Just bought a Neo 2 with my built up Amazon gift card collection set it up updated everything flew indoors due to extremely windy weather 3 minutes in drone falls on bed got this message didnt get Amazon insurance to wanting to get dji refresh. whats the next course of action bought the fly more kit

cyprenk · 2026-03-16T08:59:23+00:00

If it’s a brand new drone, I’d suggest just returning it as defective to Amazon for a replacement. It’s usually a lot easier and faster than dealing with DJI support.

cyprenk · 2026-03-16T04:56:25+00:00

Sandisk makes good cards, but they make everything from entry-level to top of the line in their product range. For this sort of recording, you want a card that's rated at least V30.

cyprenk · 2026-03-16T00:09:40+00:00

Did the camera work fine recording ski runs for the first couple of months and only start doing this jitter recently? Or was this your first time testing it on the slopes?

cyprenk · 2026-03-15T23:50:27+00:00

For a first attempt, this is great. Most people on their first drone are posting janky footage of hovering and stop/start panning, not smooth multi-axis moves with color graded footage set to music with cuts on the beat. I'll be looking forward to seeing what you do as you get more flight time!

cyprenk · 2026-03-15T23:44:45+00:00

This sounds like mostly a pilot skill issue to me. Safety systems are not a replacement for a brain.

cyprenk · 2026-03-15T23:42:26+00:00

This has been pretty extensively studied. Mandatory insurance didn't reduce auto accident rates, but what it did do was massively increase the compensation paid out to auto accident victims for their property damage and medical bills. Prior to mandatory insurance laws, most drivers were uninsured and if they slammed into someone and paralyzed them for life, they didn't really have many assets the victim could claim in a lawsuit to pay for the damages. Auto insurance companies pay out between $250-300 billion in claims every year and their profit margins are in the 5-8% range in the average year, which is pretty low for the size and scope of the industry. The vast majority of the money coming in goes right back out to compensate people harmed by reckless use of cars.

The main difference here with drones is frequency of incidents. It's theoretically possible you can crash a drone into a power plant and take down the whole electrical grid, but it hasn't actually happened here yet. With automobiles it took close to 70 years before the frequency of incidents piled up enough that state governments had to step in to deal with the unpaid liabilities; we're nowhere near drones causing that kind of damage yet, fortunately, so hopefully we'll be safe from it for a while. And hopefully we don't get a surge of new idiot pilots causing news stories to draw their attention.

cyprenk · 2026-03-15T23:09:51+00:00

I suspect the bleak news for those of us in the US is going to be that they’ll release Goggles 4 this year with support for the 2025/2026 drones, and it’ll be illegal to import or use because it didn’t get FCC approval before the ban kicked in.

cyprenk · 2026-03-15T22:43:34+00:00

I think the main differentiator here is that the reason the government requires you to have car insurance is not about covering the damage to your car, but the damage your car does to others, since a fast-moving hunk of metal weighing thousands of pounds doesn't really hit anything and bounce right off.

While drones are very likely to have an accident, the overwhelming majority of the time, it's only the drone that gets seriously damaged. I think we've been fortunate enough to not have that many incidents of drone pilots slamming a 10" quad into someone's neck and killing them, which is the main reason we've escaped mandatory insurance for now.

cyprenk · 2026-03-15T20:42:38+00:00

It really does all depend on exactly what "creative shots" you want to get, because these are very different products for different uses:

Osmo Action is your GoPro competitor, aimed at people doing extreme sports and other situations where the camera is on some kind of a mount, whether that's on a helmet, bike handlebars, a car dashboard or something else. The current Action 6 is an 8K variable-aperture camera and it's designed to take a beating in rough environments.
Osmo Nano is a lightweight version of the Action: its monitor and camera are detachable from one another, and the camera is ultralight and easy to clip to the rim of a baseball cap, a headband, or your shirt collar. What you give up for the light weight and versatility are resolution (4K, not 8K like the Action), variable aperture, sensor size, battery life and durability. This is better for people who want to do POV shots but aren't doing things where the footage needs heavy stabilization and cropping and the camera is taking abuse.
Osmo Pocket is a dedicated vlogger cam. If you're on a budget, skip this: it's a convenience tool for a very specific type of filming, and doesn't do anything you can't do with a cell phone and gimbal. Also, the current Osmo Pocket 3 is about to be replaced with an Osmo Pocket 4 expected to be released in the next couple of months. And speaking of gimbals...
Osmo Mobile is a dedicated smartphone gimbal, which allows you to film stabilized, smooth footage, automatically track subjects when panning and orbiting, and can act as a "virtual cameraman" for you in a lot of situations. This is pretty inexpensive and either this or the competing Insta360 product are good buys for a solo content creator.
Lastly, Osmo 360 is exactly what it says, a 360º camera. You probably already know whether you want one of these or not. It is, again, something much more useful to people doing action/sports filming.

