to wait and share all of my low-light shots at the end because I can’t stop gushing over how well the sensor performs at night. Let’s be real – a drone’s best use case for flying at night is in a city or town where supplemental lighting is available. The f/1.8 aperture on this lens lets in a bit more light than the others, which have a minimum aperture of f/2.8. This lets you perfectly balance your exposure settings so you can keep your shutter at about 1/160th and you can leave your ISO at its second native value of 4,000.

The clips I’m sharing with you were captured in ProRes 422 HQ, and I’ve been adding noise reduction through Neat Video and Final Cut Pro to bring the noise levels down in these clips. Just know that you will need to do some sort of post-processing on this video – it’s not perfectly clean out of the camera, but it does clean up very nicely considering the high resolution image and the bit rate of the video that you’re shooting with this camera and lens combo.

I can pick up details at nighttime that I wouldn’t be able to see with any other drone. The little lights in the buildings get lost with the low-resolution cameras on other drones, but these low-light images from the X9 8K are insanely detailed. An example of this is the rotating Eagles logo on the Center – this is usually a graphic that is actually even difficult to see with your own eyes in person, let alone using a drone’s camera. From out here though, it’s perfectly visible with this lens and camera combo.

Now if you guys want, I’ll upload some sample images to the link down in the description. Have some patience though because they are 8K ProRes files, so it might take some time to get them downloaded. Using my website, you can select the exact clip that you want to download so you don’t have to spend time downloading everything through WeTransfer all at once.

Now coming off the topic of image quality and aperture, this is the first time that with a drone’s camera I’d worry about setting my focus point, as the depth of field is definitely evident when using a tighter focal length. For the longest time with a wide-angle lens, no matter which drone you used, your entire frame was usually in focus because what you’re shooting is so far away from the camera. This made it really easy to just tap on the middle of the screen to focus regardless of your aperture and then shoot. Now though, with this big full-frame sensor and the tight focal length of the 75mm lens, you can get some depth of field depending on what you’re shooting and how far away they are from the camera.

The only reason I bring this up is because when flying with this lens, you need to be a bit more careful about what you focus on so you don’t get home and see that all of your shots are soft in focus. With that said, shooting with this lens definitely comes with its challenges, as when I’m flying around, trying to use the live view is basically impossible. The focal length is way too tight for trying to navigate to your next shooting location or trying to fly the drone back home.

This is why the FPV camera is more helpful than ever for getting around or flying with a dedicated pilot and camera operator. I keep the FPV camera in the bottom corner when I’m flying solo, and I put the live view on the screen so I can keep my shot framed, but when I’m not shooting, I instantly swap to the FPV camera to be my main focus so I can get around without completely crashing the drone. The Vision Assist feature is also a lifesaver for when I’m moving side to side, backwards, or even forwards for that matter, so I can see all around the drone with these obstacle avoidance sensors so I know that I’m not going to run into anything.

I think I bring up this feature in almost every single one of my videos, but I have to say it’s been such a game-changer. No matter which lens or which drone I use, I usually fly solo without anybody to help operate the camera, so this tool or this feature gives me the ability to do that better and more safely.

Comparing the Inspire 3 and Mavic 3 Pro

Now before I get into what I’m going to touch on next, I just need to preface this by saying in no way am I saying that the Mavic 3 Pro’s camera is better than the Zenmuse X9 8K Air on the Inspire 3. What I’m simply saying is that I prefer some of the functionality within the Mavic 3 Pro’s camera in the way that you can switch between lenses.

For those that might not have the Mavic 3 Pro, it has three cameras built in with three different focal lengths. These are 24mm, 70mm, and 166mm. The big issue though is that as you go up in focal length, the sensor size on the camera decreases, so while the footage from the main 4/3 sensor looks beautiful with great dynamic range and detail, it gets worse as you go up to the 70mm and then it’s even worse up to the 166mm.

What I like about this is the convenience factor – right from my drone remote, I’m able to switch between focal lengths without having to land. I just press a button and shoot away. For example, this came in handy when I was flying down in Cape May and saw a big yacht coming into the inlet that I wanted to shoot. I was able to get a shot with the main camera to show the whole landscape and then flip to the 70mm for a closer tracking shot.

If I instead had the Inspire 3 in the air at that time, I would have been left to capture that boat with whatever lens I had on. I wouldn’t have had time to land the drone, swap lenses, and put it back in the air because at that time the boat would have passed by and been in the inlet already.

Now for me personally, boohoo, who cares – would have still been cool to grab some photos and videos of the boat regardless of what drone I was using. But if this was a commercial project for the client that, let’s say, is the manufacturer of the boat and we wanted to get all these different shots at different focal lengths, the Inspire 3 would be the drone to do it, but imagine how much time is spent trying to land the drone and swap the lenses. That’s more time on site and, in the case of this boat, more fuel burned.

