DRONE TEST
DJI’s latest mini drone weighs less than 249g but it punches above its weight in the image-quality stakes. Angela Nicholson has been at the control sticks
Propellers The four propellers are user-replaceable, but a small screwdriver is required to attach each blade.
Vertical or horizontal shooting The camera can be rotated through 90° for vertical shooting.
The DJI Mini 4 Pro is the newest addition to DJI’s line-up of drones weighing less than 250g. This weight is crucial as it means you only need to get an Operator ID from the CAA to fly the Mini 4 Pro in the UK. Once that’s sorted, provided that you have the landowner’s permissions to take-off and land, you are okay to fly it almost anywhere except for designated flight restriction zones such as airports, military zones, and prisons.
Predictably, ensuring the Mini 4 Pro stays under the 249g mark inclusive of its battery, propellers, and a microSD card, gives it a rather fragile feel. But like its predecessor, the Mini 3 Pro, you still get a 1/1.3-inch type sensor in the camera. Again like the Mini 3 Pro, the standard Intelligent Flight Battery allows up to 34 minutes of flying.
A beefier Intelligent Flight Battery Plus boosts that to 45 minutes but pushes the weight above 250g, so it’s not sold in the UK.
Camera capabilities
DJI appears to have used the same camera hardware in the Mini 4 Pro as is in the Mini 3 Pro. Consequently, its sensor has a quad-Bayer design. Essentially, this means every pixel is split into four sub-units that can report individually or collectively, so there’s a choice of shooting 12MP or 48MP images in DNG raw and JPEG format.
The lens is also the same 24mm-equivalent optic with a fixed aperture of f/1.7. There’s a familiar sensitivity range of ISO 100-6400 in Normal mode and a shutter speed range of 1/16,000 to 2 sec when shooting 12MP images, or 1/8000 to 2 sec when shooting 48MP images.
What is new, however, is a switch to Normal, 10-bit HLG (for compatible TVs) and 10-bit D-Log M video profiles instead of Normal and D-Cinelike. In addition, the frame rate in SlowMo mode for 4K (3840 x 2160) video is boosted from 60fps to 100fps. In regular video mode, the maximum frame rate for 4K video is 60fps.
Interestingly, DJI has ditched the 2.7K video option that’s available with the Mini 3 Pro. But Full HD recording is still possible up to 60fps (200fps in SlowMo mode).
Automated features
Like most of DJI’s other recent drones, the Mini 4 Pro incorporates nifty features like Mastershots, FocusTrack, and QuickShots that simplify capt
