Drone Tip 1: Adjust Gain and Expo Settings

Now, I figured there was no better topic to kick off this series with than the Gain and Expo settings. This is my first tip to share with you, and it’s probably one of the most important things I could tell someone flying a drone: adjust the settings within the Gain and Expo section. It really does affect how the drone flies. If you think it’s too fast or too slow, you can go in there and tweak every parameter to change how the drone yaws, moves, and how the gimbal pitches up and down. You can completely alter the feel of your drone to make it smoother and more cinematic or faster and more responsive.

This tip teeters on the edge of being something quick I can tell you to do—go change your Gain and Expo settings—but it also requires a little more in-depth explanation due to all the different settings in that section. I’ve actually made a full video on my Gain and Expo settings, where I walk through what all the options mean. I’ll leave that link in the top corner and in the description. For this first tip, I urge you to adjust those Gain and Expo settings. I couldn’t think of a better way to start this series than with this key advice: change the way your drone flies.

Drone Tip 2: Set Signal Lost Action Properly

This next tip is all about flight safety, and I think it’s something often overlooked by people flying for fun or work. It comes down to what happens when the connection between your drone and controller is lost. So, my second tip is to make sure your Signal Lost Action is set properly before every flight.

To give you an idea of where this is in the settings—since I think a lot of people overlook it—open the live view in the Fly application, press the three dots in the top right corner, and under the Safety section (the first menu), scroll to the bottom. Tap on Advanced Safety Settings, and under Signal Lost, ensure it’s set to Return to Home, Descend, or Hover.

I always tell people that Return to Home is the way to go. If your drone is, say, 1,000 feet away and you lose connection, you don’t want it to just hover there—you want it to fly back to you and land safely so you can figure out what went wrong. But if you’re flying indoors, you’ll probably want to switch to Land or Hover, because you don’t want the drone trying to return home inside and hitting the ceiling. Instead, you want it to land or hover in place so you can grab it wherever it’s flying.

Here’s a funny story: One day, I was flying inside a massive warehouse under construction for work. The next day, I went to take photos of an office building for sale but didn’t change my Signal Lost Action, which was set to Land. As I flew up and over some trees, the drone lost signal and landed right in the parking lot. I was wondering why it wasn’t returning home, then remembered I hadn’t adjusted the setting. I had to drive around to get it—thankfully, it was a Saturday, and the parking lot was empty. That could’ve been avoided if I’d checked my Signal Lost Action beforehand.

Drone Tip 3: Use Auto Exposure Bracketing for Photos

My next tip is for those of you who want to take still images with your drone. Whether you prefer photos over video or you’re a dual threat doing both, if you’re taking photographs, make sure you always use the Auto Exposure Bracket function in the shooting modes. When you press the shutter button, your drone’s camera will take multiple photos at different exposure levels of the same frame, which has lots of benefits.

For example, I can leave my drone’s camera on automatic exposure mode so I don’t have to worry about it. Think about everything involved in flying a drone—it’s way more complicated than using a camera on the ground. You’ve got to fly the drone, handle airspace safety, watch for manned aircraft, fly safely, check battery levels, ensure you have enough power to return home, and frame your shot properly. With so much to manage, the last thing I want to do is adjust shutter speed or ISO. I’d rather let the camera do the work and pick the best exposure from the bracketed shots when I’m at my computer.

Plus, screens on controllers or phones can be too dim or bright to judge exposure accurately. Sure, I could use the exposure value or histogram, but I find that when I try to nail the exposure perfectly, I’m usually off due to factors like the sun, colors, and screen brightness. I’d rather have five images to choose from in a controlled environment at my office. Often, when I photograph something bright from the ground, even with bracketing, the initial image is off, so I use a darker one. Overall, bracketing makes editing easier and gives you better-looking photos.

Drone Tip 4: Fly from Your Car in Cold Weather

This next tip is something I’ve done since I started flying drones, and I’ve used it a lot recently because of the cold weather here in Philadelphia: fly from your car. There’s nothing better than reaching over to your passenger seat, grabbing your drone, lowering your window, taking off from your hand, rolling the window up, and sitting in the warmth.

It’s almost impossible to get a good Drone Video or a smooth shot on the sticks when your hands are freezing or you’re wearing bulky gloves. The car is best for me because I can control the climate, plug in my controller for nearly infinite power, and see the screen better. I mentioned earlier how sunlight makes exposure hard to judge—well, in the car, I can see the screen clearly. Plus, I’ve got a good visual line of sight out the windows.

If you can’t get your car close enough to where you’re flying, I’d also suggest investing in fingerless gloves. I’ve got a pair with magnets that fold over to cover my fingers like mittens, but when I fly, I can expose my fingers for precise control on the sticks. That’s been a game-changer this season. I’ve seen people use pouches around their waist for the controller, which could work too, but your body will still get cold without enough layers or gear. For me, the car is the best spot to fly my drone.

Drone Tip 5: Use Squarespace for Your Drone Business

Moving on, our fifth tip comes courtesy of this video’s sponsor, Squarespace. As you know, Squarespace has been a great sponsor of the channel for the past couple of years, and I truly feel I couldn’t run my business without them. I wanted to take you through the back end of my website to show you how I’ve set it up.

What’s great is that with Squarespace, I started with a template and customized it exactly how I wanted. I’ve got a homepage, an about page, a contact page, and I list all the services I offer as an aerial photographer and videographer. It’s a one-stop shop for anyone who wants to hire me—they can see what I’m about, contact me, and check my work to see if I’m a good fit.

Recently, I added a print section to my Squarespace site to sell prints of shots I’ve taken in Philadelphia—like images from the Eagles’ Super Bowl parade and cool color splash photos of city landmarks. This has been a great extra revenue stream, letting me sell my work. Squarespace also offers business tools like invoicing, so I can manage everything in one place—sell prints, share info, invoice clients—without needing another service. Big thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this video and helping me showcase my work online for over five years.

Drone Tip 6: Bring Enough Batteries and Portable Power

Tip number six is all about power. You want to ensure you have enough battery power to fly as long as you need. Drones are pretty power-hungry, so I always say four batteries are the sweet spot: three for the charging hub and one in the drone. It’s handy for travel and gives you enough juice for a good amount of flying during the day.

But if you’re away from an outlet with no extra power, you’re stuck with those four batteries. That’s why I bring portable power. I’ve got two Anker batteries in my backpack. One’s a powerhouse with 27,650 mAh, featuring one USB-A port and two USB-C ports, with 250 watts of output. I can charge multiple drone batteries at full speed or even my 16-inch MacBook Pro fully once. It’s great for extra flying or charging devices like controllers if they’re low.

The second battery is smaller, with less capacity and power, but it has two built-in USB-C cables—one extends like a ripcord, and the other doubles as a handle. It also has a USB-A and USB-C port on the side. It’s super convenient—I can grab it and go without extra cables. I keep it in my sweatshirt pocket to charge my controller while flying. Both batteries are awesome, and I’d say always have backup power for your drones and other devices you bring.

Drone Tip 7: Pack Extra Propellers

In the same vein as bringing extra batteries—drone or portable—I’d also recommend bringing extra propellers. My next tip is to pack as many propellers as you can fit in your backpack’s small pockets.

I’ve been on jobs 2 to 3 hours from home, crashed my drone with no major damage, but nicked a propeller and couldn’t fly because it broke. If I’d brought spares, I could’ve swapped it out and kept going. This raises a bigger point: if you’re doing this for work, maybe carry a second drone—I do. But if you’re traveling with just a backpack and one drone, propellers are a common failure point. Without extras, if one breaks, you’re grounded—a silly reason to miss out on aerial shots. So, pack extra propellers—they’re vital.

Drone Tip 8: Use Grid Lines and Center Point for Framing

To me, the key to a good photo or video clip is proper framing. I take pride in angling my photos and videos so everything is lined up perfectly and symmetrically, making the frame pleasing—whether it’s a skyline, building, moving train, or boat. It has to look good to be enjoyable to watch or view.

To line everything up perfectly, turn on your Center Point and grid lines on your controller. In the Fly app, tap the three dots in the top right, go to the Camera section, and scroll down. Enable the Center Point and grid lines. You can add a diagonal line too, but I find it annoying and obstructive, so I stick with the grid and Center Point. This ensures I frame shots perfectly and create great-looking images every time.

Drone Tip 9: Use Vision Assist for Safety

For our 9th tip: use Vision Assist. I’m bookending this video with two of the most important tips I can offer drone pilots. First was adjusting Gain and Expo settings, and now Vision Assist—one of the best features DJI has added to their drones.

I’ve made videos about Vision Assist before, diving deeper into it for different drones. In short, it’s a pop-up that lets you see through the drone’s obstacle avoidance cameras. As I move side to side, it shows what’s in the direction I’m flying. It’s great because if I’m moving laterally and can’t see ahead through the main camera, I get a preview via Vision Assist.

Flying older drones without it feels like I’m blind. During an orbit shot, if I can’t see to the side, I worry about hitting something and cut my shot short to check. Vision Assist is a game-changer. For more info, I’ll link my full videos in the top corner and description.

Wrapping Up The Drone Tips

That wraps up our first tips video! I want to continue this drone tips series, building a playlist of tips to help you get better at flying your drone, taking photos and videos, and growing your business—we’ll dive into that more in future episodes. Thanks for watching, and I’ll talk to you later. Peace!

Note: Tip 10: is watch more of my videos and keep reading DroneXL. 😉

The Dock 2 featured a smaller form factor and dramatically simplified the experience. A brand-new drone, the Matrice 3D and 3TD, was developed with fixed arms that sat high above the drone to ensure a seamless dock landing experience with no moving parts necessary. It would just slot itself into place and begin charging from the inductive plate on the bottom. After that massive redesign, DJI has found a winning formula as the DJI Dock 3 builds upon what they’ve learned with the Dock 2, making it a more robust system that can operate in colder winters, hotter summers, and windier conditions.

Design and Features of Dock 3

You can tell right away that the design of the Dock 3 is similar, with a slightly larger form factor at 55 kg compared to the 34 kg of the Dock 2. The drone that goes inside, the Matrice 4D, has a similar-style airframe but is also larger to fit the bigger dock and features a payload that resembles the Matrice 4T. The actual maximum takeoff weight has a slight variance, with the M3D allowing for up to 1.61 kg and the M4D allowing for up to 2.05 kg. The differences between the Dock 2 and Dock 3 show just how robust DJI has made this new system, with a wider range of operating temperatures from -30°C to +50°C, a better ingress protection rating for the dock at IP56, and the ability to land in higher wind speeds at 12 m/s.

Performance Enhancements

Faster charging times and improved electronic components make this a more reliable dock that can be used in more scenarios. The Matrice 4D and 4T, on the other hand, are some of the smartest drones DJI has made, with highly capable payloads, new autonomous flight modes, intelligent detection features, increased flight time, and an overall improved control base from DJI FlightHub 2, making data collection efficient and intuitive.

Regulatory Challenges

Now, here’s the thing: local rules and regulations are going to hinder your usage of the Dock 3 to its fullest potential—or really any drone-in-a-box system for that matter—unless you have the necessary safety components. If you have a drone docked on a construction site, on a rooftop, in an urban area around critical infrastructure, or in a completely remote area, chances are you’re going to want that drone to fly completely autonomously with no human interaction. You don’t want to have someone on site as a visual observer watching the drone. You might be in a position where the drone needs to fly over people on the ground. These are scenarios that are illegal without proper approvals from your local government.

