DJI Mavic 3 Cine REVIEW: Shooting The French Riviera

We recently purchased and tested a Mavic 3 Cine - the flagship drone in the Mavic 3 lineup, and put it through its paces in Spain and the South of France. We focused heavily on the 360 spherical panoramic feature, as well as the video feature (though we did not test ProRes RAW). As this was a vacation and not a work trip, I did not go crazy taking every single photo or shoot every occasion we could - I also tried to relax and soak in all the views. That said, I definitely did take several noteworthy RAW jpgs and practiced my aerial videography.

We did not fly in Barcelona or Paris due to the restrictions. It was mostly cloudy when we were flying but whenever it was sunny, we seemed to be in Barcelona or Paris - just our luck.

A view of Eze Village

DJ1 Mavic 3 specs

There are two versions available of the Mavic 3: Standard and the Cine. 

Both feature a gargantuan Micro 4/3rds sensor (very low light capable), a primary wide angle camera with up to 5.1K resolution with 10-bit D-log, and 20MP stills and a separate telephoto with 7x optical zoom compared to the wide angle camera which offers only 12MP stills. In comparison, the Mavic 2 Pro has a 1 inch sensor, as opposed to the Mavic 3’s 4/3 inch sensor. This means the new drone’s sensor is 1/3 inch larger.

Both versions of the new drone have Occusync 3+ for extended remote range (handy in high-interference areas), ActiveTrack 5.0, Time lapse, and greater frame rate options — 200fps in 1080p and 120fps slow motion in 4K.

The Cine version includes everything from the Standard plus Apple ProRes 422 HQ on a fast 1TB SSD internal storage, and the DJI RC Pro remote with a 5.5” display (for super quick setups.) 

Putting Mavic 3 through its paces

Build Quality - We noticed that the build quality of the Mavic 3 to be a bit more fragile than the Mavic 2 series. We suspect that the sturdiness of the drone was sacrificed a little to boost the battery life of the drone. The build quality is not low quality by any means. For example, the materials of the arms are a little thinner. Overall, the build quality is a step down, but we think this is still a high quality drone overall.

Flight Characteristics - The flight characteristics are very similar to the Mavic 2 Pro. We heard from a fellow pilot of erratic behavior but we did not experience that. In terms of speed, we did not push our M3C to its limits all the time but we believe that it is stronger/faster than the predecessor.

Flight Time - It has the longest flight time of the entire DJI Mavic, Phantom and Inspire series: a whopping 46 minutes! In reality, we found that it's closer to 35-40 minutes in mixed conditions, but that's still a decent step up from its predecessor. This gives us more time to scout, get the perfect shot, as well as make it back to the base safely. This also cuts down on the number of batteries required for the shoot. During our 18 day-trip, we brought four batteries. We typically never used more than two batteries. The only time we used more than that was when we didn’t get a chance to charge the batteries.

Camera - The camera is noticeably bigger, especially with the extra telephoto camera on top. For our flights in the French Riviera, we did not use the telephoto camera at all. Being in a habit of using only the wide angle on the Mavic 2 Pro, forgot that the telephoto camera was there. We hope to be using the tele more often in the future as I believe there can be very interesting shots created from it. Below, we will break down the stills, panos, and videos.

Stills: We found that the Hasselblad color science continues to be stellar: punchy contrast and fairly colorful, reminiscent of a 5D Mark 3 or 4. During cloudy and mostly cloudy days, we were able adjust colors and exposure in post to make it look almost like a sunny day on our RAW file (see the images in this post). We tested it in lower light situations but not anything past dusk. It held up pretty well to around ISO 800 but unfortunately we weren’t able to test for any ISO higher than that. Despite that, we found that noise was controlled very well in those ranges, even after boosting the exposure in post. We believe this is perhaps due to the large sensor.

Panos: We tested the 360 degree spherical pano extensively, and the internal computer was able to take the multiple photos (about 15-20 of them) and stitch them with ease, just like the Mavic 2 Pro. After the drone finished taking photos, it still took about 30-45 seconds to process the photos. During this time, it was fine to move the drone, despite the drone telling us the operation was canceled. We did not encounter any issues with our Panos. We noticed that the images coming straight out of camera were punchy in contrast but were often a stop under exposed. We believe the drone was compensating for the highlights near the sun. It is wise to boost exposure in post (as we did in the gallery above).

Video: As we were mainly shooting for our YouTube channel and wanted a quick workflow for that, we did not shoot in D-log or ProRes. We shot in 4K and 5.1K at H.265 but the footage straight out of camera was stunning. We shot the top of Eze village near Nice, France in 5.1K and the parallax effect was simply cinematic. The colors were also rich and you can see the details clearly in 5.1K without being overly sharpened.

If you liked that video, please subscribe to our YouTube channel for more content like that!

Issues

We only encountered one hiccup: The DJI Fly App on the Smart Controller froze up and the only way to solve the problem was to exit the app and restart it (while the drone was in flight). Although this was annoying, this only happened once over the course of around 10 flights.

Lacoste, part of the Luberon region of France, about an hour north of the southern coast.

Conclusion

Despite some minor issues, the Mavic 3 Cine is still a very capable drone for those who need more low light abilities, better video quality and options, and a longer battery life than its already excellent predecessor.

This drone sits right between the Mavic 2 Pro and the Inspire 2 - it has the same sized sensor as the Inspire 2 X5S camera, which should yield similar results but does not feature interchangeable lenses, which puts the drone in the same “physical” category as the other foldable DJI drones. Despite the improvements in image quality and videography spec upgrades, we price this drone more closely to the Mavic 2 Pro. We hope our clients will appreciate the value using this new drone.