It has now been three months with the DJI Pocket 3 and a ton of people have been asking me how has it been?

How have those three months been?

Today, we're going to go over the good and the bad, the pros and the cons of the DJI Pocket 3 over the last three months.

I will say right off the bat though, there's been way more pros than cons, like I kind of love this little pocket gimbal camera.

Number one in the pros category is just the form factor, like having a tiny camera like this has been really fun, 179 grams for this camera system itself, we'll get into some of the other components that are involved, but just the camera itself has been really nice.

The screen is incredible, it's DJI, so things are very snappy, you just kind of snap through things.

Having it just flip up and then the head folds up, that's been awesome.

Like this little, look how tiny that little thing is, and it's getting some impressive footage, which brings us to number two, which is image quality.

This thing has that one inch sensor in there and it's shooting 10 bit footage, 4K 60, and then you can go into the slow motion mode and go to 4K 120 if you want.

It looks awesome.

I've actually been shooting this thing almost primarily in normal color space, you can go into the D-log, which we'll talk a little bit more about later, but just in the normal color space, 10 bit footage, it looks great coming out of this thing.

I turned down the sharpness, that was the only thing that I was like, it's a little sharp by default, turn that down, auto exposure, auto white balance, I've been loving this.

Number three on the pros side is something that I said everyone should get if you buy this, and that is the Creator Combo.

The Creator Combo is super dope and it comes with the DJI Mic 2 system, which I reviewed in a separate video, where's the, oh wow, there it is.

So the same transmitters that are in here come with the Creator Combo and the little case bit has a spot that you can hold your microphone, so everything folds up together and you have a really great mic slash camera system that you can always have with you and this has a new trick, we'll talk about that in a minute as well.

But having this with you is really cool because again, you have your camera filming, but then your audio source could be right here, so you could set this thing up, you could be way back from it and still get really great audio, I even used it for Morgan's grandpa's birthday party, I just set this up on a chair and I went and I put this on a book right next to him and as he was sitting there telling stories to us about World War II, he's a World War II vet, we got this incredible footage and incredible audio because the camera was able to be way back here and the microphone was able to be right next to him, that is awesome.

The next pro on this thing is that it is mechanical stabilization over digital stabilization, made a whole video, click up there on the Pocket 3 versus the ZV-1 Mark II, which is using digital stabilization, this of course using physical stabilization and when you put those two next to each other, you see that digital stabilization is good until we get into low light scenarios, which is where the one inch sensor comes really into play and like at night with this thing, it still looks amazing and because it's physical stabilization, it's using that gimbal system, you don't get that like of digital stabilization, very solid.

Number five on there is it's just easy to use, I've kind of been using this like a dad handycam from the 90s, like this is just how I film my everyday life running around in the backyard with my girls, anything that we're doing around the house, I reach for this over my phone because I know, one again, I have that mechanical stabilization in there but it's just going to be easy, I can set it up, I can track my girls if I want to, I can flip it to selfie mode, we can do so much with this one camera and I like having a separate camera that I'm filming things with than having my phone be my camera also and just in the normal modes with pretty much everything on auto, I'm getting some really impressive 10-bit footage but the next thing that you can do with it and the next pro is that you really can take it to the next level if you flip to that D log M mode, you get a very flat color profile, now you do have to go into post and now you're going to do your edits and you can color grade it against footage coming out of like an A7S3 or any of the bigger cameras and when you grade it, it looks pretty dang good, it is their mobile D log, it's a D log M, it's not like full D log but if you are looking to take this camera to that next level and really shoot some impressive footage, you can, you can also get ND filters for it, so Ulanzi and I think Freewell, I got the Ulanzi filters but I think Freewell is making filters for this also, you can put ND filters on here, you can drop down to that 150th for 24 frames a second footage and because again, it is a mechanical stabilizer, you don't get that like digital brr brr brr, you can get cinematic-esque out of a 179 gram camera, maybe like 182 by the time you put that ND filter on there.

Number seven on the list is the battery life, I'm getting like two and a half-ish hours out of the internal battery and then I've got the external battery pack that you can clip on there, I think that gives you like another hundred minutes, which is like another hour and a half-ish that you're going to get on this thing, so battery life is not a problem, the coolest part though for me, because I forget to charge my things, is 15-minute fast charge, I can go from 0%, which is almost never at 0%, but I can go from 0% to 80% in 15 minutes, so if I realize like, oh we're going to leave for something, I want to grab this and bring it with me, I go and I'm like, ah it's at 20%, 10 minutes before we leave, I could plug it in and it's going to get charged up super fast.