Safety Solutions

This means that for the proper usage of a fully autonomous system like the Dock 3, you’ll need to have a parachute system on top of your drone, which AVSS has in development for the Matrice 4D and 4TD, both of which fit inside the Dock 3, just like the AVSS parachute design for the previous drones used in the Dock 2. The parachute for the M4D for the DJI Dock 3 sits on top of the drone and interfaces with the firmware through the PSDK port. This allows it to communicate with the drone to immediately stop the motors in the event of an aircraft failure, which is a vital part of the process. Without the flight termination system, the spinning motors could sever the line holding the parachute. For users in the USA and Canada, AVSS’s parachute will enable flight over people and will be a category drone for those in Europe. The AVSS parachute will also enable C5 and C6 compliance with MOC 2512 and MOC 2511. Furthermore, AVSS will be offering a standalone C6 FTS for STS-02 standard scenarios, which enables BVLOS operations.

Practical Integration

What’s great about the design of the parachute recovery system and the standalone FTS is how it sits on top of the drone and can stay indefinitely mounted to the Matrice 4D or 4T. It really becomes a part of the system and won’t need to be constantly removed and reinstalled unless you need to transport or service the drone.

Use Cases and Compliance

Let’s think about the use cases of the Dock 3 and, really, a drone-in-a-box solution in general. For me, I would love to leave this mounted at a construction site to provide constant aerial photos and videos of the progression of the job to my client. To efficiently accomplish this, I would set an autonomous mission to be completed on a routine basis without me being on site or controlling the drone. Therefore, it would be a must that I have an AVSS parachute to comply with my local government’s rules and regulations. Utility companies that want to monitor their infrastructure could keep the Dock 3 in some of the most remote areas with as harsh conditions as you can imagine, thanks to the improvements made to the Dock 3. But guess what? They also need an AVSS parachute to comply with laws. Law enforcement agencies that are looking to plant docks around their city, town, or county for dispatching to incidents will also need this parachute if they plan on flying out of line of sight and above people.

So, I think you get it by now. If you want god take full advantage of the Dock 3 to place this in a remote area to fly out of line of sight or over people, you need to make sure that the drone inside has an AVSS parachute on it so that you stay compliant and fly safely.

thanks for watching this video and I’ll see you in the next one. Peace!

Overview of Similarities

Both the Mini 4 Pro and the Flip weigh under 250 grams, even with the Flip’s built-in propeller cages. This light weight makes them regulation-friendly in many Countries, allowing for easier and less restricted flying. When unfolded for flight, both drones have the same general footprint, and when folded for travel, they use the same transmission system to maintain a strong signal both close by and at longer distances.

Both models offer access to the same remote controllers—the RC-N3 and RC2 (which features a built-in screen). Additionally, flight parameters such as speed are identical between the two, despite the Flip’s propeller cages that might typically hinder performance. Even the camera systems are nearly the same: they both shoot photos and videos with identical resolutions, frame rates, and shooting options.

The only notable difference is that the Mini 4 Pro’s hardware allows the camera to rotate vertically, making it possible to capture portrait photos and videos without a digital crop.

Pricing and Package Options

One of the most significant differences between these drones is the price. While the base option for the Flip is the cheapest, it does not include a remote controller, meaning you’d be limited to using automated flight modes or your smartphone. When comparing packages that include remote controllers, the Flip is about $300 less expensive than the Mini 4 Pro. This price difference gives you the flexibility to either save money or invest the extra funds in additional batteries and accessories.

Safety and Flight Features

Built-In Propeller Cages

A primary advantage of the Flip is its built-in propeller cages. These cages not only make the drone safer to fly around people, but they also protect it during minor crashes. This safety feature makes the Flip an attractive option for beginners and even children who are just learning to fly drones.

The cages are slim, fold neatly for travel, and do not significantly compromise the drone’s performance. Even with the cages, the Flip can reach top speeds in both normal and sport modes, making it an excellent option for dynamic video shooting.

Automated Flight Modes

Another standout feature of the Flip is its automated flight capabilities. The drone can launch right from your hand autonomously without a remote controller by using a built-in button on its side. This button allows you to cycle through different flight modes such as quick shots and follow functions. The chosen flight mode is displayed on a front screen just under the infrared sensor for visual confirmation.

For example, when using the follow mode, the drone identifies you as the subject, begins tracking automatically, and, when signaled, lands slowly in your palm. The built-in propeller cages are particularly beneficial here, as they protect your fingers during these hand launches and landings.

Obstacle Avoidance and Camera Capabilities

Advanced Obstacle Avoidance on the Mini 4 Pro

Despite the Flip’s advantages, the Mini 4 Pro offers two significant features that set it apart. First, it is equipped with omnidirectional obstacle avoidance sensors. These high-resolution, wide-angle sensors are positioned all around the drone, enabling it to detect obstacles from every direction—front, sides, above, and behind. This comprehensive obstacle detection allows the Mini 4 Pro to avoid crashes by identifying potential hazards before they become an issue.

In contrast, the Flip has only a single infrared sensor pointing forward. This sensor provides basic obstacle detection but only covers what is directly in front of the drone. In situations where obstacles are coming from the side or behind, the Flip relies on its propeller cages to mitigate damage rather than actively avoiding the obstacle.

Enhanced Camera Flexibility

The second key advantage of the Mini 4 Pro is its sophisticated gimbal design. This design allows the camera to rotate vertically for true portrait-mode shooting—ideal for creators focused on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok. While both drones offer excellent photo and video quality, the ability to capture vertical content without a digital crop can be a game changer for content creators.

Battery Life and Real-World Flight Time

Flight time is a crucial aspect of any drone, and here the differences become apparent. The Flip advertises a 31-minute flight time, which is impressive for a sub-250g drone with a compact battery that also supports the added weight of propeller cages. However, in real-world conditions, the Flip typically achieves between 20 to 22 minutes of flight time. The added drag from the propeller cages likely causes the battery to drain a bit faster.

The Mini 4 Pro offers a standard battery option that keeps the drone under 250 grams, along with a Plus battery option that pushes it over this weight limit. It is important to note that comparing the Mini 4 Pro’s Plus battery with the Flip’s single battery option isn’t entirely fair. When using the smaller battery, however, the Mini 4 Pro still tends to outperform the Flip in terms of flight time. For those who prioritize longer flight durations, this becomes a significant factor.

Performance and Handling

Both drones have similar speed and wind resistance specifications on paper. However, actual performance can differ due to their design differences. The Mini 4 Pro, without the extra drag of propeller cages, is slightly better in windy conditions and offers a more agile flight experience. In contrast, the Flip’s propeller cages act as buffers, slightly degrading its performance by picking up more wind during flight. For users who enjoy manual control and desire the best performance possible, this edge might be an important consideration.

Final Thoughts and Personal Recommendation

In summary, both the Mini 4 Pro and the Flip are remarkably similar in many ways, yet they cater to different needs:

• The Flip is ideal for beginners, children, or anyone prioritizing safety and automated flight features. Its built-in propeller cages make it safer to fly around people, and the automated hand-launch and landing capabilities provide an easy and secure flying experience. The lower price point is also attractive, especially for those new to drone flying.
• The Mini 4 Pro is geared toward more experienced drone enthusiasts who enjoy manual control and demand advanced features. Its omnidirectional obstacle avoidance system and rotatable gimbal for true portrait shooting provide a more comprehensive, high-tech flying experience. Even though it is more expensive, these enhancements make it the preferred option for those who want maximum performance and versatility.

Personally, I would choose the DJI Mini 4 Pro. I love flying manually and appreciate the advanced tech and flexibility it offers—especially the enhanced obstacle avoidance and superior gimbal capabilities. However, if safety is your top priority or you’re new to flying drones, the DJI Flip might be the best option for you.

Which drone do you think is right for you: the Mini 4 Pro or the Flip? Let me know your thoughts in the comments. Thank you for reading, and as always, happy flying!

Let me start by saying that I absolutely hate videos and paid courses about business that promise big returns as long as you purchase what they’re selling or watch the entire thing. In reality, your success will heavily depend on how much time you put in, your skill level, and how you handle relationships with your clients. These specific examples, as well as other parameters of running a business, I unfortunately can’t teach you. These are skills I’ve learned over the past eight years of having my own business servicing clients across the country. Being a business owner, no matter what you do, can be extremely difficult and time-consuming, but it’s also very rewarding working and providing for yourself. With that said, something I can teach you are the services you can offer to establish a client base for your drone business.

Business Strategy Overview

My goal with my company is to offer a wide range of services to different industries so that I can maximize my profits, make as many connections as possible, fill up my schedule, and diversify my income to weather any storm. The services covered in this video are geared towards repeatable actions that you can perform routinely to create a steady income stream. While one-off jobs will come your way, and you can entertain them if your time allows, developing relationships with clients who will give you consistent work and find benefits in your services is the best way to create a long-lasting business.

Preliminary Requirements

Before beginning to offer your services, three preliminary steps must be accomplished:

1. Get your FAA Part 107 commercial drone license
2. Get insurance coverage on your equipment and liability insurance for incidentals
3. Have your drone equipment ready

I hesitated to discuss drones and equipment because we could go down a huge rabbit hole deciding which drone is best for which job and service. As I go through the different jobs you can offer as a drone service provider, I’ll briefly touch on what drone I think is best. However, if you’ve got great skill at flying drones and a good eye for photography and videography, the drone you use probably doesn’t matter all that much. You could use any modern drone from the past couple of years and get great photos and videos that your clients will love when they see the deliverables.

Construction Industry Services

Construction is probably my favorite industry to service. I grew up with my dad being an architect and builder, so I’ve been on job sites for as long as I can remember. It’s wonderful that I can now take my love of technology and service this industry I’ve grown up around.

Construction companies use drone photography and videography for:

• Tracking job progression
• Sharing project status with management, investors, and clients who aren’t on site
• Using images for marketing to secure more work

My favorite type of construction to capture is road work. These projects are intricate and can be seen well from the air. Consider a big highway job like an interchange or bridge being repaired or built – you simply wouldn’t be able to capture the job properly from the ground, and hiring a helicopter would be too expensive. This makes drone operators perfect for these projects.

Breaking Into Construction Work

Road construction does have some hurdles, as these jobs might typically go to bid, and flying around highways can be challenging. However, it’s worth pursuing because:

• Budgets are large
• Project timeframes are usually long
• Drone operators are necessary for large-scale projects

Beyond roadways, consider other construction projects that benefit from drone images:

• Large buildings
• Parking garages
• Golf courses
• Shopping centers
• Residential projects

Building Client Relationships

The biggest hurdle is finding construction companies that want to hire you for drone services. Word of mouth through individuals and social media is the biggest driving force. Consider a large project with multiple subcontractors:

• Demolition companies
• Concrete companies
• Land development companies
• Window companies

When you do one project for one company, whether it’s photos or a cool video, others will see it and want access to that video or might hire you to create something special for themselves. There’s tremendous opportunity within the construction industry to work for different companies. Even if you don’t work for the concrete company on a large building project, you might get photos and videos for the land development company because they had a hand in making it happen.

Pricing and Equipment

I typically charge $500 or higher for a site visit, depending on the project size. A small home versus a highway bridge are different scopes of work with different challenges. Creating a contract is crucial, as deliverables and visit frequency will determine your rate.

