Phantom 3 vs. Solo

TaniaGail · May 12, 2015

Yourviewfromabove said:
You might want to read thru the Phantom 3 Forums. Looks like most of the reviews are fairly positive. I owned (2) Phantom 2 with the H3-3D gimbal and overall enjoyed it, not their customer service. I also owned an Inspire and had some major issues with it. Really looking forward to seeing what the Solo has to offer

I'm all over the Phantom forums as they are a good resource for my numerous questions. I'm happy with my pretty flying machine and have created interesting content. You can view my work on SkyPixel.

TaniaGail · May 12, 2015

Hayabusadrew said:
You'll get a ton of reviews in about a month. The great thing is you already have a bird so you are not in a rush. If the Solo can do everything they claim it's going to be a great purchase. Wish us all luck!

Oh, I will be closely watching

TaniaGail · May 12, 2015

Barry Mews said:
nobody owns a solo at this time as it hasn't been released to the public yet. You'll have to wait a couple of weeks before you can get a real world objective view. FPV will make all the difference. You'll wonder why you didn't get it for your P2 setup. What is it in particular that's making you look at another aircraft?

What is lacking from my set up is FPV. I quickly realized the video and photography I wanted to capture would be near impossible without FPV. Also, having the added vision and data from the FPV seems to me a huge jump in safety. The runaround I encountered with the hobby shops in my area was astonishing. One business told me they don't like to install FPV on Phantoms due to the poor technical support they have encountered with DJI. I heard the rumors about P3 and decided to wait and see. NAB happened and now DJI has what looks like a serious competitor in the Solo drone.

Rothgarr · May 13, 2015

TaniaGail said:
What is lacking from my set up is FPV. I quickly realized the video and photography I wanted to capture would be near impossible without FPV. Also, having the added vision and data from the FPV seems to me a huge jump in safety. The runaround I encountered with the hobby shops in my area was astonishing. One business told me they don't like to install FPV on Phantoms due to the poor technical support they have encountered with DJI. I heard the rumors about P3 and decided to wait and see. NAB happened and now DJI has what looks like a serious competitor in the Solo drone.

That's just... wow (the runaround and misinformation that you got). It's literally like a photographer not having a viewfinder to see if they are going to have the subject in the picture. Regardless if you choose a 3DR or a newer DJI the FPV will be a gamechanger for you.

I can't imagine how hard it would have been for me to put this together with my P2V+ last year not being able to see what I was shooting:

Yourviewfromabove · May 13, 2015

TaniaGail said:
I'm all over the Phantom forums as they are a good resource for my numerous questions. I'm happy with my pretty flying machine and have created interesting content. You can view my work on SkyPixel.

Very cool, I see your from Philly. I live in Wyndmoor and work in the city. Here's a link to some of my video's https://vimeo.com/user26855752

https://www.skypixel.com/user/laszlo-bagi-99834e3c-88de-4e11-b381-27bd4fbe1854

Yourviewfromabove · May 13, 2015

TaniaGail said:
What is lacking from my set up is FPV. I quickly realized the video and photography I wanted to capture would be near impossible without FPV. Also, having the added vision and data from the FPV seems to me a huge jump in safety. The runaround I encountered with the hobby shops in my area was astonishing. One business told me they don't like to install FPV on Phantoms due to the poor technical support they have encountered with DJI. I heard the rumors about P3 and decided to wait and see. NAB happened and now DJI has what looks like a serious competitor in the Solo drone.

Adding the FPV system to my Phantom 2 was really pretty easy and at the most took about 30 minutes to install. It was a DJI HUB, and Transmitter

TaniaGail · May 13, 2015

Yourviewfromabove said:
Adding the FPV system to my Phantom 2 was really pretty easy and at the most took about 30 minutes to install. It was a DJI HUB, and Transmitter

Black Pearl?

TaniaGail · May 13, 2015

Yourviewfromabove said:
Very cool, I see your from Philly. I live in Wyndmoor and work in the city. Here's a link to some of my video's https://vimeo.com/user26855752

https://www.skypixel.com/user/laszlo-bagi-99834e3c-88de-4e11-b381-27bd4fbe1854

Beautiful! The Bodie Lighthouse video is very nice. I've been there and love that area.

TaniaGail · May 13, 2015

Rothgarr said:
That's just... wow (the runaround and misinformation that you got). It's literally like a photographer not having a viewfinder to see if they are going to have the subject in the picture. Regardless if you choose a 3DR or a newer DJI the FPV will be a gamechanger for you.

I can't imagine how hard it would have been for me to put this together with my P2V+ last year not being able to see what I was shooting:

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What a lovely video, Rothgarr!

I agree, FPV will up the quality of video and stills I capture. After having a difficult time trying to decipher the engineer-speak in the DJI instructions, I was very leery about installing an FPV on my own. Also, one of the screw sets for the Zenmuse gimbal is incorrectly labelled and/or the engineers did not do a good job proofreading their installation instructions. It took close to three days and a YouTube video to figure out there was a misprint and how the darn gimbal was to be attached. *you can stop laughing now*

Yourviewfromabove · May 13, 2015

TaniaGail said:
Beautiful! The Bodie Lighthouse video is very nice. I've been there and love that area.