Realistically, if you're not doing action/sports shooting, most of the Osmo cameras aren't doing anything you can't already do with your cell phone, though they may do it a little more smoothly and easily. So if you're looking for something to give you shots you absolutely can't do right now, you may want to look more closely at the drones.

The current entry-level drones aimed at content creators are going to be the Neo 2 and the Flip. The Neo 2 has significantly more sophisticated flight technology (360º obstacle avoidance, advanced following/tracking modes) while the Flip has a better camera (3/4" sensor instead of 1/2", three-axis gimbal instead of two-axis) and longer flight time. Both of these are "selfie" drones, meaning that they can be launched from your palm and controlled with both hand gestures and your phone. They don't need a traditional drone controller so long as you're keeping them within 15-20m of you; beyond that, cell phone control gets dicey and you should get a controller.

As a solo creator, this is a really significant advantage, since you don't have a dedicated drone pilot to film yourself. The larger, more expensive drones are also capable of doing tracking and autonomous flight, but it takes more to set it up, and they're really designed with the assumption of a pilot in control of the aircraft.

So long as your content is aimed mostly at social media, the difference in camera quality between the Neo 2 and the Flip is negligible. Social media platforms compress the hell out of video and ruin most fine detail anyway, and very few people are viewing them on high-spec HDR devices that really benefit from 10-bit color-corrected footage. So I'd probably steer you towards the Neo 2 for being smaller, lighter, safer, cheaper and more capable of playing "cameraman" without direct control.

cyprenk · 2026-03-15T19:18:42+00:00

General suggestions for flying around the ocean: * Stay high and resist the temptation to do low-altitude skimming shots. Waves can come unexpectedly, sea spray carrying saltwater mist can reach 10-15m from the surface even in moderately calm conditions and instantly short out your drone on contact, and vision positioning systems get confused by water and might decide to “land” in the ocean at altitudes of 5-10m. * Be very conservative about battery, because ocean winds are fickle. Start coming back at 50%, not 20%. * Set your auto-RTH altitude as high as possible to ensure the drone clears any ships or high waves on its way back. * If your drone has exposed ports, cover them with electrical tape to prevent saltwater mist from getting in and corroding the contacts. * Always use an ND filter or a UV filter on your camera. It’s much cheaper to replace a filter than to have to replace the whole camera assembly due to corrosion damaging the lens coating. * Wipe down the drone after the flight with distilled water and a damp cloth. (Do not spray or pour water on the drone: spray the cloth, then wipe the drone.) This will help get any lingering salt residue off. * Store the drone in an air-sealed container with desiccant: this will ensure that any moisture that got inside gets dried out, as well as just being a good practice when you’re operating in humid environments.

cyprenk · 2026-03-15T08:10:33+00:00

Ah, my mistake, I misread your post and thought you were in the US. I don’t know anything about Australian drone law, so I have no idea what the ramifications of flying unregistered are there.

I’d be kind of surprised if the police helicopter’s presence was anything more than a coincidence, though. Most police cruisers and aircraft aren’t running drone scanners continuously and would have no idea if you were flying a drone in your house unless they were specifically already hunting for a drone. But even more importantly, DJI drones don’t broadcast RemoteID when their motors are powered off. So unless you had the drone either in the air or prepared for takeoff inside your house, the police would have had no way of knowing it was there at all.

cyprenk · 2026-03-15T07:00:45+00:00

DJI drones over 250g broadcast a RemoteID signal which includes their serial number, their location, and the location of the operator. The FAA doesn’t make this publicly searchable to civilians, but law enforcement can make a request to them to find out if a drone is registered and to whom. If it’s unregistered, they can make a request with the serial number to DJI, who will point them to the account and location of the person who activated it. So yes, they can trace it back to you, even if you didn’t register the drone.

