what’s up guys – key here and welcome to another tech gear talk today we’re gonna check out the all-new DJI Osmo action I just spent a couple of weeks shooting with it and putting it through some different tests I’m gonna share the things that I like and the things that I didn’t like a DJI obviously is known as a company that produces high-quality drones and Gimbels but last year with the Osmo pocket we saw the first sign that they’re definitely interesting in diversifying their product lines and they’re definitely acting as disruptors here with the Osmo action action cameras have definitely been GoPro territories for years and the super popular hero 7 black made quite a splash I was super curious to see how DJI years of experience with mechanical stabilization would translate to electronic image stabilisation and I’ll get to it later on in more detail but I’m just gonna let you know I wasn’t disappointed I’m gonna very quickly cover the major specs and then get on with the review we’ve got a 1 over 2.3 CMOS sensor got a wide F 2.8 lens up to 4k 60 video we can shoot 12 megapixels still photos we have an ISO range of up to 3200 we also have the Rocksteady digital image stabilization time-lapse slow-motion and this camera is waterproof to 36 feet without a housing there’s a touchscreen display on the back and probably the most anticipated
feature there is a front display and finally we have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support so you can control it via the DJI MIMO okay enough of that let’s get to the review if you’ve ever looked at the action camp space the design of the Osmo action is very familiar it looks well looks like a GoPro it’s essentially identical in size but it uses a circular lens cover which easily screws on and off and it allows you to use different types of filters which I’ll get to later on in this video I think that this design gives the Osmo action a more compact overall look and the filters are easier to swap out then on the seven on the back we see a really sharp and bright two and a quarter touchscreen display which gives us a live view when we’re behind the camera and lets us control the Osmo actions and settings and of course review playback of the images in video on the front we get to probably the most exciting feature of the Osmo action a 1.4 inch color selfie screen this is an awesome feature and the one that might be the deciding factor for me literally from the first time I use this camera facing me I knew it’s gonna make my life easier I’m not great at framing myself when I’m in front of the camera if I can’t have visual feedback and when I used other action cameras I would think that I’m framed well only to come home and realize that I shot a bunch of footage that’s gonna be useless there are plenty of people out there who don’t have this problem but for me and how I use it the front-facing screen is
such a good feature to have if nothing else it removes the doubt that I might have about framing and composition now there are two buttons on the top the on/off and the record button which of course give you the basic functionality you would expect there is also a quick select button on the left side of the asthma action which lets you very quickly switch between different shooting modes what I like is that there is a way to store frequently used custom settings so for example if you shoot a lot of 4k 60 with daylight white balance and automatic exposure you can just save that as a preset then you might also do 120 or 240 frames per second for slow motion with auto white balance and automatic exposure so you can save both of those and then quickly switch between them using this quick select button instead of having to go into the settings and recreate this every time you want to go from 4k to 120 or 240 you can also hold down the quick select button and it will switch live view from the screen on the back to the one on the front now another way to switch view is to double tap the screen on the back with two fingers let’s move on to usability and with any new device you’re never sure about the user face a DJ I crushed it with a super simple and intuitive user interface and even without ever looking at the manual I had the whole thing figured out
in minutes if you swipe down on the back screen you get all the basic setup options you can do things like create profiles control the screen brightness lock the screen and really control every setup feature that you would need as swiping to the left brings up your video recording options so you can select auto exposure or manual exposure in auto you can still control the max ISO as well as exposure compensation which is great in certain situations in manual you’re selecting both ISO and shutter speed so you can get the exact exposure that you’re looking for now when you try to get cinematic footage from the action you’re gonna run into an issue and I’m gonna talk about it as well as the solution in the next section now swiping up brings up different functions depending on what mode you’re in for example you can select resolution frame rates and turn Rocksteady on and off if you’re in the video mode or you can set interval and duration for time-lapse now swiping to the right will let you see all of the images and videos that you have on a micro SD card so like I said super easy functionality if you go ahead and connect the action to your phone then the interface is even easier and again all the functionality is integrated in a super intuitive way you’ll need to register your device with the DJI memo app before you can do anything so just keep that in mind and expect to do a firmware update when you get your device but it’s
