Hey guys! What’s up? I’m gonna. Do a video on focal length and the options that you have with DJI. So, starting from the bottom, you got the Phantom 3 or phantom 4 is the same focal length at 20 millimeter we’ve got the Phantom 4 professional, which is 24 millimeter.

We have the Maverick which is 28 millimeter. We have the inspire that has the x3 camera, which is 20 millimeter, which is the same as this: the x3 little white one or you can get the x5 gimble or the raw or the inspire 2, but they all use the same lenses in focal lengths.

So those ones are going to be 12 millimeter, 15 millimeter, 24 millimeter and 45 millimeter. So I’m gonna take a whole bunch of shots on all the different cameras and stuff like that, and then we can compare them.

You guys can see what the different focal lengths look like. Okay, so, first of all, what is focal length focal length is how sumed in the lenses, essentially the lower mm or millimeter the wider, the lens, the higher the millimeter, the tighter or more zoomed in the lenses.

When it’s wider, it will make things appear farther away than they really are just like that scene from Jurassic Park must go faster. The higher the millimeter number, the more zoomed in the images, and it brings you closer to your subject.

It also compresses your image as in making your foreground and your background look closer together. Okay, here’s, a series of videos that I filmed using multiple focal lengths to give you an idea of how each one looks with the drone okay.

So now that you have an idea of what different focal lengths do to your image, let’s. Talk about what options are available on drones. Typically, on a drone, I shoot between a 16 to 35 millimeter, but sometimes I’ll shoot up to a hundred millimeter lens, depending on what focal length you choose will have a huge impact on the look and feel of the shots as well.

A phantom 3 and phantom 4 and inspire X, 3 cameras all have the same 20 millimeter lens. That’s pretty wide. The Phantom 4 Pro has a 24 millimeter and the Mavic has a 28 millimeter lens. These focal lengths are fixed.

So that means that you’re not able to zoom in or out, and you’re stuck with that focal length, but they’ll work for about 80 to 90 percent of all the work that you need to do. One of the advantages of the platform like the inspire is that you can use interchangeable lenses to get vastly different focal lengths having longer focal lengths or higher millimeter lenses feels more cinematic.

In my opinion, and it’s, something that you don’t see every day, also full size, helicopters and movies. Typically, we use it’s, just a lot more epic, most of the time [ Music ] on the inspire x5, x5 r or the inspired 2 x5 s cameras.

I recommend these lenses now. One thing to keep in mind: the x5 sensors have a crop factor of 2.3, so, for example, our first lens i recommend, is the olympus 12 millimeter, which you times that by 2.

3 becomes twenty seven point: six millimeters on the Micro Four Thirds sensor. If you’re shooting at 4k next lens, I recommend is the Olympus or DJI 15 millimeter lens, which becomes thirty four point: five millimeters, the Olympus 25 millimeter, which becomes fifty seven point: five millimeters and the Olympus.

Forty five millimeter, which becomes a hundred and three point five millimeters check out these quick comparisons, to see the differences between those lenses. Okay, so now you know what the different focal length options are now the question is: when should you use them? Okay, so we’re gonna start with a wider focal length, such as 16 to 24 millimeter lenses.

I like to use these for real estate work flying around buildings. I also like to use this for filming landscape. It’s just so much easier to capture the area and to see more of the landscape. Okay. So the next option is about 28 millimeter to 35 millimeter.

This is similar to the 16, a 24 millimeter. I felt this is a good in-between range. It’s good for landscapes, but it’s, also a great focal length for flying around an object. It gives you really good parallax effect as well, here’s, an example of what I shot in Iceland.

This is about 35 millimeter focal length okay, so the next length is about 35 to 60 millimetres. This is a really awesome focal length if you’re tracking alongside a moving person or an object, it’s wide enough that you can keep the object in frame, but it’s tight enough.

That is gonna give you really good motion blur and have really good parallax effect. It’s, definitely hard to keep the subject and frame the shot, still much more cinematic and much more epic, [, Music, ].

Okay, the next focal length we’re going to talk about is 62 just over a hundred millimeters. This focal length is incredibly long and gives you an insane amount of parallax, but it can be very difficult to keep your subject room frame.

If you can keep your subject in frame, then it can be really quite amazing. Here’s, an example where I film the Tetons from miles away using the olympus 45 millimeter lens, which isn’t equivalent to 103.

5 millimeter. As you can see, the depth is pretty amazing when you shoot it a long focal length. You really need to be farther away from your subject and also fly much faster okay. So now I’m, going to show you guys, seven different focal lengths wrapping around this tower, to show you an example of how parallax looks compared to what focal lengths you’re using [, Music, ], so notice.

The effect using the wide focal length or a smaller number in millimeter or a longer focal length or higher number in millimeter. I should also point out that you can get a similar effect as a narrow focal length, but using a wide angle lens.

If you move the drone closer to the subject like this, so here’s, two shots of the same exact drone. One is about 70 feet away, and the other is about 30 feet away notice. How different their parallax looks when you move in close there’s, also a really cool trick.

You can use to simulate a tighter focal length. It’s called a post digital zoom. You basically enlarge your video and your editing. Software here’s, the comparison between the same shot before and then after we zoomed in okay, here’s, another pro tip, if you shoot in 4k, then the Edit in a 1080p timeline.

You can zoom in up to four times and not lose any quality. If you shoot in 4k and edit in 4k, then you’ll start to lose quality as you zoom in. But if you just do it a little bit that no one should notice, another tip is to do a post, zoom or push.

This is where you use keyframes in your editing software to zoom in on the shot to simulate a camera zoom. This can give you a really amazing feeling to your shots and can add to the cinematic pill. Hey.

Thank you guys so much for watching this video on focal length. I hope it really helps you guys out before you go. I ‘ Ve got a free training series for search and rescue right. Here I ‘ Ve also got a free webinar on how to start your drone business so check that out and we ‘

Ll, see you guys later [ Music, ]