Thanks, will be back in Nags Head in 6 weeks. Yes the Black Pearl or another type of 32 channel monitor. You'll also need some type of transmitter, I used....http://www.helipal.com/dji-avl58-vi...cohdq971TTJWEWjhixUj-SW34G8U6QlkdQhoCdqrw_wcB

And the DJI HUB, pretty simple install with no splicing

http://www.helipal.com/djip2-09-dji...rbhsHATFl6XwYOHuM3eL51zGAwlxuziX20xoCsyjw_wcB

Ugashik Bob · May 18, 2015

I am also interested in the Solo but need more than the 1/2 mile range and the flight time/battery to support it. Be interesting to see realistic distance and flight times of a fully functional unit instead of the marketing sunshine pumped by DJI for my Phantom flight times.

rrmccabe · May 18, 2015

Ugashik Bob said:
I am also interested in the Solo but need more than the 1/2 mile range and the flight time/battery to support it. Be interesting to see realistic distance and flight times of a fully functional unit instead of the marketing sunshine pumped by DJI for my Phantom flight times.

Yea I am in same boat. I will probably buy a Iteltite antenna kit for it when they come out. But in the end I have a feeling I might just buy a P3 advanced after shaking out my solo for my long distance stuff. The lightbridge distance is amazing !

Ugashik Bob · May 18, 2015

I'm sure there will be easy mods for improved distance. I have high expectations for a $150 smart battery in terms of both battery and flight longevity. Battery life and gimbal durability were disappointing to me with the Phantoms.

rrmccabe · May 18, 2015

One thing I have to wonder is if the distance could be limited by bandwidth. Besides the control signal the Phantom is transmitting pretty minimal data back to the controller. On the other hand the Solo is sending FPV and 500 different parameters. Just a guess.

McSlevin · May 18, 2015

Not to side-rail the thread... but how many people in this thread are from Philadelphia? Not including myself (born and raised living in Plymouth Meeting now)... I'm thinking Drone Club?

TaniaGail · May 18, 2015

McSlevin said:
Not to side-rail the thread... but how many people in this thread are from Philadelphia? Not including myself (born and raised living in Plymouth Meeting now)... I'm thinking Drone Club?

Quadcopter club?

Yourviewfromabove · May 19, 2015

McSlevin said:
Not to side-rail the thread... but how many people in this thread are from Philadelphia? Not including myself (born and raised living in Plymouth Meeting now)... I'm thinking Drone Club?

I'm only a few miles from you, I live in Wyndmoor.

Buzz313th · May 20, 2015

A good fair comparison of the cameras..
http://www.provideocoalition.com/dji-cams

For someone taking the photography side of things as the most important factor.. The GoPro is the way to go.

I'm glad I'm waiting for the SOLO.. I'm really not happy with the DJI cameras.. They all have post sharpening on and you can't turn it off in video mode. And from footage sent to me from friends and people online all the DJI cameras produce lots of compression noise.

Yourviewfromabove · May 20, 2015

Buzz313th said:
A good fair comparison of the cameras..
http://www.provideocoalition.com/dji-cams

For someone taking the photography side of things as the most important factor.. The GoPro is the way to go.

I'm glad I'm waiting for the SOLO.. I'm really not happy with the DJI cameras.. They all have post sharpening on and you can't turn it off in video mode. And from footage sent to me from friends and people online all the DJI cameras produce lots of compression noise.

How can you say it the way to go......From the link you supplied............

"As you'll see in the above video, that other than some rolling shutter from the vibrations in the P2 craft with the GoPro, all of the cameras are pretty well matched in quality. The 4K video from the DJI Inspire 1 and the Phantom 3 Pro are nearly identical"

So basically the guy is saying the cameras are all about the same..........explain to me how the GP is the way to go???

LOL

Buzz313th · May 20, 2015

I own a P2H4 combo.. And I have been very close to pulling the trigger on the DJI Inspire.. Only thing that has stopped me is the video quality of the camera. I'm lucky that there is a drone shop close to me and they allow me to shoot test footage with it.

These are my observations comparing the camera footage..

All the DJI cameras in video mode force post sharpening. You can't turn it off, even if you set sharpening to 0 or -2 etc.. If you shoot a DNG raw still, then Post sharpening is off and you will see that the DJI cameras aren't as sharp as the H4 in raw and they don't have the exposure or color latitude. Personally, I don't want the camera to do any post work for me.. I want as close of an image I can get to raw sensor data, so I can do the post myself.

On a lot of the footage I have looked at, I have seen the inspire and P3P camera also has some problems with compression artifacts and noise in all ISO settings.. It's easy to see if you take your Inspire or P3 footage and zoom in to 400%.. You will end up seeing lots of pixels jumping around. The Hero4 has that, but not nearly as much.

I know you mention seeing rolling shutter in the videos above, but every digital video camera has rolling shutter and you deal with it the same on each camera by lowering Shutterspeed. The reason why the Hero4 might show more than the other cameras, is because the H4 can't go down below 400ISO where the DJI cameras are able to go down to 100ISO.. That's two stops.. But I don't think the DJI cameras are native at 100ISO, I think they are native at 400ISO as video quality is better there.

Also in the footage above, you will clearly see that the H4 has a lot more dynamic range than the DJI cameras, the contrast is better.

The only real pain for me, is that I can't control the H4 remotely with my P2.. Which is why I am looking foreword to the SOLO..