For equipment, any recent DJI drone with a good camera is sufficient, including:

• DJI Mini 3 or 4
• DJI Mavic Air 2 or Air 3
• DJI Mavic 2 Pro or DJI Mavic 3

Construction sites are dusty and things break, so I prefer using less expensive equipment to minimize repair costs. The DJI Air 3S is my go-to option because it’s relatively inexpensive, has a great camera, great flight time, and is wickedly fast to get around big job sites efficiently.

Real Estate Services

Real estate fills a good portion of my calendar, as it’s the industry where my name has spread the most. I service agents in the Main Line Philadelphia and South Jersey areas, photographing:

• Big farms in the country
• Mega mansions in the main line
• Row homes and condos in the city
• Small homes that make up big neighborhoods

The primary purpose of these aerial images is to sell the property. Drones offer the benefit of showing:

• Large pieces of land for sale
• Proximity to local attractions
• Better angles of homes on hills

I actually made a full guide to real estate aerial photography that gives you a breakdown of the important shots you should capture on every property visit.

Considerations for Real Estate Photography

Drone shots aren’t needed for every home that hits the market. Some properties might look less desirable from the air due to:

• Neighbors with old-looking homes
• Vacant properties with buildings needing demolition
• Water treatment facilities
• Power lines or train tracks causing distraction
• Highway proximity

For example, I recently dealt with a property that bordered a loud highway. While I wanted to show the entire acre plot, I needed to avoid emphasizing the highway proximity, as that might discourage potential buyers from viewing the property.

Building Real Estate Relationships

Real estate agents will be your main type of client, and it works differently than construction industry relationships. Instead of dealing with corporate entities, marketing teams, or site superintendents, you’re dealing with personal relationships with individual agents. However, getting business follows the same principle – word of mouth is huge. When you do great work for one agent, they’ll praise you in their office, at meetings, and to agent friends, leading to more calls for your services.

Pricing and Equipment Structure

Real estate is a volume business with lower per-shoot prices. My aerial photo packages start at $150 per property, adjusting upward based on scope. For instance, photographing a large farm with multiple acres requires more photos, meaning more deliverables and time on site.

For equipment, I recommend the same drones as construction, considering the budget-to-value ratio. Does it make sense to use a $3,000 drone for a $150 job? My go-to option for real estate shoots is the Air 3S for its price-to-performance-to-camera ratio.

Expanding Services

You want to offer a well-rounded service package so clients can come to you for all their photography and videography needs. Don’t limit yourself to just Drone Photos and videos, potentially forcing clients to shop around for other photographers and possibly losing them altogether if they find value in a one-stop solution.

For example, while $150 for drone photos might seem low, consider the additional services you can offer during the same shoot:

• Interior photos
• Floor plans
• Property videos

This comprehensive approach significantly increases per-job revenue.

Stockpile Measurement Services

This is probably my favorite type of service to offer because it’s a complete no-brainer – something my clients absolutely need. Without this service, they couldn’t run their business as smoothly or at all.

Using Drone Technology, you can measure material on the ground to determine volume in piles of:

• Topsoil
• Mulch
• Rock
• Sand

These piles are extremely valuable – sold between companies, transported by trucks, combined to make different materials. With all these logistics, tracking total amounts can be challenging.

Process and Technology

The measurement process, while sounding complex, couldn’t be easier:

1. Fly the drone to capture photos (either through pre-planned autonomous missions or timed photos around the pile)
2. Use software like DroneDeploy to process data into 2D maps and 3D models
3. Use built-in tools to determine height, area, and volume

Business Model

I work with land developers and material providers to:

• Visit sites weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly
• Create digital inventory logs
• Track material movement
• Ensure regulatory compliance (some townships have height restrictions)
• Verify quantities at new purchase sites

For example, if a client is considering purchasing excess dirt from a new construction site, I can measure it to verify the claimed 10,000 cubic yards before purchase.

Like real estate, I price for volume so clients feel comfortable using services frequently:

• Flat rate for the trip and first pile
• Additional charges per pile measured
• Rates vary based on site size and number of piles

Equipment Requirements

This service requires either:

• Older DJI drones
• Newer Enterprise drones with SDK support for automated flight planning
• Any drone for manual photo capture (software can stitch images from any drone)

General Inspection Services

Your drone isn’t just a sophisticated aircraft with a high-end camera for artsy photographs – it’s a tool that can serve as an eye in the sky for hard-to-reach areas. General inspections can include:

• Land
• Roofs
• Buildings
• Roads
• Solar farms
• Bridges

Business Approach

Important note: Building inspectors, land surveyors, and insurance adjusters carry special licenses and training. While you might be in one of those fields, as a drone company, your specialty is flying and photography/videography – and you have your own special license for that.

I find it best to partner with:

• Architecture firms
• Engineering companies
• Inspection firms

This way, everyone stays in their lane – you fly and photograph, they analyze.

Project Examples

Past projects include:

• Giant Center arena roof in Hershey
• Mann Music Center gutter inspection in Philadelphia
• Hospitals
• Churches
• Condemned buildings
• Roadways

Advanced Services such as Thermal Inspection Services

You can offer thermal inspection services to find underlying damage on roofs or outer facades. While you need to be a licensed thermographer to analyze these images, my business model involves being the drone operator and turning images over to experts for analysis.

I prefer this approach across all inspection work because I’m not responsible for recommendations – my job ends when I deliver the photos.

Pricing and Equipment

This service is perhaps the most difficult to price due to varying job nature. Consider:

• Hourly rates
• Half-day/full-day rates
• Per-structure pricing
• Per-side rates for large buildings

Equipment recommendations:

• Higher-end drone with high megapixel count for detail retention
• Newer drone with 640 thermal sensor for thermal work
• Good omnidirectional obstacle avoidance for tight spaces

Event Services

The events category is perhaps the broadest, including:

• Weddings
• Corporate events
• Car meetups
• Outdoor gatherings

Notable Projects

Recent memorable projects include:

• Mini Cooper group ride from Albuquerque to Seattle with 300 cars
• Battleship New Jersey‘s departure and return to Philadelphia for repairs
• Ferrari showcase event at a previously photographed property
• Local events:
• Farmers markets
• Parades
• Farm festivals
• Tailgates

Any outdoor event with good turnout can benefit from drone photography and videography.

Service Structure and Pricing

Pricing varies based on deliverables:

• Raw footage delivery to another editing team
• Complete photo and video package
• Integration with ground-level photography
• Full event documentation

Offering comprehensive services makes you more valuable to event organizers who prefer working with a single vendor for all their photo and video needs.

Conclusion

These five main service areas offer diverse opportunities for drone business growth. While I can’t teach you the intangible skills of business relationships and time management, these services provide a foundation for building a successful drone business. Remember, your success depends on dedication, skill development, and client relationship management.

If you have any questions about this video or how you make money with your drone, feel free to reach out or leave a comment below.

Understanding the Controversy

Here’s the controversy though: DJI would actually take the authority of limiting your drone through software if it deemed that you were in an area where you needed more approval to fly. So they could limit the height that you could fly your drone to, or they could completely ground your drone if you’re in one of their restricted zones.

On one hand, this is great for someone who is brand new to flying drones. If you just picked up your first drone from Best Buy and try to fly it near an Airport or a place that you shouldn’t, then it will immediately stop you from doing so.

Some out there might think this is a pain, but it really is good for the Drone Industry. So there aren’t drones flying close to airports, around important government buildings, and other critical infrastructure areas. Doing so could make drones such a nuisance that more rules and restrictions are put on their use.

On the other hand, for commercial drone operators out there who are keen on airspace rules, it proved to be a real pain because getting approval to fly became a two-step process. First, you’d have to go to the FAA and get approval, and then submit that to DJI for them to unlock their geofencing directly on your drone.

Real-World Experience

That may have seemed simple enough to do, but it was such a headache to deal with. I’ve done some work down at the stadium complex for the sports teams in Philadelphia, and this whole area conveniently fits in a zero grid because of its proximity to the Philly International Airport. Once I received the approval waiver from the FAA, who was really the only entity that I should be needing to speak to, I’d then have to go through the whole unlock process with DJI, which would take up time spent on site; I’d have to import the unlock to my remote and pray that it works.

I remember being sick to my stomach showing up at jobs where I knew I’d have to fly within one of DJI’s restricted zones, just hoping everything would go off without a hitch and I didn’t have to spend hours trying to unlock my drone, inevitably making me look bad in front of the person that I’m trying to do work for. Now, even though I would do my due diligence, I would contact the FAA and get my approvals. I would submit that paperwork to DJI for the unlock. There were so many issues that could go wrong at the time of trying to unlock the drone, whether there’s a poor internet connection and I can’t import my license, or if there was just a miscommunication between DJI and me. It always caused so many issues, and for that reason, I am so happy that these geo zones are completely gone.

How to Update Your Drone

Now, if you want these changes to take effect, you’ll have to update the Fly Safe database on your drone. This can be done right within the Fly app by going to the profile section from the main home screen, then select settings and then select check for Fly Safe database updates.

The drone you install is now completely unlocked from all geofencing zones. Moving forward, to give you a quick comparison of what these zones look like before and after the update, I went down to the Philadelphia Airport, which is in a red zone, meaning I would need to submit an unlock request with proper approvals to DJI to take off. Right on the main flight screen, it says “Restricted Zone” in the top left corner, and when I try to prime the motors, it immediately tells me that I’m in a geozone and would need further authorization to get my drone off the ground.

After doing the FlySafe update, and restarting my drone, things look way different in this same spot. The “Restricted Zone” prompt has now been replaced with language that says “Takeoff Permitted.” Upon looking at the map, there’s now no difference in color for different zones with flight restrictions or altitude limits. Everything is in orange to showcase where controlled airspace might be. This means that now, when I spin up the propellers, a quick prompt displays on the screen to warn me that a geozone might be nearby. However, the propellers on my drone spin up immediately, and if I wasn’t in my car, I’d be able to ignore this popup and take off.

To give you a quick side-by-side comparison before and after the most recent fly safe update: We used to have a bunch of different colors on the map right within the fly app so that we could see areas that are restricted, areas that have limits in altitude. We could see warning zones, enhanced warning zones, a bunch of different areas so that we could know what we were up against when flying our drone. And now, within the app, we just see enhanced warning zones. Everywhere that is the only color we see is a bunch of orange.

Mixed Feelings

I have no idea where I stand on this because, on one hand, I think that it’s not up to DJI to Police people on where they should and shouldn’t fly. They’re just the manufacturer of their drone; they should leave it to, say, the FAA here in the United States to police people, educate people, and help them understand where they should and shouldn’t fly their drone. They also said in a blog post, DJI said that it was up to Remote ID to kind of take over from here. They said that with remote ID now in place, this is the way that we should be enforcing the airspace, and I believe them.

ID has kind of had a lackluster rollout; it’s not the best technology. The best way to help people understand where they shouldn’t fly is with DJI’s Fly Safe system built right into the drone so that you don’t have to download another app and try to use something to detect a drone. No, DJI had it right from the beginning with their Fly Safe system, and I think that it did a really good job at mitigating drone incidents in areas where there shouldn’t be drone incidents. I mean, look at how many times we see people flying drones around NFL stadiums. There are people that do a lot of stupid things with their drones, and now that everything is completely unlocked, it leaves me a little bit worried.

Final Thoughts

So I think that for the drone industry as a whole, that is my description right there: I’m worried. I’m worried about what’s going to happen. I’m worried to read a headline that a drone was flying above an international airport and there was some sort of collision because now with DJI having such a large market share, all of their drones are completely unlocked and it could be a huge issue. But selfishly, for myself, man, I am so happy these are gone, and now it takes one huge hurdle, one big step out of my workflow. So if I’m flying in an area where I need approval, I can go to the FAA, I can get my approval and not have to worry about going to DJI and then getting their approval. That was just such a cumbersome and useless step.