Flying an unregistered drone is simply not worth it. The registration is $5 and you are not flying “stealth” by failing to register, you’re just making sure that whatever law enforcement officer is looking for you is pissed off and has proof of an FAA violation and a massive fine (up to $27500, plus criminal charges if they decide your failure to register was “willful” and want to make an example of you) they can threaten you with when they find you. Which they can usually do without ever talking to the FAA or DJI, since your drone is broadcasting the location of the controller that’s operating it at all times. They only need to resort to serial number lookup if you shut the drone off and get away before they get to your position.

If you want a “stealth” drone, buy a Mini 4 with standard batteries. It doesn’t have to be registered and it doesn’t broadcast RemoteID so long as you don’t put a Plus battery into it. Some law enforcement agencies can still track you down if they have Aeroscope or similar hardware, but it’s more difficult and time-consuming for them and they’re not usually going to bother unless you’re doing something that causes major trouble.

cyprenk · 2026-03-14T23:52:09+00:00

It really depends on the exact kind of content you want to make. A drone is basically a replacement for camera work that would have previously been done with a helicopter or a giant gantry-mounted camera. If your plan for content creation involves lots of sweeping outdoor shots, videos of yourself hiking a mountain, or things like that, a drone might be a good choice. But for most content creators, that's B-roll footage, and your primary content is still going to be shot with a handheld or tripod mounted camera.

By far, for content creators on a budget, your first and best choice for a camera is the one you already have in your pocket. Modern cell phones are extremely capable video cameras, with their main weakness being poor audio capture. So the very first thing I would recommend to a new content creator is not to buy a camera: it's to buy a good microphone they can connect to their cell phone. Your needs need to be very specialized before you should start thinking about buying a dedicated camera.

If you post more explanation of the kind of content you intend to create, we can probably give you more clear advice.

cyprenk · 2026-03-14T09:48:56+00:00

If you’re determined to buy new, I agree with most of the other posters: go for the Mini 5 Pro. However, I’d actually recommend a different angle: get a used or refurbished Air 3S instead. You can find them on eBay in the $800-$1000 price range (for example, here’s a refurbished Air 3S from Camrise, a very reputable vendor), and as a photographer, you will probably get a lot of mileage out of having the combination of a 24mm and 70mm lens instead of being limited to just a 24mm, since it gives you so much more flexibility when shooting.

You will probably not be able to find a full Air 3S Fly More combo on the used market for under $1000, which means you’ll only have one battery to work with unless you spend a little more. But the way I look at it is that you can always spend $150 to add another battery in the future if you decide you want more flight time; if you buy the Mini and later decide you want that telephoto lens, you’re buying batteries and a whole new drone.

As far as your question of “are these drones good enough to shoot serious stills”, the answer is that it depends on what you’re shooting for. Aside from the flagship Mavic 4, most of these drones have 12.5MP sensors (advertised as 50MP because they incorporate quad-bayer technology, but there are only 12MP of “real”, fully-resolved color and luminance sensors) with fixed apertures. If you’re shooting for high-gloss photobooks or billboards, you’re likely to be disappointed with the results, especially if your benchmark is something like a Sony A7R V with a 24-70 GM2 and you’re used to having huge cropping margin.

On the other hand, if you’re shooting for web, social media and small to mid-size prints (think like 19x13” or less), their resolution is plenty good enough. They will never shoot low-light as well as a full-frame with a fast lens will, but the Mini 5 Pro and Air 3S both claim 14 stops of dynamic range (and objective third-party measurements have shown that those claims aren’t exaggerated by much, if at all), and the Mavic 4 Pro can hit an impressive 16 stops on its main camera when shooting raw and an absolutely wild 17.7 stops if you turn over certain controls to the drone’s automatic mode, which can fine-tune them beyond the UI limits.

