12 Months With the DJI Osmo Pocket 3: The Best Video Camera I've Ever Had

So I've had the DJI Osmo Pocket 3 for about a little over a year now. It came out October 25th of last year, 2023, and now here in November 2024, it's still a camera that I'm using daily, weekly, sometimes monthly, it kind of depends. But I love this camera so much and I knew I wanted to make a video on it, but I've been really hesitant because there are so Many Osmo pocket three videos out on YouTube. A lot of them are sponsored by DJI. They do a really great job getting the camera in the hands of people who are really skilled. There is some controversy around. It may seem like maybe they have a little bit too much influence over the discussion. But I mean universally, unequivocally, this camera is awesome. That's a little bit expensive for what it is, and maybe you can get the same results. But I don't know of another camera that's available for sale at least in the United States, that's this form factor that's easy to use and obviously that has a gimbal. So, love this camera. And I think for me, if I was going to make a video about this, which I am now, I wanted to add to the conversation. I didn't want to just repeat specs and show a video and say, hey, I love this camera. I wanted to make sure I'm adding to the conversation and maybe providing a unique point of view. So for me, this video is all about my experience with the camera and I'm going to make it pretty short because I love this camera. As somebody who is a father of a three year old girl who I love dearly, and I want to make sure that when she grows up she'll have a lot of videos for herself to go back on and explore her youth kind of through the eyes of myself and my wife. And I think this camera has been so good for that I probably should use it more. But I kind of want to talk about three things that I love about this camera for being a father. All right, so first thing I love about this camera for filming my daughter, and even just family stuff in general is how unassuming it is. Right. A lot has been said about this camera and the size and the form factor. I'm not going to get into that. But look, there's a 1 inch sensor in this gimbal. It's obviously super stabilized. The low light performance is Strong. It's a 12 megapixel CMOS sensor. It's a fantastic little camera. But I Think more importantly when you're filming people. If I'm using my phone, which I've got a Pixel 9 Pro XL here, I think a lot of times you're filming people and they're like, oh, yeah, I'm on a phone and I kind of know what phones look like, so I know how far they can zoom and maybe not zoom, but I think with this camera, people may not even understand really what it is. And certainly they see the lens on this and they see sort of the sensor and they say, wow, that's probably pretty small. So I'm not going to really be too weird about being in front of the camera. And I think this is especially true for children or for young people because when they see themselves being filmed or someone's following them around with this little gimbal thing, it's a lot more unassuming and they feel a little bit more less likely to say, oh, you know, I'm on camera. And maybe that's just my experience, but I feel like that's been the case with this. Now, having said that, when I'm out in public and I've got this weird thing in my hand and I'm kind of gimbaling around, right, Kind of filming and angling it down a little bit, that part does feel a little bit strange. And I know sometimes adults maybe look a little bit different because they're not sure what it is you're pointing at them. But once they realize it's a camera, it's probably a small camera, they typically don't care. But again, for young children, this has been really great in terms of getting those, like, really candid shots and videos of my daughter and of my family. The second thing I love about this camera is just how fast it is to start up. I can flick open the screen and immediately you can see it starts going. I can even set some settings to do some pre recording or turn on the camera with that record button and just start recording. It's super easy. I also love how if you're into vertical content, I personally am not, you can actually flip the screen vertical and start filming in 3K. Now, there is another option which you're probably aware of if you've researched this camera, where you can turn it to the side and get vertical content at the 4K resolution that that sensor has available. But again, I think that's pretty cool. But again, just the speed of turning on the camera and getting it ready, it's so much easier to literally throw in your pocket or in a bag and Then just take out and flip. Whereas, you know, with this camera I'm filming on today, or any of my other Fujifilm cameras that are small, I still kind of got to move a dial and double check things are right and do I need an ND filter and all of that kind of stuff. But again, the speed of getting this thing ready to shoot is super, super useful. And the third and final thing I want to mention I love about this camera, which makes it easy to shoot children and family stuff, is the DJI ecosystem. Now, you may be a DJI fan, you may not really understand their products. You may have just heard about the United States talking a little bit about what's going on with their drones past all that stuff. They have an incredible user interface. It's fast, it's responsive to touch, whereas the GoPro products that I've ever used in the past have always been very laggy. And did I tap it? Did I not tap it? I'm sure you know what that feeling is. But it's been really, really cool to use this camera because I can go through this interface knowing that it's similar to what I've done on my Mini 3 Pro or even my DJI Mic 2 here. It all feels really integrated. Certainly the DJI Mic 2 syncing directly to the camera is super useful. But I think besides all that, just being able to pop this out fast, the user interface is good, it's quick. The battery life is actually really good without even using the battery grip. You can see here, I'm actually using an Ulanzi or Ulanzi, I'm not sure how to say their name. Little mini tripod here. And I love this little mini tripod because I can throw it down on something and film my daughter or even film myself. Some talking head stuff that's been really useful. But even for someone who doesn't necessarily vlog and do a bunch of like walking around and filming my life, I'm quite too busy for that, which I wish I could do that, that'd be a lot of fun. But I think it's still really good for filming people because you can really use a follow mode. You can go in the FPV mode, get some really cool shots with this camera. So those are three things I really love about it. And again, I'm going to cut in some photos and videos of my daughter here with the DJI Osmo Pocket 3. And I've had so much fun filming my daughter with this camera. The thing I like the most is just being able to Bring it everywhere. You know, we always talk about the camera that you have with you is the one that you should have. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we all know that. But ultimately I can bring a big camera places. I have a GFX 100 Mark II. I always bring that places if I want to shoot on it. I don't mind the size and weight. It is a deterrent for sure. But if I want to film video, which my challenge for 20, 25 to myself is to film more video, I'm unfortunately doing too much photography, which it's kind of funny how that works. But I love filming videos of my daughter. I love this camera. I love taking it with me. And certainly she knows at this point what she's talking into. But again, I think it's just less assuming and less intrusive for her versus a camera with a big black lens staring at her. Sort of been very happy with this camera. I can't recommend it enough for people who have kids. Whether your kids are 6, 10, 12, I think you'll get some incredible shots. For family stuff, I'm heading to Hawaii next month with my family. I'm very excited about that. It's my first vacation here in a couple years. I've been working a lot and so the thing that I'm going to bring first and foremost is this. Now am I going to bring my Lumix S9 or Fujifilm GFX100 Mark II? I don't know yet. That's kind of a more difficult conversation. But I can tell you right now that I'll be bringing this Pocket three because it's just such a great camera to use. So that's what I wanted to share with you. Hopefully that kind of adds to the conversation. Maybe it's meaningless, who knows? But I really appreciate you watching. If you liked what you saw today and you made it this far in the video, I could really appreciate sub and A like on this video. I do YouTube part time. I really enjoy it. I like talking about cameras and gear and photography and videography habits and different methods. So if you like that stuff too, stick around. Again, really happy to have you here and thanks so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one.