Drones
Mavic Air 2S.
The DJI Air 2S is our compact travel drone. It packs down small enough to bring on any shoot, making it the easy call for quick aerial establishing shots and real estate exteriors.
Specs
- Sensor
- 1-inch CMOS, 20 MP effective
- Lens
- 22 mm equivalent, f/2.8, 88 degree field of view
- Video
- 5.4K up to 30 fps, 4K up to 60 fps, 150 Mbps max bitrate, 10-bit D-Log
- Takeoff weight
- 595 g
- Max flight time
- Up to 31 minutes in ideal conditions
- Transmission
- OcuSync 3.0 (O3), up to 12 km (FCC)
- Obstacle sensing
- Four directions (forward, backward, upward, downward) with APAS 4.0
The drone that goes in the bag every time.
The Air 2S is our light, fast-deploying aerial camera. It folds down small enough that bringing it costs us nothing, which matters more than it sounds: the drone shot you get is the drone you actually had with you. It runs a 1-inch, 20 MP sensor behind a fixed 22 mm equivalent f/2.8 lens, records 5.4K at up to 30 fps and 4K at up to 60 fps, and gives us 10-bit D-Log when we want room to grade rather than a locked-in look straight out of the camera.
That sensor size is the reason we still fly it. A 1-inch chip holds detail and color in a way smaller drone sensors do not, particularly in the golden-hour and overcast light that the Pacific Northwest hands us most of the year. Highlights on a white barn roof or a bright river surface hang together instead of clipping to paper.
What we shoot with it.
It is the drone we use when the aerial work is a supporting element rather than the centerpiece. On a wedding day that means a venue establisher and a wide of the ceremony site before guests arrive. On a real estate listing it means the lot, the roofline, the approach and the neighborhood context in a fifteen-minute window. On a commercial shoot it fills out the b-roll bed without pulling the crew off the ground unit for an hour.
- Property and listing exteriors, including lot lines and neighborhood context
- Venue and location establishers for weddings and events
- Fast b-roll passes on commercial and corporate days
- Follow and orbit moves on people, vehicles and buildings
Range, safety and the honest limits.
OcuSync 3.0 gives a solid link at range, and four-direction obstacle sensing with APAS 4.0 makes it forgiving when it is tracking a subject through a treeline. Neither is a substitute for keeping the aircraft in sight and flying it like it can fall. We plan for around 25 useful minutes per battery rather than the 31-minute headline number, because wind, cold and the reserve you should never spend all take their cut.
The lens is fixed and there is no mechanical aperture, so in bright sun we are on ND filters to hold a sensible shutter angle. And at 595 g it is over the 250 g registration threshold, which is fine: commercial drone work in the United States requires an FAA Part 107 remote pilot certificate and aircraft registration regardless, plus airspace authorization anywhere near a controlled field. Around here that comes up often, so we check the airspace before the shot list, not after.