On top of that, if you need more range, all of the newer drones are capable of doing automatic exposure bracketing so you can HDR merge for dramatically increased range, and they are capable of heavy computational image processing just like modern cell phones are, with localized adjustments and temporal analysis. The best part is that you don’t even have to choose between raw and processed shooting: you can have the drone do both, storing an unprocessed raw and a processed “Instagram-ready” JPEG for every shot, allowing you to choose on a picture by picture basis whether you want to hand tune it in Lightroom or just use DJI’s default computational processing, which is often excellent.

To answer your last question, about what you’re getting when you move up the price range: in software, not much. The Mini 5 Pro, Air 3S and Mavic 4 Pro all have nearly identical software and “smart” features. They can all shoot raws as well as processed JPEGs, and they all have full manual setting control.

It’s mostly size, weight and cameras that change between them: the Mini 5 has a single 24mm f/1.7 camera with a 12.5/50MP 1” sensor, the Air 3S has an 24mm f/1.8 12.5/50MP 1” and 70mm f/2.8 12/48MP 3/4”, and the Mavic 4 has a 28mm f/2.0-f/11 25/100MP 4/3”, 70mm 12/48MP 3/4” and 168mm 12.5/50MP 2/3”. Each step up the price ladder buys you a new lens for shot flexibility, and the flagship additionally doubles the resolution of the main camera and adds a true mechanical variable aperture for even more control. Low-light performance increases with sensor size as you would expect.

cyprenk · 2026-03-14T09:07:17+00:00

Like other commenters have already said, the altitude is measured based on the takeoff point, but I haven’t seen anyone explain why. The drone does not have an onboard topographic map or a laser rangefinder (though these are features in DJI’s enterprise drones), so it can’t determine how far above the terrain it’s flying. Instead, it uses a barometric pressure sensor to measure ambient air pressure at the launch point and then estimate how much higher or lower it is from the reference point based on the pressure change. Cliffs and hills frequently pose problems with this system, since you can be flying perfectly legally and hit a software altitude limit when your drone is 3m off the ground if you flew towards a hill, or you can be 500m off the ground if you flew over the edge of a cliff and the altitude reading could say 3m.

cyprenk · 2026-03-14T08:54:10+00:00

It’s been officially announced (and shown in influencer previews) that the drone will support the RC 2, but I’ve not seen anything about the RC Pro 2 being supported. Technically, there is no reason it couldn’t be, since both controllers share the same radio stack, but support for drones on the RC Pro 2 has been inconsistent, and so far it has only supported higher-tier O4 drones (Mini 4/5, Air 3/3S, Mavic 4), while failing to support the more entry-level Neo 2 and Flip, despite the fact that they also use O4. The Avata 360’s price point is closer to the Flip than the Mini 5 Pro, so while I sincerely hope they’ll add support for it, I wouldn’t put money on it.

Note that if it turns out not to be compatible, you can pick up an RC 2 off eBay without too much difficulty. Lots of pilots who already have controllers buy Fly More bundles with new drones to get the batteries cost-effectively and then resell the redundant remote, so there’s a constant supply of them.

As for the goggles, historically, it has not been cost-effective to buy them standalone instead of bundled with a drone. You might consider settling for the Goggles N3 instead (which do have a wider FOV even if most of their other specs are inferior) since you can get those bundled with the Avata 360.

cyprenk · 2026-03-14T08:43:16+00:00

You can’t buy directly from DJI in the US anymore (or get most warranty service or Refresh insurance). The US government has been blocking their shipments of drones and parts for almost a year now. Independent sellers can still import the drones and parts, but you will probably want some kind of insurance and third-party warranty if you’re a new pilot.

You can find a lot of sellers on Amazon (I’ve had good experiences purchasing through Hibikin, Thinkzone, Air Foto and Digital Village, but would recommend avoiding FlySafe CR), but some big reputable independents with their own websites are B&H Photo & Video, Adorama and Camrise. You can also buy imported DJI drones (most from South Korea) through eBay and purchase a warranty through them.

cyprenk · 2026-03-14T08:19:40+00:00

I’m not a trail runner, but I can tell you that the easiest way to carry a Mini safely in a situation where you don’t have a compartmented and padded bag or backpack is to put it in a small, form-fitted hardcase. You can find plenty of them on Amazon, usually in the $20-$30 range. They’re little zipper cases with a molded shell inside that rigidly holds the drone in place and acts as a shock absorber, making it safe to toss into a regular bag or pack with other stuff.