But when you look at it, and as I say, it was useless, it really was great to have implemented for people that are brand new to drones to help them understand where they shouldn’t fly. So where am I? I’m up in the air. I think that while DJI again shouldn’t be policing people, I think that it also helped the industry out as a whole. I think that only time will tell.

So let me know your thoughts on this whole situation down in the comments below. Thank you for watching this video and as always, I’ll talk to you later.

Peace.

To get technical here, the Flip actually uses propeller cages which fully enclose the props. This means that while the drone is flying, it’s basically impossible to get nicked by them, making it a very safe drone. The DJI Avata 1, Avata 2, and Neo have a variation of propeller guards that are built into the actual body of the drone, making it all one piece. The Avatas are classified as cine whoops and the Neo is a tiny whoop, and to fit these classifications, they need this design. That’s why seeing this design wasn’t out of the ordinary on these drones—it was just fitting in with what everyone is used to.

The DJI Flip, on the other hand, takes an optional accessory that I would say not many people use for general flying and makes it a permanent fixture for any and all flights. As a fun throwback for those of you that have been flying drones for a long time, you might remember the clip-on cages for the Mavic Pro, but the key word there is “clip-on”—they could be added for scenarios where you needed them and taken off to fly freely without them.

Understanding the Design Choice

Now we still haven’t answered the why—why did DJI make this drone when in reality it’s just a niche version of the Mini 4 Pro? If you think about it, both of those drones are so similar: they’re the same size, the same weight, they use the same controller, the same transmission system, they’ve got the same camera. Both of them are so similar, but the biggest difference is that the Flip has these built-in propeller cages.

Being a niche version of the DJI Mini 4 Pro, I think its different design helps it excel in a few different areas. The first of which is close proximity flight around people and objects. This drone does have the smart features of the Neo built-in, so you can take it off from your hand with the push of a button, which is super safe because the propellers are enclosed—they won’t nick up your hands. And also, if you’re just flying around other people trying to get photos and videos, you can rest assured it’s not going to cause any damage to people or property because the propellers are fully enclosed.

A Perfect Drone for Children

Now this brings me into the second point, which is that this is going to be a great drone for young children. If you have a son or daughter that wants to get into flying drones, this is going to be the one to get because it still offers great specs—it’s fast, it’s nimble, it has a good camera on it, it has a great transmission system, but the propellers are fully enclosed meaning that they won’t injure themselves.

Now the final thing personally that I’m interested in the most probably is the tracking on this drone. The tracking features are going to be great because of the fully enclosed propellers. It doesn’t mean that this drone is going to do a better job at keeping up with the subject you wanted to track, but it’s going to do a better job at bouncing off of objects that it might run into because of these propeller guards.

The Weight Factor

You might wonder why DJI didn’t just make propeller guards or cages available for the Mini 4 Pro, but don’t forget the magic weight number of 250g. The Mini 4 Pro is under 250g, which allows people in certain Countries to fly under different rules, and by adding these propeller guards, you’ll push the weight over, thus making it heavier than 250g. The benefit of the Flip is that it stays under 250g with these propeller cages on.

That there is the reason this drone exists—to have a drone with built-in propeller guards that stays small and lightweight. We see rules and regulations here in the United States being relaxed so that it’s much easier to get a waiver to fly over people as long as you have a drone that is lightweight and has propeller guards on it, so the Flip here really does fit the bill well with everything already built in and ready to go out of the box.

Pros and Cons of Propeller Guards

With that said, as a whole, propeller guards, no matter what drone they’re attached to, have a list of pros and cons which I want to briefly highlight. By now you can probably guess what they are as they’re in line with what we’ve already discussed. Propeller guards allow for safe flight around people, they allow you to do things with your drone from a regulation standpoint that you couldn’t do without them, you can launch and land from your hand without slicing your fingers, and if you bump into a wall it won’t be a devastating crash where the drone tumbles down to the ground.

All of that is great, but that extra weight comes with downsides like a decreased flight time, worse overall aircraft performance from a handling and speed standpoint, the extra plastic can make a louder noise, and it overall makes the drone more clunky. But those cons don’t seem to apply to the Flip as much as they would to another drone that uses these propeller guards as an extra add-on accessory, especially considering the Flip uses these propeller cages which fully enclose the propeller, which usually are the most restrictive type.

Because the drone has these built in, the design and performance was specifically made to fly with them always attached, therefore having propeller guards goes from being a negative to an added positive. For example, I can easily get up to a good speed in the normal mode despite these windy conditions we’ve had here in the Philly area—I was able to rotate up and around the art museum with no sweat at all.

Design and Physical Features

So with all the talk about propeller guards and cages out of the way, why don’t we finally talk about the actual drone itself now, shall we? The Flip is a very different looking drone from DJI’s other offerings for the main reason that we have been talking about for this entire video. When unfolded, it looks like a regular drone, but the way it folds together for travel is actually genius. Instead of folding close up to the body, the legs fold under the drone, making it compact and easy to throw in your bag. This isn’t much bigger than the Mini 4 Pro folded up, and there’s no need for any extra brace to hold the propellers in place as the cages around the propellers keep them from getting snagged on anything for easy storing in your bag.

For a quick walk around, you have your power button on one side with the LEDs to display battery life, and on the other is the auto launch button beside the USB-C port and the SD card slot. The drone here does not have omnidirectional obstacle avoidance, so the only obstacle avoidance is forwards and downwards with two vision positioning sensors underneath and an infrared sensor in front. If this looks or sounds familiar, then you might be thinking of the DJI Spark that shares a very similar design with that forward-facing infrared sensor through the big plastic piece on the front.

The Flip is really just like any other drone we’d get from DJI. We’ve got the three-axis mechanical gimbal on the front to take stable photos and videos, we’ve got the battery that goes in the back, of course we have the same four propeller design—really the biggest difference is just the fact that it has these propeller guards.

Performance

Now with the idea of the propeller guards still in our mind, how the drone performs is definitely the topic of conversation here. As with the size, this drone surely has its limitations. For instance, the flight time is one of the main things that has been slightly decreased from the Mini 4 Pro. With most GPS drones from DJI having an advertised flight time of over 43 minutes, the 31-minute advertised flight time is probably the most drastic difference, but it’s not only the propeller guards that are affecting this. To account for the extra weight of those propeller cages, the overall capacity of the battery has been decreased, which is also why the flight time isn’t up to par with those other drones. It sure is better though than the real-world flight time of 12 minutes I’ve been getting with the much smaller Neo.

The speed, on the other hand, is unchanged with a top speed in sport mode of 16 m/s or 36 mph. This is the same exact speed as the Mini 4 Pro, which is impressive considering the extra drag added by the propeller cages. Despite the top speed on paper being the same, I do find that the wind has a greater impact on the drone’s flight, so you won’t be able to reach the top speed as easily.

Overall in my time actually flying the Flip, I didn’t feel like the propeller guards were holding me back as much as I expected them to. When I got the drone up out and away from me, I was able to zip around from spot to spot, get the photos and videos that I needed, and I felt like the speed was right on par with what I expected. Now sure, in strong gusts of wind I did feel like the drone needed to fight a little bit harder to get through, but all in all I’m super happy with the performance of this drone considering it has built-in propeller cages.

There’s really no good way that I could perfectly describe the performance of this drone unless I handed you the controller and let you fly it for yourself, but I think sharing screen recordings does give you a good understanding to look at the speed and see how the drone performs when moving through space. I still think that the best clip I shared is the one from earlier going up and around the art museum on a windy day—the drone was able to move side to side, increase its altitude and pitch the gimbal down with no issues whatsoever despite high winds.

Camera Quality

Now the camera on this drone is where it really starts to shine, as this is the same exact camera as the one on the Mini 4 Pro. That means the photos and videos are highly detailed with good dynamic range, leading to some of the best aerial photos and videos you can capture on a drone of this size. DJI doesn’t skimp when it comes to the cameras on its drones, and the specs of the Flip alone show that. The photos max out at 48 megapixels so you can capture high resolution still images, and the video is right in line with most cameras today that can capture 4K video at up to 60 frames per second. There are even some pro video tools sprinkled in here like the ability to capture 10-bit D-Log footage and a sensor that has a dual native ISO.

Getting to the example photos and videos, these are images that I’ve been used to seeing for the past year or so, as remember this is basically the Mini 4 Pro camera, and that is a drone that I’ve used quite extensively. There are a lot of drone cameras to compare within DJI’s lineup, some of which are far better than what’s on the Mini 4 Pro and now the Flip. To me though, the differences are amplified by the on-paper specs. If I were to show you a bunch of images between all the drones that make up DJI’s current lineup, you’d probably have a hard time discerning the difference between them by just looking at them with no context. This is a big plus for the Flip as it’s an inexpensive drone that can hang with the others, giving you more than usable photos and videos you can share.

The one thing I will say is the performance limits you in the shots that you can get with it, and I actually feel this way with the Mini 4 Pro as well because of its size. People often won’t correlate how the performance of a drone will impact the camera, but it’s true—if I have a smaller drone, I can’t get fast sweeping shots of a city skyline or chase a fast moving subject like a boat or a car. I think I’m just getting picky here though, as the camera quality is great and I think the examples that I shared here speak for themselves. If you’re interested, feel free to check out the link in the description to download some sample photos and videos for yourselves.

Smart Features

Now I mentioned the Neo earlier in this video, which is one of DJI’s newest, smallest, and least expensive drones, but despite all of that, it actually introduced some features that has really changed the landscape of DJI’s offerings. If you’ve seen any of my videos on this drone, you know that it can be flown without a remote, so you can cycle through the different automated modes using the button on the drone, and once you have the desired flight mode selected, you can long press and the drone will take off out of your hand and do its thing.

The same is true with the Flip, so it has a button on the side towards the back that allows you to cycle through these different modes. Once you’ve selected the one you want, like Active Track, then you long press and the drone will launch and begin its flight. This is really where the propeller guards come in handy as you can take off and land from your hand without the fear of nicking up your fingers. TRUST me, I have done it a lot—I hand launch and land my drone often because I’m usually on a dusty construction site, so I’ll go and catch the drone or take off from my hand, which has led to some cuts on my fingers. But with this drone, it actually feels so idiot-proof—like I can just kind of hold it out there, start the propellers, let it take off from my hand and catch it as well super easily.

Probably my favorite way to use this drone is with Active Track, simply because it has those propeller cages. Even though it doesn’t have omnidirectional obstacle avoidance, it has physical guards in place to protect the drone in the event of a crash. Depending on the impact, the drone might bump off and keep moving, or if it crashes, the damage will be mitigated as it has the protection built right in.

I say this as if crashing is a common occurrence, although the drone actually does a great job at staying in space and tracking a subject without crashing in the first place. Just like the Neo, the drone tracks the movement of the subject it’s following to better navigate through space. It figures if you as the subject were able to make it through an area, then it too should be fine by following the same path. Don’t forget this drone does have a forward-facing infrared sensor to detect some obstacles—it’s just not like some of DJI’s more advanced drones that have the obstacle avoidance sensors in every direction to detect obstacles no matter which way it’s flying.

