What’s cooler than having your own eye in the sky? For a lot of consumers and professionals out there, not much! The DJI Phantom was one of the first truly user-friendly drones on the market, and the family has grown over the past few years to includes some awesome new features. The beautifully designed Phantom 3 brings more range, more clarity, and more power to the field with two new models.
What is a Phantom 3 drone?
DJI’s Phantom 3 series is made up of a pair of models, but in a nutshell they are easy-to-control aerial vehicles that are fun to fly and perfect for getting pictures and video from high up in the air. Each Phantom drone is a quadrocopter; it’s like a helicopter with four lift-generating rotor blades.
These blades are attached to electrically driven motors that are powered by a lithium ion battery. You control the whole the with a dedicated control unit, and you can also attach your phone or a tablet via bluetooth to see what’s going on through the drone’s camera.
I’ve flown the DJI Phantom 2 Vision+ along with a number of other drones; the key to good flights are powerful motors, intelligent stabilization, and a good app to automate some of the processes like takeoff and landing. DJI does a particularly good job of having their drones connect up through GPS, making it easy to fly.
Flying at range
The Phantom 3 drone series has an incredible degree of range, flying up to 2km away from you and showing what’s going on in real-time. DJI uses their proprietary Lightbridge technology to transmit what the drone is seeing with its camera to you in 720p high definition. Part of the reason for the incredible range is that each Phantom 3 has four antennas–one in each leg, constantly broadcasting the live video and receiving control commands from you.
Having flown the Phantom 2 up to 800m I’m excited to see what the Phantom 3 can really do.
Powerful Camera Features
Each DJI Phantom 3 has a powerful camera mounted on a 3-axis gimbal. A gimbal is designed to keep the camera perfectly stable, no matter the flight conditions. You can adjust the angle of the gimbal up and down up to 94º through the included remote controller and the dedicated DJI Pilot App.
This, for me, is the killer app that DJI is just nailing time and again with each iteration; the two new models offer 1080p with the “advanced” camera and 4K in the “professional” camera. Having 4K available is going to be a game changer; it gives you enough resolution to have absolutely gorgeous panoramic video shots, but also gives you the ability to “punch in” when you’re editing, producing a 1080p image from a fraction of your shot. It’s this flexibility that makes 4K incredibly valuable when you’re creating your own stuff.
Both models can shoot stabilized 12MP still pictures, so you can get great still shots as well.
The DJI Phantom 3 is coming soon, and you can read about the existing Phantom 2 here. It’s still the leading option for many fans out there, and is an unbeatable choice for hobbyists, real estate agents, videographers, and anyone else who’s looking for that easy-to-fly eye in the sky. Personally I can’t wait to try it out!
