DEFINITION May 2018

AERIAL DJI REVIEW

TOP OF THE WORLD As part of the shoot we were at a research station called Jungfrau, shooting sunset and sunrise so in the evening we were fully open putting the ISO in and then stopping it down the next morning. You do have to have a good set of ND filters. With it being a bigger sensor it does pull more light in so you do put on the NDs quite quickly; we were putting them on at first light. We were using Schneider fixed filters which are really good with a great colour cast. With the new lenses and the 1.6x crop factor on a Super 35mm sensor you do find use for all of them. I love the 50mm because that’s where it started to encroach into helicopter levels of shots. It means you’re getting proper parallaxes and looks that were out of the bounds for drones until

now. OK so you might have been able to do that before with drones but not at speed without wobbling. As long as it’s a fixed subject the 50mm lens is perhaps the one to go for; it does look like it has been shot from a chopper. I shoot alongside helicopters a lot and everything has its place, but the fact that I can do shots that they can’t – and to be fair they can do shots that I can’t – it’s a kind of harmony at the moment. But the fact I can really throw the 50mm at things nicely with the Hasselblad glass label means something. It gives credibility. The four lenses are all the lenses you’ll ever need. I’ve never wanted one halfway for instance. It might be nice if they did a specialist wide- angle maybe, like a 10mm which would be a full framed 16mm. That would give you the height you need sometimes for say a race track or something that’s big and you’re restricted. Also it would be nice to see if they could do a faster version, across the range, than the 2.8, but we’ll see. Also I’d like to see if the processor might be able to push out faster frame rates as productions are asking me for it. But can it do something like 2K

at 200fps or 240fps? Even cropped wouldn’t bother me. I would pay for that update if it became available. I have seen quite a few companies which have bought the Zenmuse X7, even one company that traditionally used heavy-lift drones, because of all the options the X7 presents. It elongates the life of the Inspire 2 craft as well, which is now around 18 months’ old. The Zenmuse X7 is a really impressive upgrade which opens up different markets for you, even movie markets, if only for shooting back plate shots. Also you could look to the X7 to achieve high risks shots.

Lec Park is an award-winning aerial and specialist camera operator working on shows like The Grand Tour Seasons 1 and 2 and SAS Who Dares Wins. ABOVE AND TOP It might not be perfect but the Zenmuse X7 impressed in the Swiss Alps.

THE FOUR LENSES ARE ALL THE LENSES YOU’LL EVER NEED

DEFINITION MAY 2018

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