Flight Controls and Modes

Now it’s also worth noting that there’s a lot of different ways to fly the Flip just like the Neo, making it a very versatile drone that gives you many different options. To quickly run through them: you can have it fly standalone with no phone or remote connected, so it just follows you or performs an automated quick shot right from your hand. You can instead connect your phone with the Fly app to get better control and a live view from the camera—there’s even a set of virtual sticks if you want to push the drone around. But by far my favorite way to fly this drone is with either of the remotes with physical sticks for the best control. You can choose between the RCN3 that uses your phone as a screen or you can use the RC2 that has the built-in screen.

Both of these controllers operate over the O4 transmission system, so you’ll get a crazy amount of total range, but more importantly, it’s got a great signal for uninterrupted flight at distances under a few miles. A drop in frames or a black screen while flying is very rare to see.

Additional Features

Now as we get to the tail end of the video here, there are a few miscellaneous things that I want to cover, like the fact that the drone turns on when it’s unfolded. Now when you unfold the front two arms and the back left arm, the drone will stay off, but as soon as you unfold that back right arm, the drone then kicks on. Now this is a cool feature—it’s fairly neat, it does get the drone turned on faster so that you can get in the air a little bit more quick, but just know that you want to have your gimbal guard taken off of the camera before you unfold the drone.

This also goes for inserting a new battery, so if you land, turn the drone off and take the battery out, when a fresh one goes in, it’ll turn on immediately. So the drone gets on, gets warmed up, establishes its GPS connection so that you’re off to the races flying.

Now another thing that I really like about the Flip is the four-way battery charger, so you can put four batteries on one charging hub to get them charged for your next flight. Most recent drones from DJI are coming with three-way chargers so you can charge three batteries one at a time, but with this one here, you can actually charge two batteries at once if you have a high enough wattage output on the charger that you’re pulling from. So this is definitely one of my favorite charging hubs released by DJI for the fact that we’ve got four total slots and you can charge two at once.

Now the final thing I want to mention is that because this drone is fairly small, it does not have Remote ID built in, so you might want to go and get a Remote ID module for the drone. If you’re out of the United States then maybe this doesn’t apply to you, but just know that it doesn’t have Remote ID built in and you definitely want to plan for when you go and fly this drone depending on where you live and what your intentions are.

Ground Camera Capability

Now the final thing that I want to mention, and this is kind of a little bit weird, is the fact that this drone can kind of be used as a ground camera. Now look, pretty much any drone can be held and used on the ground, but just the way that these propellers or these arms fold up, you could hold it down here on the bottom and actually use it as a fairly comfortable ground camera.

Now of course you’ve got to go and hold the controller so you can see what you’re shooting, or you want to pull your phone out and connect using the Fly app. So while this is a little bit clunky, it might be good in a pinch if you can only bring one camera, one drone, and the Flip is your option. I will say that I’m always a proponent of just buying the right gear for the right situation, so if I want to shoot anything on the ground, I’ll use my mirrorless camera, I’ll use my phone, I’ll use the Pocket 3, but hey, again if you’re in a pinch, you can always use this on the ground just like all the other drones, but this one just feels a little bit easier to use because of the way the propellers fold underneath.

Anyway guys, that’s all that I got for this video. Please let me know your thoughts down below on the Flip. You think it’s a good release? If you were to right now buy a drone, would you purchase the Mini 4 Pro or the Flip? Would love to hear the thoughts—leave them down below and as always, I’ll talk to you later, peace.

First look at the DJI Matrice 4T

We’re going to take our first look and first flight with the Matrice 4T, but man, it is cold out here, so I’m going to do it from my car. Remember, this is going to be our first look at this drone. I’m not aware of all the nuances, specs, and features. I was just told, “Hey, here’s a new drone, go fly it,” and here we are.

Let’s hover it here. As you guys saw, there was an insane-looking camera array on the front, so I want to just get a feel for what we have here. We have this wide-angle camera up at the top – it shows a 1.7 aperture, so it will let in a good amount of light and probably be good in low-light scenarios. I’m going to turn down the sound so it’s not crazy loud. It looks like we also have a zoom and an IR camera as well.

Let’s look over here – we’ll try to zoom in. We’ll press the zoom button, and now we have a nice 7x zoom. Let’s continue to push in – the zoom is very nice. 18x… how far can we go? 48x! This is some pretty good zoom here – 112x. So 112x zoom on that zoom camera. Of course, some of this seems to be digital zoom – there’s going to be a little bit of optical and a little bit of digital zoom, but I will tell you that was a good amount of zoom right there. You just notice it switched back over to the wide camera to bring us to 1x.

Now how about the IR? There’s the IR – it is nice and crisp. Let’s look down at the car. We’re going to see a little bit of heat from the vehicle, which will be right… oh, it’s right underneath us right there! The IR camera definitely is nice. Looks like we have some zoom here as well – we can zoom in with the infrared a pretty good amount. Man, that zooms in a lot further than some of the other drones! The focal length of the thermal camera definitely is a little bit tighter than some of the other drones, which is good. I think for what people are going to be using this drone for – inspections and Search and Rescue – a little bit of a tighter focal length for the thermal camera is good.

Let’s switch back over to the wide camera. Let’s talk about this controller for a second. This is kind of like a trimmed-down version of the DJI RC Plus. Again, I don’t know the exact specs on this controller, but it definitely resembles it from the design as well as some of the ports. I would say it’s just a little bit lighter. Let’s go and open up the back – you can still put in an extra battery in the back there if you want, that backup battery. You have some of the different ports we’re used to: USB-A and HDMI at the top, and at the bottom, we’ve got Micro SD and USB-C.

Test Flight of the DJI Matrice 4T

Okay, so let’s fly over to this construction site. The good thing about being out here is there’s absolutely nobody around. This parachute is still a prototype as well, so it’s not rated for flight over people yet. This here is a spot that we were actually filming at with this drone just above this construction site – this is a pretty cool-looking building. Let’s say if we wanted to look at some of the intricate details down here in the work area where all the trailers are. We’ll switch over to the zoom, we’ll punch in on the right side here. Nice! You can definitely see a good amount of detail here – this is 14x, this is 28x. So there’s a good amount of zoom here. Looks like the zoom camera also has an f/2.8 aperture up there in the top right.

Now look here on the left – we have the rangefinder, we have routes which is probably waypoints, we have AI smart track, and then probably cruise control here. Let’s jump back to the wide camera, we’ll zoom around, we’ll spin over here to the left. Let’s just press on AI and see what that does.

AI Features on the DJI Matrice 4T

Oh, look at that! It shows the amount of people, cars, and boats in a frame. Now it’s not perfect because this is a fairly wide angle, but it actually gives us a total count – that’s actually very impressive! Look, there actually are two people down there, that is crazy! So it looks at those two little figures down there and shows it as two people. That is so cool! Let’s punch in – let’s actually switch over to the zoom camera. Yeah, so it gives us a much better view. There it shows two cars and three people. I wonder where it thinks the third person is… four people now! That is a fairly cool feature. I’m not going to say that this is in its final form because I’m flying the drone before it even comes out. Wait – is it… I think it’s actually picking up the baby as a person! That is crazy! The AI feature looks really cool.

Let’s jump back to the wide camera. This does have what seems to be a rangefinder, which is cool. It has a laser rangefinder just like the H20 cameras would, or the H30 camera from DJI’s M300 series, the Matrice series. That’s pretty cool – we have a laser rangefinder, smart track is also awesome.

Let’s see, do we have a car driving anywhere? Smart track will be able to actually track onto a car and then move along with it – that’s a feature that’s also come over from other DJI drones. Let’s try to zoom in and see if we can do smart track on one of these vehicles way far out here. Look at this, it’s actually snowing just a little bit! So smart track, it’ll give us options to select – look at all the cars! Oh, that is… wait, there actually were a ton of cars over there. Wow, the AI feature actually got it right!

Let’s tap on that van. So tap on the van, it’s going to zoom in… oh, it just missed focus a little bit – there it goes. So the focusing seems to be a little bit of an issue, but there it goes – it’s picking up that subject, and I’ll tell you, it is very defined. Like, it has it wrapped right around that van. You can tell that SmartTrack has definitely been updated from previous drones. We actually have a car coming right underneath us right now. Let’s use smart track on that. We’ll press smart track, we will tap on… let’s see… the vehicle there. Cool! And look at that – it zooms right in and it’s going to follow him.

So I am not touching the controls at all – the drone is actually spinning around and zooming in to keep him in the middle of the frame. This is not a new feature, it’s been in DJI’s other drones, but you can tell that it’s definitely been refined and the AI is very powerful. That’s awesome!

Okay, let’s jump out of the SmartTrack feature, we’ll go back from AI. Let’s see, let’s just get a feel for the actual speed of the drone now. We’ll go and hit wide. The flight time seems to be pretty good – we’ve got 55%. I think we took off with about 80%. Let’s see… it doesn’t show us our remaining flight time estimated, but I will say the flight time is pretty good from what I’ve seen so far.

All right, let’s go ahead and flip into sport mode – how fast can we get this drone up? 40 miles an hour… I would say it’s probably going to max out at like 45… 43, that’s pretty good! I wonder if there are some settings here. We’ll go into the settings, we’ll go to the… let’s see… parameters. Where would they be under? I know that you can choose like the gain and expo settings on the… on the… yeah, where are… let’s see… in sport mode – oh, we don’t even have the maximum speed turned up! So 33 m/s is the maximum speed in sport mode.

Let’s spin back around, give ourselves a little bit of room here. There is nobody down there, which is good. We’ll go ahead – there is a vehicle, so let’s actually go this way. We’ll push the drone over this empty parking lot. All right, let’s see it – sport mode! Let’s see how fast we can get this thing going. That thing is moving! 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46… cool! So about 46 miles an hour. Nice!

Awesome! Well hey, I have to say that for me just jumping into this drone, it definitely feels like a nice refined experience. The drone is fairly small itself – it’s a really nice combination of a small form factor and a powerful drone. This seems to be kind of like in between the M30 and the Mavic 3. So I wonder – like, are they going to do away with the Mavic 3 and M30 and just combine the drones and give us this one drone? I guess it kind of seems the way that we’re going here.

All right, so that wraps up our first look at the Matrice 4T here. Listen to that – it has such a low pitch, such a low hum. It’s definitely fairly quiet, quieter than DJI’s other drones, which is definitely a nice touch. So in my opinion, this seems to be a really good replacement for the Mavic 3 as well as the Matrice 30, but again, this was such a preliminary first look. I almost feel like this shouldn’t have even been a video, as I’m going to get my hands on this drone in the future and make much more in-depth content, but I figured if I had the opportunity to get an early look, I’d love to be able to show you guys what’s on the forefront of Enterprise Drone Technology from DJI, and this seems to be like a really good option.

Anyway, thank you guys so much for watching. Let me know your thoughts on the Matrice 4T down below, and as always, I’ll talk to you later.

Peace!

With that said, this review is going to be based on my experience using the 75mm lens on my DJi Inspire 3 to help you determine if this would be a good lens to add to your kit to help you achieve different shots you might not have been able to with DJI’s other available lenses. Also, this video is sponsored by Squarespace, but more from them later.

The First Impressions: 75mm on the DJI Inspire 3

So earlier this year when I started seeing the leaks for this lens, I started craving having a longer focal length than just 50mm on my Inspire 3. Once it became available, I picked one up almost immediately directly through DJI and was shocked at how fast it shipped and was delivered. I placed my order on Monday, September 9th – it shipped the same day and got to my house two days later on the 11th.