super simple once you’re connected another thing that I really liked about using the app is that it allowed me to control everything when the action was mounted to my car so I could start and stop video change exposure frame rates and it was great to be able to have this type of remote control functionality as far as battery life I was getting about an hour at 4k 30 which is pretty good if I was going to take it up snowboarding or something like that I’d get at least one additional battery probably – and the charging hub and I’ll put some links in the description to a few good option from a user experience standpoint I absolutely love that the action is waterproof without the need for housing this means that I never have to stop and switch housing to accommodate situations where the camera might get rained on or just gets splashed so again from a real life use situation it provided a great overall experience alright let’s move on to image quality and the Osmo action can shoot video at 4k 4×3 4k 2.7 k 4×3 2.7 k 1080p and 7 24 k we can go up to 60 frames per second and with 1080p or Full HD we can get up to 240 frames per second now overall the image quality is quite good especially in good light it will struggle a bit in low-light or super contrasted scenes where I recommend shooting in de cine like and then get a flatter image
that will help you retain more colour information to work with and post there’s also an HDR mode which works well in difficult to shoot or high dynamic range situations but there’s a limitation there which I’ll get to in a bit now I know the DJI has been stabilizing video for years now but up until this point we were talking about mechanical image stabilization with all their various gimble’s now obviously the Osmo action is too small for this type of integration and this is the first time where we see them using electronic image stabilization which they named Rocksteady what I’m gonna tell you about it is that it’s outstanding and I’ll do a side-by-side with the hero 7 in a comparison video but it’s super impressive even running with the camera on a gorilla pod where I literally see the camera bouncing up and down like crazy the action yielded stable results now I’m bouncing up and down in this image but if you check out the background it’s really steady I also tested the camera while running and just holding the camera with no gorilla pod and got good results these are situations where you’d normally get absolutely sick watching video from DSLRs mirrorless cameras or even phones now if you’ve watched any of my cinematic look tutorials you know that you’re going to want your shutter speed to be twice that of your frame rate but when you’re
shooting outside with the action on a bright day even at ISO 100 you’re gonna see that the image is just way too bright and this is where you’re gonna want to use an ND or neutral density filter which will help you block some of the incoming light and let you get the proper exposure at the shutter speed that you need now I’ve been using the free well all day eight pack kit which has been awesome it includes an ND 4 8 and 16 as well as a circular polarizing filter and then on top of that it also has ND 8 16 32 and 64 and polarized versions so this will let you tackle essentially any lighting situations that you’re gonna run into I’ll put some links in the description to this kit as well as a few other filters like a light pollution filter for night shooting and a long exposure filter that really blocks out the light that’s coming into the action and lets you shoot images with very long shutter speeds now one other areas where these are helpful is when you want to drag your shutter for a better time-lapse video and if you have any questions about that just put them in the comment section and I’ll answer them or do a follow-up tutorial finally I did some slow motion with it and it was really cool to be able to get up to 240 frames per second which none of my other cameras can do as expected it performs better in situations where there’s plenty of light but since I’m
mostly shooting outside that was great moving to still images you can get 12 megapixel images but it’s not something that I did a ton of I usually have my iPhone with me and I’d rather use that for photography if I’m not using a real camera [Music] I want to talk about a few things that I think DJI can improve on with the action first a quarter twenty on the bottom would mean that I can use it without the housing and an additional mount although it may be challenging to build that right into the battery next it would be great if HDR mode would be stabilized with Rocksteady and finally the fact that you can’t connect this to an external microphone is a bummer for me I would definitely use this as a super portable vlogging kit if I could use something like the rode videomicro but as of now I’m not willing to use the built-in microphone all right so this pretty much sums up my initial impressions of the DJI Osmo action I’m gonna say that after using it for a few weeks I’m pretty happy with the results I’m definitely keeping it and it’s gonna be something that I take with me on the road I’m happy with the image quality and the stabilization it’s very user friendly waterproof without the case and what ultimately sold me on it was the front screen I’m very interested in knowing what you think based on what you’ve seen so far is this a device that you would consider and then why or why not I really hope my first impressions video of the Osmo action was helpful if it was please let me know by leaving a comment giving this video a thumbs up and if you haven’t yet join the community by hitting the subscribe and notification buttons you can also find me on Instagram Twitter and Facebook at tech gear talk and you know what I always say buy it nice or buy it twice good luck and see you soon
