DJI Osmo Pocket - challenger for the GoPro 7

Vultch said:
Not much to go on so far but they have this little beast lined up.

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbre.../dji-osmo-pocket-gimbal-action-cam-photo-leak
https://www.engadget.com/2018/11/28/dji-osmo-pocket-gimbal-camera-leak/

Guessing it will have a drone camera with their gimbal know how.
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Interesting. I have owned several DJI products and while they always provide great bang for the buck, there is usually a catch, the manuals are terrible and customer support is non-existent for all intents and purposes, they usually take 3 days to a week to respond with vague answers. My old Osmo V1 that I sold to a friend stopped communicating with the DJO Go app a year ago and so far, nobody else is having this issue and DJI support has been non responsive. So it has become a useless boat anchor for the friend. My Mavic Pro has been okay as far as functioning once DJI issued a new firmware to mitigate the controller overheating with the iPad. Buy DJI at your own risk, sometimes they work great and sometimes you want to throw them into the sea.

In comparison, my new Go Pro 7 is also sketchy, used it on a shoot last night and most of the time the app was wonky and freezing as well as the camera locked up several times. Go Pros also have horrible, awful apps and firmware issues and I curse them every time I use them. So in the action camera arena, all of the choices are sketchy and only work some of the time. Just shot a documentary with heavy reliance on Go Pros for a year, we usually ran 10-15 of them and out the 10-15, usually at least half failed, overheated, had fogging issues inside the housings even with the anti-fog inserts (on the Hero 4 Black and Silvers). The 5s were pretty good, the 6s were terrible, awful and almost always had issues. So far my new 7 isn't much better. Go Pros are not "pro" in the least. When they work, great, but we were having 50-60% failure rates, even with a full Go Pro team dedicated to doing nothing but babysitting the Go Pros.
 
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Thanks, I was eyeing up a GoPro 7, I had hoped they have worked out the bugs but obviously not.
 
I did a comparison with the Pocket and GoPro 7. Surprisingly the audio of the GoPro was better! But I liked the overall image of the Osmo way more....also you can't beat a real gimbal.
 
Well wouldn't a better comparison be GoPro/Karma and the osmo rather than just the gopro itself? All my local colleagues love DJI products. Does this new thing have a camera that detaches (like the GoPro) and can be put on different mounts?
 
They gave the camera the same shape as the Hasselblad camera on the Mavic 2 Pro... But I highly doubt it is(haven't even looked at the specs).

And I agree with Dan. GoPro's are SH!T. Use at your own risk. I stopped offering GoPro's to clients over a year ago and I try to dissuade them from using them at all, if they bring them up. I have at least $1K+ worth of mounting hardware(not counting the GoPro's) sitting in a Pelican, but I'd rather it just sit there and collect dust than deal with GoPro's. $1,000 to never have to use a GoPro again is a bargain if you ask me.
 
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Not 4k, but I rarely have problems with my Mobius Mini cameras, and at $70 each you don't cry very much when one gets wiped out. They will overheat if you have them in the Sun with no ventilation, this can be mitigated by a big chunk of aluminum attached to the camera and use the aluminum for the mount. 1080/60 with audio that doesn't totally suck, not waterproof though.

Not sure what to do if you need 4k, I haven't moved in that direction and may never need to go there as I don't use this stuff to make my money.

Would be great if I had a compact gimbal and camera that I could use on motorcycles though, it gives people a queezy feeling watching the horizon tip.
 
It seems a little strange comparing this to a GoPro considering that the big appeal of the GoPro is being waterproof, dustproof, shockproof, and generally robust. Also, the GoPro is smaller and more easily mounted to helmets, vehicles, etc.

That said, I like the image quality, stabilization, audio quality, and subject tracking of the Osmo Pocket better than the GoPro.

However, having owned the original DJI Osmo, which had a bigger sensor, I can testify to the overall poor image quality when compared to a GH5. I stopped using mine because the difference was so vast. I upgraded to a DJI Ronin-S.
 
Footage looks better, at least on my phone, than I expected.

Rarely use more than a handful of seconds of gimbal footage in my work, & may eventually pickup a Osmo Mini if only for the convenience of it’s size.
 
Run&Gun said:
They gave the camera the same shape as the Hasselblad camera on the Mavic 2 Pro... But I highly doubt it is(haven't even looked at the specs).
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The Osmo Pocket has a 1/(2/3) inch sensor in it, while the Mavic 2 Pro's Hasselblad camera has a one inch sensor in it. Definitely no the same beast!