The reason I got this lens in the first place was for a video shoot with a local hospital where they wanted to capture their helicopter taking off and landing from the helipad of one of their newer hospitals. Being a higher production shoot, they of course wanted the best camera I could fly, so my Mavic 3 Pro wasn’t going to cut it. I knew that safety was going to be one of the most important things for this shoot. Staying as far away from the helicopter as I could to avoid any sort of incident was my biggest priority. I also thought that a tighter focal length would help focus on the helicopter, the pilot and medics, as well as the branding of the building. This specific hospital was recently acquired by this company, and the top of the building wasn’t all that much to look at as there were AC units and other commercial equipment.

I think my favorite thing to do is when I have an upcoming shoot, I try to justify buying gear that would be necessary for that shoot as if I can’t just use what I already own. And I’m sure everybody watching this video is guilty of the same thing – like hey, if I go out and if I buy this lens to do this shoot and I make enough money to pay this lens off and then some, the lens was technically free, right?

Look, I know that most people are here for images captured from the lens, so I’m going to give that to you right off the bat and then follow up with some miscellaneous things that I want to discuss about using the 75mm on the Inspire 3. While we look at these images though, why don’t I share with you some of my thoughts?

Performance and Image Quality

It’s no surprise that the images from this lens are insanely detailed and sharp. This is mostly thanks to the Zenmuse X9 just being a powerhouse of a camera. I can’t rave about the image quality enough, no matter which lens I’m using. I would love to shoot with this drone more if I could get over the general bulkiness that comes with it – carrying the gear, setting up, the massive file sizes. I’m unfortunately lazy and would rather just bring my Mavic 3 Pro on most jobs, but when the client calls for better image quality or if I’m out shooting on my own time and decide to break this drone out, I am so happy that I did. When I start editing the images, it’s seriously unmatched and has made me think about ditching my Sony A1 for the Ronin 4D plenty of times as my ground camera because it uses the same camera.

To get on topic here about the lens though, I think that 75mm is a very niche focal length when it comes to flying it on a drone. I’ve come to two major realizations in my time using such a tight focal length. The first is when getting up-close detail shots, controlling the drone and camera at the same time can be difficult as the tighter focal length will really exaggerate anytime that you mess up on the sticks. Trying to keep your frame steady regardless of how stable the Inspire 3 is and how rugged the gimbal on the Zenmuse X9 is can be a challenge. Dealing with wind, slight movements from the camera, and worrying about how flying the actual drone can lead to jumps in your footage that you’d prefer not to be there. These clips can be smoothed out after the fact using warp stabilizer as I’ll show you here in a few minutes, but I think using this lens in coordination with the dual operator setup, so having a dedicated camera operator, is probably going to be your best bet. Having someone dedicated to controlling your frame is super helpful on higher intensity shoots like the one that I had for the hospital, even though I handled that job on my own.

Where I think that you’ll get away with flying as a solo operator when using this lens is when you’re shooting a city skyline or if you’re just capturing landscapes, as there isn’t a bunch of things happening at once. If you’re instead filming a moving subject like a boat or a car, getting someone to operate the camera would be very helpful.

This brings us right to the second realization that I had when I was out filming the Philadelphia skyline with the 75mm lens. When you get these types of shots that are so far away, they just feel like they were done with a helicopter or they resemble those blimp shots of the stadiums before a football game. Like way back when, before drones were a thing, helicopters were used for all aerial photography and cinematography, and the lens of choice was usually a tighter focal length to capture subjects in greater detail while remaining a safe distance away. Now though, with a small unmanned aircraft, you can do things and fly in areas a helicopter couldn’t, which I think makes wider angle focal lengths a cool look from an aerial perspective.

Now look, I don’t think these far away compressed shots look bad – in fact, I am a huge fan of being able to take off outside of the city in a big park but still get close-up shots of the big buildings. And hey, there is no saying that you need to be far away when using this lens. It was really fun getting up close and personal capturing details of buildings up close with such a high-resolution camera.

Low-Light Performance

Now finally, I wanted to wait and share all of my low-light shots at the end because I can’t stop gushing over how well the sensor performs at night. Let’s be real – a drone’s best use case for flying at night is in a city or town where supplemental lighting is available. The f/1.8 aperture on this lens lets in a bit more light than the others, which have a minimum aperture of f/2.8. This lets you perfectly balance your exposure settings so you can keep your shutter at about 1/160th and you can leave your ISO at its second native value of 4,000.

The clips I’m sharing with you were captured in ProRes 422 HQ, and I’ve been adding noise reduction through Neat Video and Final Cut Pro to bring the noise levels down in these clips. Just know that you will need to do some sort of post-processing on this video – it’s not perfectly clean out of the camera, but it does clean up very nicely considering the high resolution image and the bit rate of the video that you’re shooting with this camera and lens combo.

I can pick up details at nighttime that I wouldn’t be able to see with any other drone. The little lights in the buildings get lost with the low-resolution cameras on other drones, but these low-light images from the X9 8K are insanely detailed. An example of this is the rotating Eagles logo on the Center – this is usually a graphic that is actually even difficult to see with your own eyes in person, let alone using a drone’s camera. From out here though, it’s perfectly visible with this lens and camera combo.

Now if you guys want, I’ll upload some sample images to the link down in the description. Have some patience though because they are 8K ProRes files, so it might take some time to get them downloaded. Using my website, you can select the exact clip that you want to download so you don’t have to spend time downloading everything through WeTransfer all at once.

Now coming off the topic of image quality and aperture, this is the first time that with a drone’s camera I’d worry about setting my focus point, as the depth of field is definitely evident when using a tighter focal length. For the longest time with a wide-angle lens, no matter which drone you used, your entire frame was usually in focus because what you’re shooting is so far away from the camera. This made it really easy to just tap on the middle of the screen to focus regardless of your aperture and then shoot. Now though, with this big full-frame sensor and the tight focal length of the 75mm lens, you can get some depth of field depending on what you’re shooting and how far away they are from the camera.

The only reason I bring this up is because when flying with this lens, you need to be a bit more careful about what you focus on so you don’t get home and see that all of your shots are soft in focus. With that said, shooting with this lens definitely comes with its challenges, as when I’m flying around, trying to use the live view is basically impossible. The focal length is way too tight for trying to navigate to your next shooting location or trying to fly the drone back home.

This is why the FPV camera is more helpful than ever for getting around or flying with a dedicated pilot and camera operator. I keep the FPV camera in the bottom corner when I’m flying solo, and I put the live view on the screen so I can keep my shot framed, but when I’m not shooting, I instantly swap to the FPV camera to be my main focus so I can get around without completely crashing the drone. The Vision Assist feature is also a lifesaver for when I’m moving side to side, backwards, or even forwards for that matter, so I can see all around the drone with these obstacle avoidance sensors so I know that I’m not going to run into anything.

I think I bring up this feature in almost every single one of my videos, but I have to say it’s been such a game-changer. No matter which lens or which drone I use, I usually fly solo without anybody to help operate the camera, so this tool or this feature gives me the ability to do that better and more safely.

Comparing the Inspire 3 and Mavic 3 Pro

Now before I get into what I’m going to touch on next, I just need to preface this by saying in no way am I saying that the Mavic 3 Pro’s camera is better than the Zenmuse X9 8K Air on the Inspire 3. What I’m simply saying is that I prefer some of the functionality within the Mavic 3 Pro’s camera in the way that you can switch between lenses.

For those that might not have the Mavic 3 Pro, it has three cameras built in with three different focal lengths. These are 24mm, 70mm, and 166mm. The big issue though is that as you go up in focal length, the sensor size on the camera decreases, so while the footage from the main 4/3 sensor looks beautiful with great dynamic range and detail, it gets worse as you go up to the 70mm and then it’s even worse up to the 166mm.

What I like about this is the convenience factor – right from my drone remote, I’m able to switch between focal lengths without having to land. I just press a button and shoot away. For example, this came in handy when I was flying down in Cape May and saw a big yacht coming into the inlet that I wanted to shoot. I was able to get a shot with the main camera to show the whole landscape and then flip to the 70mm for a closer tracking shot.

If I instead had the Inspire 3 in the air at that time, I would have been left to capture that boat with whatever lens I had on. I wouldn’t have had time to land the drone, swap lenses, and put it back in the air because at that time the boat would have passed by and been in the inlet already.

Now for me personally, boohoo, who cares – would have still been cool to grab some photos and videos of the boat regardless of what drone I was using. But if this was a commercial project for the client that, let’s say, is the manufacturer of the boat and we wanted to get all these different shots at different focal lengths, the Inspire 3 would be the drone to do it, but imagine how much time is spent trying to land the drone and swap the lenses. That’s more time on site and, in the case of this boat, more fuel burned.

Installation and Use

This is probably a good time to mention the mounting procedure for the 75mm lens, which is heavier than the other DL mount lenses, so it’ll require a counterweight. For installation, you just remove the back plate that came with the X9 8K Air and replace it with the plate that comes with the 75mm lens. You can leave this plate on no matter which lens you fly with as it still provides protection for the fan exhaust on the back so nothing gets sucked up inside of the camera causing damage.

With this plate in place, when you want to use the 75mm lens, you just have to clip the counterweight on the back of the camera and then attach the second weight to the vertical arm that holds the gimbal assembly. At first, I was worried that this might fall off during flight, but that quickly went away after messing with it because this is clamped on very well.

I have an embarrassing story to go along with this. You guys know in the beginning of the video I mentioned that I bought this lens for that shoot with the helicopter? Well, when I showed up, I realized I didn’t have any of the counterweights, which means I had to use this lens, and the footage was a shaky mess, which I would recommend you don’t do unless you absolutely have to because it could burn up the gimbal motors. Here is a raw shot from the camera, and as you can tell, it is a complete mess, but luckily when I slow down the footage and add warp stabilizer, it was completely usable. Being able to do this completely saved me on this day.

Now to follow up on what I was talking about earlier, kind of comparing the Mavic 3 Pro and the X9 8K Air – when you look at the image quality difference between the Mavic 3 Pro’s 70mm camera and the X9 8K Air with the 75mm camera, it’s completely night and day. I’m not going to be spending much time showing examples here because it’s kind of like comparing an action camera to a cinema camera, but the 70mm lens on the Mavic 3 Pro has always been soft in comparison to the X9.

It’s really clear that using the Mavic 3 Pro, despite its convenience, just wouldn’t even get you close to the image quality from the Inspire. There are different tools for the job, and while the 70mm camera on the Mavic 3 Pro isn’t unusable, you certainly will still see a massive benefit to using a camera like the X9 that allows you to swap between prime lenses.

Personally, I don’t think that either of the two systems we have right now work all that great. On one hand, you have multiple cameras built into one drone that sure gives you the convenience and functionality to switch between focal lengths just from the controller, but the image quality isn’t all that great between the different cameras. On the other hand, you have a camera with detachable prime lenses which sure gives you the absolute best image quality but functionality-wise, it’s a nightmare to deal with.

It’s not like a mirrorless camera where I can pull lenses out of a bag and switch it right there in my hands and continue to shoot. Instead, it’s a whole production – you’ve got to land, turn off the drone, swap the lenses, you’ve got to maybe adjust the counterweight, you’ve got to then turn the drone back on, allow it to establish its GPS connection, boot up, and then you’re back in the air, which is just an overall cumbersome process.

To me, I think we need one simple solution that is functional, convenient, and doesn’t compromise on image quality. The answer to this, and what I would love to see, is a camera option with an internal optical zoom that doesn’t impact image quality. For example, look at the Zenmuse H-line of cameras for the M350 – you get optical zoom mixed with digital zoom that is used more so for inspection, Search and Rescue, and other commercial operations.