Installation and Use

This is probably a good time to mention the mounting procedure for the 75mm lens, which is heavier than the other DL mount lenses, so it’ll require a counterweight. For installation, you just remove the back plate that came with the X9 8K Air and replace it with the plate that comes with the 75mm lens. You can leave this plate on no matter which lens you fly with as it still provides protection for the fan exhaust on the back so nothing gets sucked up inside of the camera causing damage.

With this plate in place, when you want to use the 75mm lens, you just have to clip the counterweight on the back of the camera and then attach the second weight to the vertical arm that holds the gimbal assembly. At first, I was worried that this might fall off during flight, but that quickly went away after messing with it because this is clamped on very well.

I have an embarrassing story to go along with this. You guys know in the beginning of the video I mentioned that I bought this lens for that shoot with the helicopter? Well, when I showed up, I realized I didn’t have any of the counterweights, which means I had to use this lens, and the footage was a shaky mess, which I would recommend you don’t do unless you absolutely have to because it could burn up the gimbal motors. Here is a raw shot from the camera, and as you can tell, it is a complete mess, but luckily when I slow down the footage and add warp stabilizer, it was completely usable. Being able to do this completely saved me on this day.

Now to follow up on what I was talking about earlier, kind of comparing the Mavic 3 Pro and the X9 8K Air – when you look at the image quality difference between the Mavic 3 Pro’s 70mm camera and the X9 8K Air with the 75mm camera, it’s completely night and day. I’m not going to be spending much time showing examples here because it’s kind of like comparing an action camera to a cinema camera, but the 70mm lens on the Mavic 3 Pro has always been soft in comparison to the X9.

It’s really clear that using the Mavic 3 Pro, despite its convenience, just wouldn’t even get you close to the image quality from the Inspire. There are different tools for the job, and while the 70mm camera on the Mavic 3 Pro isn’t unusable, you certainly will still see a massive benefit to using a camera like the X9 that allows you to swap between prime lenses.

Personally, I don’t think that either of the two systems we have right now work all that great. On one hand, you have multiple cameras built into one drone that sure gives you the convenience and functionality to switch between focal lengths just from the controller, but the image quality isn’t all that great between the different cameras. On the other hand, you have a camera with detachable prime lenses which sure gives you the absolute best image quality but functionality-wise, it’s a nightmare to deal with.

It’s not like a mirrorless camera where I can pull lenses out of a bag and switch it right there in my hands and continue to shoot. Instead, it’s a whole production – you’ve got to land, turn off the drone, swap the lenses, you’ve got to maybe adjust the counterweight, you’ve got to then turn the drone back on, allow it to establish its GPS connection, boot up, and then you’re back in the air, which is just an overall cumbersome process.

To me, I think we need one simple solution that is functional, convenient, and doesn’t compromise on image quality. The answer to this, and what I would love to see, is a camera option with an internal optical zoom that doesn’t impact image quality. For example, look at the Zenmuse H-line of cameras for the M350 – you get optical zoom mixed with digital zoom that is used more so for inspection, , and other commercial operations.

These cameras aren’t built for high-fidelity image capture with a super high bit rate or crazy dynamic range for high-end productions. The zoom on them, however, is crazy – like flying from Manayunk zoomed all the way in with the H20T, I was able to clearly pick up the skyline that’s like 5 miles away. This of course was aided by digital zoom so the image is grainy, but it’s impressive nonetheless.

Final Thoughts and Future Wishlist

Now look, I don’t need that much zoom when I’m out doing my photography and videography for personal reasons or for my clients, but I would like to have some flexibility of optical zoom that doesn’t compromise on image quality, giving me the best of both worlds – the functionality to just switch my focal length or zoom in from my controller without having to land, but also gives me the high-fidelity image quality of the main sensor of the camera instead of switching to some secondary sensor that’s smaller just so I can zoom in further.

And guess what – the Mavic 2 Zoom already does this, and even though this camera is not really all that great (the sensor size is small), within this camera module within this lens housing you do have an optical zoom between 24mm and 48mm. I would love to have this same functionality in a drone that has a larger sensor and a constant aperture throughout. Whether it be f/2.8 or f/1.8, to me that doesn’t matter – I just overall would prioritize the functionality and the image quality.

I would love to be able to go anywhere between 24 and 50mm and have the same image quality throughout without having to jump around between cameras, without having to land and swap lenses. Give us one camera with optical zoom and all of our questions will be answered.

Anyway, thank you guys so much for watching. Let me know your thoughts on the 75mm lens down below and the thought of an optical zoom camera in the future because I would love that.

Anyway, thank you for watching and as always, I’ll talk to you later.

Peace.


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Billy Kyle
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Hago vídeos para Internet. Puedes ver todos mis vídeos de drones en mi canal de YouTube y aquí en DroneXL.

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