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As you might have gath­ered from my pre­vi­ous arti­cles about the DJI Mini 2 and the DJI Air 2S, I’ve been into drone pho­tog­ra­phy for some time now. Cur­rent­ly, I still own both drones. 

The Mini 2 has the advan­tage of being very small and, due to its weight of only 249g, also more uni­ver­sal. Among oth­er things, it can be flown with restric­tions in res­i­den­tial areas and above indi­vid­ual peo­ple in accor­dance with the cur­rent EU drone reg­u­la­tions. As a trib­ute to its light weight, how­ev­er, it only has a cam­era with a small 12-megapix­el sen­sor that allows shoot­ing at about the lev­el of cur­rent cell phones. That’s cer­tain­ly not bad, but it does­n’t always meet my requirements. 

In con­trast, the Air 2S has the much bet­ter cam­era with a 1-inch sen­sor and 20 megapix­els of res­o­lu­tion, as well as sen­sors for obsta­cle detec­tion that enable autonomous flights. So it can, for exam­ple, auto­mat­i­cal­ly fol­low a per­son or cir­cle around an object. Video capa­bil­i­ties are also improved. The Air 2S sup­ports videos in 4k 60P and the 10bit D-LOG for­mat. How­ev­er, due to its high­er weight, it is not allowed to be flown inside res­i­den­tial areas accord­ing to the actu­al EU drone reg­u­la­tions. In addi­tion, the small drone license is required.

Now DJI has unveiled a new drone on May 10th, 2022 that appar­ent­ly com­bines the advan­tages of the Mini 2 and Air 2S in one device: the DJI Mini 3 Pro. 

It is as small and light (249g) as the Mini 2, so it can be flown inside res­i­den­tial areas. At the same time, it has a much larg­er (1/1.3″) sen­sor and fast f/1.7 24mm equiv­a­lent optics. The sen­sor is thus small­er than the one of the Air 2S, but the optics are faster (f/2.8 for the Air 2s). In addi­tion, the res­o­lu­tion of the sen­sor has been increased to a remark­able 48 megapixels. 

In terms of video, it has also almost caught up with the Air 2S, sup­port­ing 4k 60P and 10bit D-LOG for­mat just like the lat­ter. Obsta­cle detec­tion sen­sors are now also built into the small drone, so it also sup­ports autonomous flying.

After the pre­sen­ta­tion of the DJI Mini 3 Pro, I there­fore did not hes­i­tate for long and imme­di­ate­ly ordered the kit with the brand new DJI RC con­troller. I just got an email from DJI that my drone is on its way. As soon as it arrives, I will imme­di­ate­ly test it exten­sive­ly and post a report here. As a pho­tog­ra­ph­er, I’m espe­cial­ly excit­ed to see what image qual­i­ty the 48Megapixel sen­sor deliv­ers. The Mini 3 Pro also sup­ports RAW for­mat shooting.

I have already sold my DJI Mini 2. If the DJI Mini 3 Pro should also reach the image qual­i­ty of the Air 2S, I will prob­a­bly part with it later.