These cameras aren’t built for high-fidelity image capture with a super high bit rate or crazy dynamic range for high-end productions. The zoom on them, however, is crazy – like flying from Manayunk zoomed all the way in with the H20T, I was able to clearly pick up the skyline that’s like 5 miles away. This of course was aided by digital zoom so the image is grainy, but it’s impressive nonetheless.

Final Thoughts and Future Wishlist

Now look, I don’t need that much zoom when I’m out doing my photography and videography for personal reasons or for my clients, but I would like to have some flexibility of optical zoom that doesn’t compromise on image quality, giving me the best of both worlds – the functionality to just switch my focal length or zoom in from my controller without having to land, but also gives me the high-fidelity image quality of the main sensor of the camera instead of switching to some secondary sensor that’s smaller just so I can zoom in further.

And guess what – the Mavic 2 Zoom already does this, and even though this camera is not really all that great (the sensor size is small), within this camera module within this lens housing you do have an optical zoom between 24mm and 48mm. I would love to have this same functionality in a drone that has a larger sensor and a constant aperture throughout. Whether it be f/2.8 or f/1.8, to me that doesn’t matter – I just overall would prioritize the functionality and the image quality.

I would love to be able to go anywhere between 24 and 50mm and have the same image quality throughout without having to jump around between cameras, without having to land and swap lenses. Give us one camera with optical zoom and all of our questions will be answered.

Anyway, thank you guys so much for watching. Let me know your thoughts on the 75mm lens down below and the thought of an optical zoom camera in the future because I would love that.

Anyway, thank you for watching and as always, I’ll talk to you later.

Peace.

That’s because there was never any real threat to begin with. This story was blown out of proportion from the start, gaining more attention than it deserved despite the lack of credible sources or evidence. Week after week, misinformation spread through social media and even major news outlets, fueled by members of our community and elected officials. Now, the topic has simply lost its appeal.

If you check Google Trends, you’ll see that searches for “New Jersey drones” peaked on December 14 but declined just as quickly. Similar search terms followed the same pattern—initial high interest, followed by complete evaporation once people caught on.

Lessons Learned

I uploaded my first video about the sightings on December 11, just before the peak in online interest. Since then, I’ve posted response videos and follow-ups as more information emerged. Here are the three key realizations I’ve made:

1. People will believe anything if it fits a narrative.

Whether the narrative is positive or negative, as long as it garners views, people will keep pushing it. In this case, videos showing random lights in the sky attracted thousands of views, with claims of UFO sightings over New Jersey. In reality, these were likely just military or commercial aircraft—nothing extraordinary.

2. No credible evidence was ever found.

No one discovered any spaceships or drones allegedly from another country. The only “evidence” was low-quality cell phone videos shared online.

3. No lasting damage to the Drone Industry.

Fortunately, this hysteria didn’t seem to cause long-term harm to the drone industry, which is a relief for those of us who work in it.

Debunking the Hysteria

Throughout my videos, I highlighted dozens of examples where people misidentified airplanes or helicopters as drones. In many cases, the errors were blatantly obvious.

Take Congressman Van Drew’s early comments, for instance. He claimed the drones were Iranian and launched from a “mothership” in the Atlantic Ocean, even as footage next to him showed commercial airliners flying between airports. Videos shared on platforms like X were also debunked by community notes, where experts provided logical explanations for the lights in the sky. Most sightings turned out to be everyday commercial or military aircraft.

I even appeared on NewsNation to share my perspective live. I reiterated that this entire story was fueled by mass hysteria. Now, as other sensational topics have emerged, the mysterious drone sightings have stopped. Weird, right?

The Current State of the Drone Industry

Now that the story has faded, the drone industry seems unaffected in the long term. While the hysteria created some short-term challenges, things are returning to normal for drone pilots.

For example, I’ve had the Police called on me multiple times while working in New Jersey. Homeowners see drones in the air and think they’ve “caught the guy” responsible for the statewide sightings. Luckily, once I show them my Part 107 certificate and explain my work, the situation is quickly resolved.

Another challenge has been the Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFRs) placed around New Jersey and New York. These restrictions, positioned near power distribution centers and other critical infrastructure, were meant to curb the hysteria. While they’ve caused issues for some drone pilots, they are set to expire soon. For instance, some TFRs will lift within one or two weeks, allowing airspace to reopen.

Looking Ahead

Now that the drone sighting hysteria has subsided, it seems like we can all move forward. The FAA’s involvement during the height of the story seemed more coincidental than impactful, but it did help calm some of the panic.

For most drone pilots, this episode has been a minor speed bump. Hopefully, we can get back to our work without unnecessary interference. If you’re a drone pilot and have experienced similar challenges during this time, feel free to share your stories.

Thanks for reading, and hopefully, this will be the last time I need to discuss this topic. As always, I’ll catch you in the next one!

Peace.

What I want to do in this video is formulate a better opinion about why you probably shouldn’t be worried about these lights flying through the night sky.

Now just to give you some quick background, as I did in my previous video so you don’t think I’m some random guy on the internet – I’m a drone pilot based here out of the Philadelphia area, so I’ve been asked non-stop about this topic. I primarily use drones for work, taking photos and videos for real estate agents and construction companies, but I also work with local Police departments helping them integrate Drone Technology into the tools that they use daily.

Okay so over the past few weeks, I’ve heard a lot of talk about the legality around flying drones, who’s allowed to fly them, where they can fly them, and what drone rules and regulations need to be followed. The first thing to know is that there are two different types of operators: a hobbyist or recreational drone pilot who just flies for fun, and a commercial drone operator who needs to take a 60-question test to get their Part 107 from the FAA. This license basically allows these operators to make money with their drone but doesn’t unlock the ability to fly larger drones like the ones that have been reported in the skies above New Jersey.

Now no matter if you’re a hobbyist or a commercial pilot, there’s still a similar set of rules that you need to follow. Some of these rules slightly vary between a hobbyist and commercial pilot, but things like following airspace rules, not flying out of your visual line of sight, and flying over people are the same.

A question I often get is “Can you fly your drone legally over somebody’s house or property without their permission?” to which I respond yes. Remember, the FAA controls the airspace in the United States, so as long as I’m following their rules, regulations, and guidelines, I can fly my drone over whatever I like. Think about it in terms of a manned aircraft like a plane or a helicopter – they don’t ask you for explicit permission to fly over your house, and when you see one, you’re like “oh yeah, there’s a plane passing over” because the FAA is controlling that airspace.

Now this same logic applies to drones even though it’s a little bit different because the drones are lower to the ground. I still don’t need to ask permission to fly over somebody’s house. Really what it comes down to is where I operate, take off, and land my drone from. I need to make sure that wherever I’m going to be standing, I’ve got permission to fly my drone from that spot – if it’s my own property, if it’s somebody that I’m working for, or maybe even if it’s a public piece of property.

Now there are larger drones out there that exceed the 55-pound weight limit the FAA has put into place, and if you want to fly one, you’ll need to get special approval from the FAA to do this. For example, I was out delivering supplies with a friend in Utah, and in order to fly this big drone to carry things, we needed special approval to do so. It’s not like flying one of these smaller drones that have a camera on them for photography or videography. These large drones are also much more difficult to come by – you can’t just drive down to Best Buy, pick one up, bring it home and start flying it. It’s usually something that needs to be ordered online or maybe a custom drone someone’s building like a prototype.

So really the point I’m trying to make is that with the claims made of these large SUV-sized drones flying through the sky, it’s not something that someone can easily get their hands on. Now when it comes to the FAA, unfortunately, they’re really not the best at policing drone pilots, as I could just go down to Best Buy, buy one of the smaller drones, bring it back home and without their approval just take off from my backyard and start flying my drone. So even though the FAA has put all these rules and regulations into place, I don’t think many people actually follow them because there’s really no enforcement.

What could these mystery drones be?

So right now everybody seems to think that these lights flying around at nighttime are a bunch of different things. There are so many crazy theories jumping around, but I’ve kind of narrowed it down into seven possible things these lights at nighttime could be.

• They could be a hobby drone pilot,
• They could be a commercial drone pilot,
• It could be a manned aircraft,
• It could be a military aircraft,
• It could be some sort of test or prototype aircraft,
• It could be an adversarial aircraft,
• Or it could be aliens.

And look, I think that out of the seven things I’ve listed there, the bottom two are probably the worst-case scenario while the other five are just kind of run-of-the-mill everyday scenarios.

Now look, is a hobby drone pilot a nuisance? Look, I’ve been there. I fly my drone for fun, I know how annoying somebody can be flying in the park, but it’s their right to have fun flying their drones. So I don’t think that would necessarily be anything bad if you saw somebody in your neighborhood just flying around at nighttime for fun. The cameras on these drones that are for hobbyists and for people just having fun usually aren’t the best, so if they’re flying at nighttime, they probably can’t see anything anyway.

A commercial drone pilot is somebody literally just trying to get their job done. I can’t tell you in the past couple of weeks how many times I’ve had somebody come up to me and think that I’m the person that is flying the drones at nighttime – like they think because I’m in their neighborhood and I’m doing work taking photos of a house for sale that I am the one flying the drones above the entire state of New Jersey.

So if it’s a commercial drone pilot, it’s literally somebody just trying to get their job done. A manned aircraft could be anything – it could be police, it could be Coast Guard, it could be a commercial airliner flying people from one Airport to another, it could be somebody just flying their airplane for fun. So when it comes down to manned aircraft, that is literally happening each and every single day between a bunch of different places. There are literally always manned aircraft flying over us, and really, a lot of these lights at nighttime that are captured seem to be these manned aircraft.

If it’s a military aircraft, depending on where you live, I mean honestly that’s not much of an issue either. There’s a lot of exercises being done, there’s military bases all over the country that are moving assets between one point to another, there’s tests being conducted. So just know that if it’s like a military aircraft flying above, it doesn’t mean war is imminent – military aircraft move around all of the time.

Now test and prototype aircraft are also kind of fun – this is kind of what I hope it is. I hope that it’s somebody or someone testing some sort of really cool technology at nighttime. I know a lot of people will immediately think that that is something that is bad, they’re like “oh, there’s this test prototype aircraft over my house, I’m not sure what it’s doing” but actually that’s kind of cool. Like if we can continue to push technology forward and if it means that somebody is flying an aircraft above your house at nighttime, which happens all the time, it’s probably something that’s actually for the good.

Now when it comes to adversarial aircraft, this is like one of those crazy theories going around that Iran has a mothership sitting off the east coast of the United States, they’re sending aircraft over to us, but let’s be real – if it was somebody trying to do something nefarious with their drone or with their aircraft, it likely isn’t going to have lights on it so they can do what they’re doing in secrecy. And also, like if they’re trying to collect data, they’re not going to fly at nighttime – usually cameras collect better data during the daytime anyway, so why would they be flying at nighttime with their lights on? That really just doesn’t make much sense to me.

And of course we get to our final point, which is aliens, which I don’t even want to really go in depth here. There are a lot of people thinking that it could be an alien invasion, it’s aliens visiting us, there’s UFO sightings dating way back into the 1900s. I mean look, this is a huge can of worms that I’m not going to open up here in this video. I do think that there is other life out in the universe – it’s kind of hard to believe that with how many stars and galaxies out there there’s not another form of life out there – but do they have the time and do they really care about coming to visit us? I’m not sure. So I’m going to leave the aliens thing for the experts to discuss down in the comments.

