by Tom Barrance | Updated July 2022
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The Osmo Pocket is a stabilised camera from Chinese drone maker DJI. It’s built around an electronic gimbal stabiliser like the ones in DJI’s Mavic drones. It’s tiny, but you can get some great footage with it. It’s around $260/£270 new and under $150/£150 used. I’d buy it with the optional wireless module and extension rod, which make it much more flexible and easier to use. See below for a full review.
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The DJI Pocket 2 has a larger 1.7 inch sensor, a faster ultrawide (20mm equivalent) lens, better autofocus and audio, and an optional wireless microphone kit. It costs around
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The review and samples below are from the original Osmo Pocket.
This short movie shows the kind of cinematic footage you can get with the original Osmo Pocket. Filmed in 4K (24p, and 60p slow motion) downscaled to 1080p24, edited in Final Cut Pro X. Thanks to Cosmic68 (YouTube channel) for permission to feature it.
These students were working to a coursework deadline so I had to work around them. So I mounted the Osmo on a boom pole. That let me easily set up all kinds of unusual angles, and get the camera in close to the action without getting in their way.
The Osmo Pocket is a really interesting camera with a huge amount of potential. It’s small enough to take anywhere, and as they say, the best camera is the one you have with you. It offers lots of creative possibilities: you can use it to get smooth tracking shots, steady static shots without a tripod, or on a boom pole to get crane shots. It’s much more discreet and convenient than an iPhone on a gimbal stabiliser, which I find too big and cumbersome for travel and street filming.
It has a very small built-in colour touchscreen, but it’s best connected to your phone. The phone app – Mimo – includes ActiveTrack (for tracking and following objects) and FaceTrack (for faces). In selfie mode, FaceTrack will be really useful for vloggers. You can also switch to FPV (first person view) mode, which follows tilts and leans to show dynamic movement.
The Pocket is designed to be very easy to use, but the Mimo app also has a Pro mode which gives you manual control over exposure (shutter speed, ISO and white balance). If you want to be discreet, but still use the pro settings, the Mimo will retain them when you disconnect your phone.
The Pocket’s built-in camera has a 1/2.3″ sensor – that’s slightly bigger than the sensors in the newest iPhones. It can record 4K in 60fps slow motion, or cropped Full HD at 120fps. The camera has a roughly 28mm equivalent focal length, which is wide but not extreme. It’s really sharp, though I don’t think dynamic range and colour are as good as the most recent iPhones, and it struggles in contrasty lighting. You can also shoot in a flat D-Cinelike mode for easier colour correction. Continuous video autofocus is unreliable: it works better in AF-S mode where you choose a single focus point.
The Pocket has a built-in battery (good for up to around 2 hours filming) but you can connect an external power pack.
A range of accessories are available. You can get a controller wheel for accurate pans and tilts, an accessory mount and a wireless module, an extension rod/selfie stick, ND filters and a charging case. There’s also an underwater case. A number of third-party providers are also producing Pocket accessories.
For the clips in the forge, I mounted my Osmo to a boom pole using a ball head, with my phone clamped to the base of the pole. Instead of buying DJI’s wireless module I used a 2-metre braided Lightning extension cable. (I’ve now bought the wireless module and extension rod, which is much more convenient.)
The Osmo Pocket is a much more convenient alternative to a mobile phone and gimbal combination, and it’s cheaper than upgrading to a new phone.
The Pocket 2 comes in a base version, and a Creator Combo kit which includes a wireless microphone, wide angle lens adapter and other accessories.
Buy Osmo Pocket
Buy DJI Pocket 2
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