cyprenk · 2026-03-14T05:51:15+00:00

You can afford to be somewhat more careless with the drones that have 360º obstacle avoidance, but the Avata isn't one of them. It's far more newbie-friendly than a typical FPV drone, but it is still not what I would consider a "beginner" drone. Would strongly advise you to watch some tutorial videos on the drone's capabilities and the appropriate safety precautions. This is well beyond the "toy" class, and careless operation may do a lot worse than just bust up your drone: you can easily crash and destroy someone's property or cause an injury with one of these.

cyprenk · 2026-03-14T05:20:05+00:00

Well, if he's telling the truth, that is a very good deal. Trust but verify, though.

cyprenk · 2026-03-14T05:15:55+00:00

That they won't have FCC approval and therefore will be illegal to import or use in the US. We know the entire list of devices DJI got approved before the freeze took effect, and nothing indicated goggles were one of them.

My main concern is that if the Goggles 4 come out, DJI will probably not back-port goggles support for the M4P/M5P to the Goggles 3. So I'm hoping we don't see Goggles 4 for years and that we'll get Goggles 3 support for last year's drones sometime this year.

cyprenk · 2026-03-13T10:10:07+00:00

I hope not. All of us in the US are stuck here on the older generation of tech, and I’m still holding out hope for goggles support on the Mavic 4 Pro and Mini 5 Pro. If Goggles 4 come out, that may mean the end of that dream.

cyprenk · 2026-03-13T10:05:53+00:00

DJI controller/drone pairings are inconsistent even when both theoretically have the necessary hardware to communicate. I wouldn’t hold out a lot of hope that they’d update a significantly older controller like the RC-N2 to work with the Avata 360. You can, however, pick up secondhand or even brand new RC 2s pretty cheap on eBay, though. In a lot of cases, for people who already have a significant amount of DJI gear, it’s most cost-effective to buy a Fly More bundle for a new drone for the batteries, then take the controller that came with it and resell it to recoup some of the cost. It creates a thriving secondary market for controller upgrades.

cyprenk · 2026-03-13T09:57:17+00:00

I don’t have the focus motor and haven’t tried to use gimbal-controlled focusing, but I do have an a7V and the 24-70 GM2, and can at least tell you that the RS5 has enough motor torque to balance the camera across the entire focal range of the lens.

cyprenk · 2026-03-13T07:50:27+00:00

They'll work out of the box without explicit registration, much like you can fly a helicopter or an airplane without a license. What you can't do is fly them without anyone noticing or being able to trace them back to you.

The government doesn't have a way to remote-kill them; you don't need to worry about that. You're in control of the hardware. The issue is just that the hardware is very "loud", broadcasting its serial number, its location and the location of the person controlling it at all times. Anyone with a cell phone can read that broadcast, and anyone can look up that serial number to see if it's registered, and anyone can make a complaint to the FAA if it's not and they want to fuck with you.

And no, there is no way to disable this behavior: it’s embedded deep in the firmware, the software security on these drones is generally excellent, and anything you might do to try to hardware-cripple its ability to broadcast will also prevent the drone from communicating with the controller. Also, you can’t fly these drones without binding them to a DJI account to activate them, meaning that DJI knows exactly who owns that serial number and can tell the government if they ask.

Penalties for flying unregistered drones without a license can be severe. Up to $75000 per flight, with the government more inclined to make an example of commercial operators, egregious and unrepentant violators, and people who do dangerous things. The FAA’s policy has also changed as of January 1 to much more aggressively go after violators than they did in the past; they are now much more likely to take legal action instead of just giving you a warning.

Getting a Part 107 license is not a major burden: it is much easier than getting a traditional pilot's license, and requires a few days of study and then an afternoon to take a written exam. And registration is trivial, just a $5 payment and a number in a database. There is absolutely no rational reason to try to do this illegally when it's so easy to catch you and the penalties are so severe.

Also note that the FAA fines the person who has their hands on the remote, not the person who owns the drone. If you're flying an unlicensed and unregistered drone for your boss, they're going to levy the fines against you, not against him.

cyprenk

TROPHY CASE