DJI Osmo Review

I first used a DJI Osmo in 2015 for a school project, I only had a few hours operating it but coming from a Glidecam and a Ronin M, the Osmo was super light and low profile and I was impressed with the image. I have owned one for a few months now and have got to use it on a few productions and it has turned out to be a real asset to our productions.

Initial Osmo Test

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7gFg30fiRY

Osmo camera specs

1/2.3” CMOS Effective pixels:12.40 M (Total pixels: 12.76 M)

Lens

3.5× Optical Zoom 22 - 77mm Equivalent F2.8 (Wide) - F5.2 (Tele) FOV 92° (Wide) - 35° (Tele)

Focus

0.5 m to infinity

ISO Range

100-3200 (video); 100-1600 (photo)

Electronic Shutter Speed

8 s-1/8000 s (up to 30 s when camera is in M mode)

Max. Image Size

4000 x 3000 pixels

Still Photography Modes

Single Shot Photo Burst Mode: 3/5/7 shots Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB): 3/5 bracketed frames @ 0.7 EV bias Interval Auto Panorama Selfie Panorama 9-shot Panorama Motion Timelapse Regular Timelapse

Video Resolution

C4K (4096×2160) 24/25p 4K (3840×2160) 24/25/30p 2.7K (2704×1520) 24/25/30p FHD: 1920×1080 24/25/30/48/50/60/100p

Video Recording Modes

Auto; Slow Motion

Max. Video Bitrate

60 Mbps

Supported File Formats

FAT32(≤32 GB); exFAT (>32 GB)

Photo Formats

JPEG, DNG(RAW)

Video Formats

MP4/MOV (MPEG-4 AVC/H.264)

Supported SD Cards

Micro SD; Max. Capacity: 64 GB; Class 10 or UHS-1

Operating Temperature

32° to 104° F (0° to 40° C)

Audio Output

48 KHz; AAC

Currently, my office is in the back of a tattoo shop, naturally I handle all of their media needs. In May of 2016 we decided to do a “Star Wars” themed tattoo sale and needed a commercial. My creative partner Brendan came up with an insane one shot idea. We were very limited on time money budget ect, and the video was for the web so the Osmo seemed like a perfect fit. We had no issues with the little guy, it was light hungry and the final image is a bit under exposed but we pulled off a fun little video with this tool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPfIFcqAeh4

The Osmo also proved useful while filming punk shows for a documentary I DPd, we rented like 5 handed them out to Pas and sent them into the crowd and got some silky-smooth front row action, again the Osmo was light hungry and a little milky in the dimly lit venue, however the proved durable enough to survive 5 consecutive nights of a punk rock show.

I have yet to use the Osmo in a narrative filmmaking environment and would love to experiment further with it and I plan to continue using it to shoot YouTube content, documentary, weddings and anything else I can come up with a use for it.

My only complaints are the low light performance, having to use a smart phone to operate it and shitty battery life. I wouldn’t recommend the Osmo for an A cam but it’s a great B or C cam for getting B roll and creative insert shots.