You have to try pretty hard to actually crash the thing

The Phantom 4 Pro is an upgrade from Phantom 4. You can now fly a full 31 miles per hour while obstacle avoidance is engaged. Previously, if you wanted to go that fast, you had to put the drone into Sport Mode, which disengaged crash avoidance. It has rear sensors now, too, so you have obstacle avoidance even when you’re backing up. A new return-to-home feature retraces the path it originally took (more or less), so there’s even less chance of it crashing if you lose you connection with the remote (plus, obstacle avoidance will be engaged). It’s debuting infrared sensors, too, and even more angles—basically, you now have to try pretty hard to actually crash the thing. All of this, plus the flight time has been bumped to a generous 30 minutes.

Extra obstacle sensors are nothing to sneeze at, but the real reason to opt for the Phantom 4 Pro over the standard Phantom 4 is the camera.The Phantom 4 Pro uses an all-new video camera with a 1-inch image sensor, 4K video recording at up to 60p, and 20MP Raw and JPG image capture. The 1-inch sensor size has proven to be a very capable format in compact cameras like the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 III.

The reason is simple—surface area. The 1-inch sensor is about four times the size of the more typical 1/2.3-inch class used by most drones (including the Phantom 3 series and the Phantom 4), flagship smartphones, and point-and-shoot cameras. You can pack more pixels onto the sensor—20MP has been the standard for some time—while maintaining solid image and video quality at higher ISOs, and capturing more detail in images than you can with a smaller imager.

In addition to the larger sensor, the camera adds aperture control and a mechanical shutter. Its field of view (24mm equivalent) is slightly narrower than the 20mm lens used by the Phantom 4, but you aren’t stuck shooting at f/2.8 all the time—you can stop down all the way to f/11. This reduces to reach for neutral density filters to balance shutter speed and frame rate to maintain proper shutter angles and exposure.

The mechanical shutter is there to eliminate the rolling shutter effect—if you do get a propeller in a shot, it won’t show the jello-like effect that you get with many cameras that use electronic shutters for video capture. You still have to contend with the Phantom’s propellers creating a flickering effect when approaching the sun at a certain angle—slowing down your shutter speed can help to ameliorate the effect.

Video recording options are vast. If you want to capture the highest resolution 4K DCI, typically used for cinema productions due to its 2:1 aspect ratio, video can be shot at 24, 25, or 30fps. If you shoot at UHD, 4K in a 16:9 format, you can choose from 24, 25, 30, or 60fps. All 4K footage is compressed at a 100Mbps bit rate, using H.264 compression. You can also use the more modern, efficient H.265 codec, but you’ll lose the ability to record 4K footage at 60fps if you do.

The Phantom 4 Pro blows all other drone cameras out of the water (including the GoPro Hero 5). It has much higher resolution photos, less compression when shooting video and higher frame rates.If you haven’t received your Mavic Pro, you could get Phantom 4 Pro soon.

 

 

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