Battery life and fast charging is, it's much bigger in like the actual user experience with a device than I think, I think some companies realize.

DJI nailed it with this one.

Number eight on the pros category is firmware updates, they did a couple of firmware updates, one introduced cancel recording, which I first saw on the Ace Pro, but now they have it on here, I'm glad they borrowed this feature, you press record, now you're recording a clip, maybe you're trying to get something like really smooth, you're trying to get a really cool shot, or maybe you just accidentally hit the record button, you look down and you go, oh I've been recording for three minutes, now you can cancel that recording simply by pressing and holding the record button, you get a little pop-up and it has now deleted that clip, so that never gets saved to the SD card, you don't end up with an SD card full of files that halfway through the clip you realize like, oh I don't want this clip, now you can just delete it instead of having to save it and then go back later and delete it later.

Cancel recording added in a firmware and then also with the DJI mic 2, they added something in the firmware where you can send the audio file to the camera, which will marry it with the video file that you're recording, that's how you kind of do one of these setups, but now internally you can set the internal mics to record the ambient sound, so if I have this setup way over here and I walk 10 feet away, this isn't going to hear my voice at all, but it could hear like the city sounds or the waves if I was at the beach and it will record those, I now have a separate file that if I listen to this audio and it sounds a little too isolated, like you see that I'm at the beach but you don't hear the beach, I can now take that file and I can bring up some of that ambient sound in post to be able to blend with the audio that I picked up perfectly coming from the DJI mic 2, very cool that they added that.

Next up on the list is the case, I would say the case is a pro, the only con I would have with the case is that while it's in the case it's fully protected, this is a killer case, it does have a spot that you can pop this on, like very well protected, lens is protected, screen is protected while it's in here, the only bummer is that because it's a hard case, even when I take this out of there and I start filming something, I still have like this large thing that I've got to put in my pocket and now I've got like a, you know, got like a big thing in my pocket, so while this case does a fantastic job, it does also hold the wild angle and black pro mist filter in there, I wish that there was also, I wish they would also make a silicone case that would kind of just cover the head, like I'll put a screen protector on here and I won't even worry about all this, like it's durable and I would just cover the head and then when I pull that off I could just put that in my pocket and like it would be flat, like it wouldn't be a big, wouldn't be a big thing, but when I was going from place to place I could pull it out, I could just kind of go and stick it on top of there to just protect like what I see as the most fragile elements of this thing, but that does bring us to number 10 and that is the durability of this thing, this thing has been shockingly durable, I will say I was in the camp when I first got it of like, ooh, this is cool, but like what if I drop it, it looks fragile as heck, there's a screen on there that's a flippy screen, the gimbal, I've dropped it like four times now, two times, pretty rough, like one time onto concrete, it was in the case and it kind of one time actually while filming for this video, I set it, I was just stupid, it was my fault, I used a little tripod but then I put an extension pole in between it and I tried to set it up on the cliff and the wind blew it over, right into the sand, it took a digger and it survived, not a problem at all, taking a digger from like five feet, I did scratch my wide-angle lens though, I had to get a new wide-angle lens because I scratched this one, so 10 pros that I have on the Pocket 3, again, I do have a few cons, before I tell you about the cons though, let me tell you about the sponsor of today's video, Squarespace and if you guys have watched this channel for any amount of time, you will know I am a massive fan of Squarespace, I've been using them for over 10 years for my photography business and it's been a great experience, there's rarely a situation where you deal with a company for 10 years and at the end of it, you're like, that was great, I'm stoked, but 10 years in with Squarespace and I love them mainly because I'm a guy that does not know how to build websites, but with Squarespace, I built a super dope website and you can too, if you want a super dope website for your business, go to squarespace.com and sign up for a totally free trial, go in there and download one of their free professionally designed templates, you just pretty much swap in your info for their info, your photos for their photos and you have a super dope website and from there, you can use their fluid engine design system to further customize your web, pretty much anything that you can dream of, you can create with the fluid engine design system within Squarespace and you can do all that during the free trial, when you are ready to go live though, use code davidmanning and save 10% off a checkout, super dope website and you save 10% and they use Squarespace.

