Opening Shot
I love movies, do you? Most of us do.
There’s something about movies that spirits you away to someplace new. They give us new vistas, they reimagine our current reality, they show us the past through someone else’s eyes. Movies are magic!
If movies give us magical places to escape to, the opening shot is the portal that takes us there. Every movie has them, sometimes we get thrown right into the action, but more often than not, we open onto a slow shot of the place where our story begins, maybe a slow winding shot through the interior of an old house, or a soft drifting image of a park on a summer day, bathed in the heat waves of the sun high overhead. The most common opening shot by far, though, is the aerial location shot. We all know it when we see it, a wide shot of a city skyline from across a river, a downward angle of a farmstead bustling with animals and workers from high above. There is something about those aerial images that really takes us to another place, and they do wonders for establishing the tone of the movie.
It used to be that a production would need to hire a helicopter to fly over a place to get those angles, and the wind from those huge propellers meant that even with the high angle, the camera had to be focused in certain ways to avoid catching the buffeting effect of all that wind! Expensive and limited, but still magical in the end. No regular person had the means of getting footage like that on their own. Weddings and birthdays and special events were doomed to be filmed from hand-height for the longest time, but now we have drones!
Attack of the Drones
Drones, the buzzy little remote controlled quad copters that became all the rage not 15-20 years ago. They popped up seemingly out of nowhere and took the world by storm. You couldn’t go to a mall for a while without seeing someone at a kiosk flying little blinky-light-covered drones around. They popped un in the gifts sections at JC Penny, they dominated the window displays at the Sharper Image. They were everywhere! Best Buy re-organized their entire store layout to accommodate a new drone tech aisle, for goodness sake!
Now, though, they seem to have faded into the background a bit. Not because they are no longer popular, but because they have simply become such a common and expected part of our product culture. They are still everywhere, but they’ve lost that “fad” status that made them so apparent. In doing so, however, they have brought the power of the aerial shot to the hands of everyday content creators and hobbyists. Anyone can set up a camera drone, fling it into the sky and get stunning footage of whatever they want to share with the world! Now the question isn’t “how do I get this shot,” it’s “what drone do I get to make this shot work?”
The DJI Flip
Queue the DJI Neo Mini Drone, a high quality entry in the seemingly endless catalogue of camera drones available to civilian consumers. This one stood out to me for a few reasons, but the first was price. At first glance $439 ($349 on sale at Amazon at the time of writing this article) might not seem terribly cheap, but for something easy to use with a great camera and portability, this is a crazy good number! Most of the really good camera drones out there that aren’t gimmicks or garbage are between $500 and somewhere over $1000. As a matter of fact, DJI is such a trusted drone manufacturer, most lists of the best camera drones you’ll find these days will be full of DJI options. The pro models are crazy expensive, so trust me when I say, this is the low end.
I picked this one for a few reasons beyond just the price tag, though. One of the really nice features that caught my eye here was the propeller guards. A lot of the nice drones out there assume you are already a pro and have open propellers, something I was 100% certain I’d destroy within the first few minutes of use. Not everyone who wants to get beautiful high shots for their own use are seasoned operators, so the bumpers gave me some serious peace of mind. Boy oh boy did I make the right call because the first thing I did upon spinning the drone up was whack myself right in the head with it. Not my finest moment, but without the bumpers that could have been so much worse!Another little feature I just couldn’t get over was the way it folds up for easy transport. I don’t usually include photos mid-review but I just have to show you this. Look how cool that is!
As I’ve established in previous reviews, I’m something of a dork. I love toys and cartoons and this feature speaks to my inner Transformers fan so loudly I just plain couldn’t resist.
A Professional Quality Drone For Casuals and Beginners
This was DJI’s smallest and lightest-weight drone ever when it was released and was marketed as a “selfie-drone.” If that sounds silly, don’t worry, it’s more of a classification than an actual use-case description. This just means it is designed to be easy to use for the casual operator. The encased propellers and excellent handheld controller are great for first timers and the camera is just good enough to give you great 4K footage without costing you an arm and a leg. While the battery life isn’t super good, coming in between 25 and 35 minutes depending on how you use it, it’s still enough to get you a decently long shot before having to land and recharge.
The Specs
Let’s break this thing down and see what’s inside!
Weight, Size and Design
- Under 249 g (which means in many places you won’t need a license to operate!)
- Foldable arms (Mini-style design)
- Carbon fiber reinforced guard structure
Camera
- 1/1.3-inch CMOS sensor
- 24mm equivalent wide-angle lens
- 48 MP high-resolution photos
- Also supports 12 MP standard shooting
- 4K HDR video at up to 60 fps
- Full HD up to 100 fps (slow motion)
- Vertical video support
- Multiple focus modes including auto-track, which keeps the drone focused on a subject during flight.
Flight Stats
- Max speed: ~16 m/s (35.8 mph)
- Up to 13 km (8 miles) range from controller
- Max altitude: ~3000 m
- Supports palm takeoff/landing (which is way too cool)
There are a lot of other features I could list here but as I’m guessing you are a beginner like I was when I got the Flip, I’ll leave it there. There are so many other neat things this drone can do, like following pre-set cinematic paths and switching between Wide angle and spherical panorama. It’s crazy how much this little thing can do!
Downsides
We always have to look at the negatives, as nothing will ever be perfect and the DJI Flip is no exception.
For one thing, those bumper guards I like so much are a blessing and a curse, as they do increase the noise a fair amount. This is not a quiet drone. The price is great in the context of other high-quality drones, but for someone just stepping into the space it can seem like a lot. If you grab a cheap drone, the lack of quality will turn you off to the whole hobby, but if you want quality, you’ll have to dig up the wallet and spend a little.
The battery life is also a bit of a drawback. Once you start flying this thing, you’ll want to go for hours at a time, so stopping every 20-30 minutes to charge it back up is a real drag. I’ve seen some people buy multiple drones to combat this problem, but in the end, the more expensive and often times bigger drones are the ones with the killer battery life.
Is This Thing Right For Me?
It’s not a necessity by any stretch of the imagination. Drones are a luxury hobby and professional film making tools, so the cost and practicality of a good drone can’t be judged by casual standards. If you really want to up your social video game, or if you love taking beautiful photos and videos, and really want that aerial angle, this is a fantastic place to start. For most, this drone is all you’ll ever need, but if you get the bug and really dig into the drone hobby, you’ll be glad you avoided the cheap trashy drones. For me, this was a fun way to expand my video and photo range, and I recommend giving it a shot if you can afford it!