Latest updates on mystery drones

Now I think one of the best places to stay up to date with information on this topic is through X. It’s really great to see people posting videos online of their encounters with lights during the night sky. I myself have gone out, I’ve seen things at nighttime that literally just look like manned aircraft – it’s nothing that I see that’s out of the ordinary. It’s a plane flying up to New York, it’s a plane flying into the Philadelphia International Airport. I mean, we see air traffic during the daytime and at nighttime all of the time.

But there are people that are encountering things that are a little bit different that they’re posting onto X, and it’s great to have the Community Notes feature so that experts can come and add on a little note to the bottom to let other readers know that hey, while this person says it’s this, it’s actually this, and it’s great because some of these really crazy conspiracy theories are being completely debunked by people that just provide logical evidence.

Now the first general thing I want to cover here is the people not only just on X but across any news outlet that is sharing photos and videos of blatant airplanes and helicopters – like it is a Southwest airplane bringing people to Philadelphia International Airport and people are filming it thinking it’s a drone. And what’s my favorite is people on the news are literally calling themselves journalists and experts talking about these weird New Jersey drones, yet there is a full-on airplane that everybody sees every night flying above their house, and it’s something that really does just make me laugh because it’s a blatant airplane, it’s not a drone – we see it every single day.

Now the first specific example I want to share is what people are saying is a close-up of the New Jersey drones flying over the night skies when this just looks to be any normal quadcopter – like this is probably a commercial operator or a test or prototype drone hovering there doing nothing. Nobody can even tell where the drone is as it’s just a blank night sky – you can’t see anything in the foreground or the background and it also has the typical navigation lights of any drone. So to me this really isn’t anything special – again, it could just be anybody flying a drone literally anywhere.

Now this next video was sure to rile some people up as it showed one of these drones flying through the sky and actually firing down at the ground but was immediately debunked as a military training exercise from one of the bases here in Jersey. It’s actually McGuire Air Base, which is in the middle of New Jersey – some people will say that Central Jersey doesn’t exist but I’d say it’s in Central Jersey – and it was actually published ahead of time on their website to the public so that people would know what’s going on. But of course nobody did the due diligence, nobody did any sort of research to figure out what this might be, they just immediately assumed that this helicopter that was training was one of these drones flying through the sky.

Now this next example kind of goes hand in hand with what I mentioned in the beginning of this section where people are just pointing their phones up in the sky and recording any flashing light saying that it’s one of these drones when typically it’s a manned aircraft that we would see every single day no matter what day of the week it is. We see airplanes up in the sky and in this case it’s a military cargo aircraft – to be specific, it’s a C-17 landing at McGuire. These are airplanes that I see every day during the day and at nighttime, no matter what day it is, when I’m out like towards the Medford area doing work. So this is a normal sight in New Jersey because of the air traffic at McGuire – this is something that we see every day.

Another thing I’ve seen a lot of people post about is that these drones are spraying something down onto the ground when this video is clearly just a contrail that was made by the airplane as it was flying through the sky. So it’s just condensation that comes off of the plane – it’s basically a human-made cloud. This is not coming down to the ground, it’s actually streaking across the entire sky but it just looks like it’s coming down to the ground because it gets cut off at the top of the roof line. And as you can see, this person is just pointing his or her camera at any light that they can see up in the air and they think that each of these things are a drone when in fact all of them and most of them are probably just manned aircraft.

Now this next example appears to be digitally altered and this is the great thing about Community Notes – is that you can see when something is fake. And in this case this is actually a video that has been altered to make it look like the person filming is also shooting at the airplane. Again, this is fake, but I can’t help but imagine that there have been so many incidents over the past couple of weeks of people that haven’t filmed it but have actually taken fire upon these flashing lights into the sky, which is such a threat to everybody on the ground and everybody up in the sky as well. I mean, you don’t know what those flashing lights are – that could be a FedEx airplane delivering cargo, it could be a military aircraft, it could be a passenger airplane transporting people from one airport to another. So this is something that is going to give people bad ideas and even though it’s digitally altered, even though Community Notes came in and saved the day with this one, I assume that this is probably happening across the state every single night and it really is a shame. So please do not fire weapons at any aircraft – it is a federal offense and comes with a hefty fine as well as jail time.

Now up until this point all of the stuff that I’ve been sharing here and most of the videos that are posted online have been captured at nighttime – there doesn’t seem to be any daytime footage of these apparent drones flying around. But there is one good video someone’s posted of one of these drones up close in broad daylight but it’s just a regular manned aircraft that actually is being tested and manufactured here out of Philadelphia. This is a Leonardo AW609 – at first I thought it was just an Osprey but I’m glad Community Notes was here to give me the exact aircraft manufacturer as well as the type of airplane that it is. So even though people think that this is a drone, even though it does look a little bit different, this is quite literally just a prototype aircraft being tested out of Philadelphia that is set to be produced here in the city as well, which is pretty awesome for the local economy.

And now to end this video off on a funny note, this is a meme that I found from one of the aviation pages that I follow that is New Jersey’s guide to aircraft identification and it shows any and all aircraft being drones to people that live in New Jersey because apparently we don’t know what blinking lights look like up in the sky.

Now look, I don’t want to discredit anybody – I know that there’s a lot of stories and a lot of examples out there, there’s things that I’ve seen that I can’t explain like there’s videos of a bunch of clusters of lights, there’s videos of lights moving really fast, but let’s be real – we have seen so many of these apparent UFO or alien encounters for decades, things being classified by the governments, there’s been things that have been leaked in the past, right? This is nothing new. But what I don’t like is all this mass hysteria going around about blinking lights in the sky that are adversarial drones when in reality it’s just a Southwest flight flying people into Philly, right? Like I think that we’re right now over-amplifying all the lights up in the sky when we see these every single night – this is nothing that’s new.

So really I think that we should take what we see online with a grain of salt and make sure you’re doing your research before doing something stupid and say firing a weapon at a light in the sky when you have no idea what it is. Anyway guys, thank you so much for watching – I’d love to hear your thoughts on this situation. Please, please, please leave me a comment down below. Man, the comment section on my last video got unhinged so if you’re somebody that’s crazy and have a crazy conspiracy to share, please by all means leave it below – I’d love to read it.

And yeah, as always I’ll talk to you later, peace.

For those who don’t know me, I’m Billy Kyle, and I’ve spent the last eight years as an aerial photographer and videographer. Whether I’m documenting construction projects, capturing real estate visuals, or just grabbing some epic city views for my social media, I’ve seen pretty much everything when it comes to drones and public reactions to them.

Understanding Drone Lighting Requirements

Let’s break this down with some real-world perspective. The drone I use daily – a DJI Mavic 3 Pro – is pretty typical of what most pilots fly, whether they’re hobbyists or professionals. Here’s what we’re actually looking at when it comes to drone lighting:

• Two front navigation LEDs
• Two rear orientation lights
• A downward-facing auxiliary landing light
• An FAA-mandated anti-collision strobe visible from three statute miles

TRUST me, I know these lights inside and out – they’re literally my everyday work tools. And here’s the thing: they’re designed to be seen, not hidden.

The Nighttime Factor

Here’s what really gets me about these sightings – they’re all happening at night. As someone who’s had their fair share of Police calls and concerned citizen confrontations (seriously, I’ve lost count), I can tell you this timing is super important. Most of these “mysterious drone lights” are just commercial aircraft heading to nearby airports.

Think about it – if someone was really up to no good with a drone, why would they light it up like a Christmas tree? It just doesn’t make any sense. If you’re trying to be sneaky, you don’t advertise your presence with FAA-compliant lighting.

About Those Congressional Claims

Now, I’ve got to address Congressman Van Drew’s Fox News interview – and honestly, it’s pretty wild. He’s talking about Iranian motherships off the East Coast launching drone surveillance missions. But here’s what really got me: he actually called for these aircraft to be shot down. As someone who works in this industry every day, that’s not just wrong – it’s dangerous and potentially illegal.

Let’s Get Real About This

Here’s a pro tip from someone who deals with this stuff every day: download FlightRadar24 on your phone. Next time you see these “mysterious lights,” pull up the app and check what’s actually flying around up there. Nine times out of ten, you’re looking at a commercial flight just trying to get people home.

Look, I get it – I’m probably not the coolest person on the block because I fly drones for a living. Some people might think it’s weird, and that’s fine – I really don’t care what people think of me. But what I do care about is keeping our skies safe and maintaining the trust we’ve built in the Drone Industry.

Could there be some weird, unidentified drones out there? Sure, anything’s possible. But until we see some actual evidence, I’m going with the logical explanation: these are just regular aircraft doing their thing. And if there really were covert drones up there? Trust me – you wouldn’t be seeing their lights in the first place.

That’s my take on all this. Feel free to share your thoughts, but let’s keep it grounded in reality. Peace out!

DJI’s Secret Sauce: The Common Ground

Here’s something fascinating about DJI drones that most people don’t realize: they all fly surprisingly similar. Whether you’re handling their top-of-the-line Inspire 3 or the entry-level Mini 4K we’re talking about today, DJI’s “secret sauce” gives you that consistent experience. You get rock-solid GPS hold, super fluid controls, reliable image transmission, and trustworthy return-to-home features across the board.

But that’s where the similarities between these two drones end. The Mini 4K, which dropped in early 2024, is essentially a refreshed version of the Mini 2. Don’t let that fool you though – the technology is anything but outdated. Meanwhile, the Neo is this entirely different beast that feels more like a tiny whoop with some serious tricks up its sleeve.

Breaking Down the Price Tags

Let’s talk price, because that’s probably why you’re here. The Mini 4K lists at $299, but I’m seeing it discounted to $239 right now. The Neo might look cheaper at first glance, but here’s the catch – the base version doesn’t come with a controller. If you want the full Neo experience with goggles and everything, you’re looking at about $629, plus batteries. It’s not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison.

Flight Modes: Traditional vs. Triple Threat

Now, here’s where things get really interesting – the flight modes. The Mini 4K is your classic GPS drone. Three-axis gimbal, super smooth video, sharp photos – it’s exactly what most people think of when they imagine a drone. The Neo? It’s like DJI threw three different drones into a blender. You can have it track you automatically, fly it like a normal GPS drone, or slap on the goggles and go full manual FPV mode. I actually made a whole separate video about all the ways you can fly this thing because there’s so much to cover.

Camera Quality: The Real Difference Maker

The camera situation really tells you everything you need to know about these drones’ personalities. The Mini 4K gives you that cinematic, smooth footage that looks amazing for landscapes and cityscapes. The Neo has this wider angle lens that’s better for when you’re flying close to the ground or tracking someone. I’ve got to be honest – the video quality from the Neo is noticeably softer and grainier than the Mini 4K. It feels like that’s where DJI had to make some compromises to pack in all those flight features at this price point.

Making Your Choice: Photos vs. Versatility

So which one should you get? Here’s how I look at it: if you’re primarily interested in taking photos and videos, get the Mini 4K. The camera quality really punches above its weight class, and I’d have no problem posting those shots on social media. But if you want to experiment with different types of flying and don’t mind sacrificing some image quality, the Neo offers an incredibly versatile experience you just can’t get with the Mini 4K.

As a photographer who flies drones primarily for capturing images, I’d personally go with the Mini 4K. But I totally get why someone would choose the Neo – the ability to switch between tracking modes, normal flying, and FPV is pretty incredible at this price point. It really comes down to what you want to do with your drone.

Download the sample photos and videos I shot with both drones and see for yourself. The difference in image quality might make your decision a lot easier, depending on your priorities.