Okay, on to the cons on the Pocket 3, I really only have a few of them, the wide-angle lens, I love shooting with the wide-angle lens on there, I like that look, it's really fun to like run around, chase my kids with that wide look but it's just magnetic, like it doesn't click on there in any way, so plenty of times, I've like been in public and I knock it against something, when we were in Seattle, I was kind of walking through the market and I hit someone and the mag, it went like that and I went, oh no, where'd it go and I had to find this tiny little lens on the ground, so it's on there, like you're not going to shake it off but if you bump it, you could definitely knock it out, like a good like, and it'll go flying, not really the case for the little filters, like these little Ulanzi filters and I'm sure the Freewells, like they're very slim, like this one, like you really can't knock off, so only the wide lens is like potentially knock off and lose it.

Number two on this guy is, I wish that there was a physical exposure compensation dial, the one thing that I use a lot or I seem to use a lot is, again, I'm in normal mode on this thing, I'm running around filming and then I realize like, oh, I would like to bump my exposure a third of a stop or a half a stop or 0.7 of a stop, I have to swipe over, wait, no, I have to start recording, while recording, swipe over and now I get an exposure, it's a slider, it's a slider on the touch screen and now I got to kind of like hone it in, there we go, there's 0.7 exposure compensation, now I can be able to just like walk around and while I'm walking, just kind of go, so the con is that to access exposure compensation is in the touch screen and the fix for that would be on the Pocket 4, when they give me a physical exposure compensation dial, please DJI.

Number three is face tracking, face tracking is really good, you swipe down, I turn on face tracking and anytime that I'm in selfie mode like that, now it sees my face, face track enabled and no matter where I go with the gimbal, I could be walking through a city, looking at the city and just holding the gimbal over here, anywhere and it's going to track my face, it's going to keep me very centered and that is good, my issue comes with, hang on, let's see if I can recreate it for you guys, hold on, all right, let's see if we get the effect, so if I'm nice and close to the camera right now, this is pretty decent framing, like the framing looks pretty good, I am a little, I kind of wish, okay, watch this, if I back up quite a bit, it continues to track my face, but look at all this space up here, what I wanted to do is, I want to be like a third line, I want to be right here, whether I'm next to the camera or I'm super far away from the camera, so as it, see right now, I got all this extra space, I would like it to be framed, it just looks a little wonky with the framing, now the fix for that is very simple and it's just don't use face feature, which is dynamic framing, so I go into dynamic framing, I select my face right where I want it, the top third and boom, so now it wants to keep my face in this upper third, so upper third and in the middle, so no matter how far back I go, the gimbal is going to come down quite a bit more, I have what much less of this like weird space above me and I can still do all the same tracking that I would do before, but with the dynamic framing, I can tell it always keep my face in the upper third and in the middle, even if I go way back away from the camera, it's gonna, it's gonna keep, I don't know, this space up here with the, with the just face tracking, you get a way too much of it, way too much upper spacing, it would also be cool if on the face tracking, I could also give it framing, like within dynamic framing, I can tell it where I want that to be tracking me, within face tracking, I wish I could just say, I always want to be in the upper middle or wherever you want to be.

Number four, I guess I could mention like, like the skin smoothing features are right there and I just wish there was other controls, the glamour effects, don't do, no, don't use the glamour effects, no one should use those and then, oh, number five, number five is this guy, you guys know my issue with having the low cut filter turned on by default on this system, it's also turned on on this system, if you have these two paired together and you go into the settings on here for the transmitter, you'll see the low cut filter is on by default, so same thing that happened with that, click up there and go watch that video, same thing that happened with this system to me, is also present here, if you want to turn the low cut filter off, you have to go into the settings and turn it off, yeah, by default, it is on and honestly, after three months of using this thing, those are the only cons I could really think of, I love the pocket three, I use it as like an everyday camera, we're going to Maui in like a week, this will be my travel camera, like filming all my family vlogs, I'll be filming this thing, like I'm not filming anything for the channel, so I won't be filming with my big cameras, everything will be filmed for my family with the pocket three and then when we go in the water, probably the ace pro and I'll probably bring this for photos, maybe, but all video, all video for that trip will be on the pocket three, what do you guys think, have you been waiting, like have you been waiting post hype cycle of the pocket three to figure out if it is any good, like if people had problems with it or are you someone that picked it up right away, I'd love to hear your thoughts also, like how have the last three months been for you, I've been stoked and again, I was in the camp of like, oh I'm gonna drop that and break it and I have, but it hasn't broken, so that's pretty sweet, questions, comments, comment down below and I will see you soon.

Tell me a joke?

Yeah.

What's your joke?

Why did the poop can't go to the movie theater?

Why can't the who?

The poop.

The poop?

Why can't the poop go to the movie theater?

Because he pooped out popcorn.

Oh wow, let's put that in the video.

Comedic gold.

Yeah.