And I agree with Dan. GoPro's are SH!T. Use at your own risk. I stopped offering GoPro's to clients over a year ago and I try to dissuade them from using them at all, if they bring them up. I have at least $1K+ worth of mounting hardware(not counting the GoPro's) sitting in a Pelican, but I'd rather it just sit there and collect dust than deal with GoPro's. $1,000 to never have to use a GoPro again is a bargain if you ask me.
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I agree... that's why I use Sony and Yi action cameras instead. :)

The Yi 4K+ has a much better image than the GoPros I've tried, partly because Yi put a quality lens on it.
 
Tamerlin said:
The Osmo Pocket has a 1/(2/3) inch sensor in it, while the Mavic 2 Pro's Hasselblad camera has a one inch sensor in it. Definitely no the same beast!



I agree... that's why I use Sony and Yi action cameras instead. :)

The Yi 4K+ has a much better image than the GoPros I've tried, partly because Yi put a quality lens on it.
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After shooting so much with Go Pros on this project, all I care about is reliability. Action cameras, compared to real cameras, all look like crap. All I care about is does the app work? All of the time? Does the camera power down for no reason? (fresh batteries, not a heat causing mounted location) Does the camera always talk to the app? Does it work every time? I have not tried the Yi, but all I care about is do they operate more reliably than Go Pros? Also, is there a Refuel or other 6 hour battery for the Sonys? I don't think there is. For the Yi? I shoot a lot of sports, racing, etc. where you need minimum to a three to four hours of recording to capture anything usable. Internal action cam batteries usually cannot make it even to one hour.
 
unbelievably....and yes, the 1080/120p spec was there...I saw it...and the dci formats....dji changed the spec sheet ! No 1080/120 and no dci. I think dji just lost a bundle of customers who wanted to spend 4 bills this christmas...to gopro !
https://www.dji.com/osmo-pocket/info#specs

....dji has said on their forum that the 1080/120p spec will be added in firmware ...nothing on the dci
 
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I've been learning more about this device. On dji's forum, there's lots of discussion about activation problems. Work arounds etc, because there are very few devices supported on dji specs. There's even a discrepancy with ios app specs, and it doesn't have any support whatsoever for usb micro devices. The firmware is a work in progress. I'd say they jumped the release by at least 3 months. Does that mean someone else has something in the works ? Also on bh's comments I found that the battery is only guaranteed for 6 months at approx max 400 cycles. That's a non replaceable battery ! The more I learn, the less I like. I esp don't like the activation scenario. Which camera did I buy where I had to activate it to take pictures ? It's kinda of orwellian, considering. I'm contemplating alternatives until dji gets their act together, when and if.
 
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Yeah, with so much stuff nowadays, there's no just taking it out of the box and using it. If you don't have access to wifi/internet, you're screwed.

I still play some video games, occasionally and in spurts, and while the new systems are incredible in their performance, I miss the days of just being able to buy a game, pop it in and play it. Now they all have to download off the disc AND then download patches and updates on-line before you can play it. When I was a kid, as fast as you could unwrap the game and get it in the console you were playing. Now, it may be at least 30-60 mins or more before a game is ready. And if Microsoft had gotten their way completely, you wouldn't be able to play an Xbox without a persistent internet connection.

The internet is great and it's changed our lives, but we shouldn't have to have everything connected to it to work.
 
Josh Bass said:
The extensive newsshooter review says its very ok.
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it's a great review...that doesn't address the activation issue whatsoever. It's not an online video game, or at least not to our knowledge. Nor is it a drone, which is the subject of legalities, and which apparently dji makes activation necessary. The concept is great standalone, however, to use pro features....and when are setting aperture and shutter speed considered "pro" ?....(that's how cameras started...pro)....it's gotta be connected to a phone....it really looses that zap feature of so "tiny". It's the same form factor as the other two osmo's...with that phone tagging along. So.... I'm reconsidering placing an order , at least until I can activate one with a throwaway phone to a fictitious email account ! In fact an almost tiny gimbal and yi 4k are coming my way first, at half the price , that don't need "permission" while I wait for things to smoothout, or mark 2, or I'd bet zhiyun or somebody else has one in the works as we speak....that won't need "permission" to use. However, the concept is brilliant....w/o the baggage.
 
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