DJI SPARK

The popularity in drone copters has grown hugely over the past years mainly due to one company, DJI.

With the launch of the original Phantom, DJI brought aerial photography and video to the masses. In 2016 they added the Mavic Pro to their range, creating a drone that not only produced great images but added portability to the drone market.

THE SPARK

DJI have now announced a new drone, The Spark, which aims to bring aerial photography to an even wider market.

FORM FACTOR

The Spark is the smallest drone DJI has produced so far, measuring 143x143x55mm, making the main body of the copter around the size of a modern smartphone. Where the Mavic Pro folds down small enough to fit into a backpack, the Spark will fit into a jacket pocket.

In addition to its small form factor the Spark borrows a lot of the functions from the higher end models. It has obstacle avoidance to help prevent crashes, subject tracking and following to make filming moving subjects easier.

FUNCTIONS

DJI have also added some pre-set manoeuvres to the Spark, these include, Dronie, which will fly away from the subject, taking it from a close up to a dramatic wide shot. Circle, which as the name suggests flies the Spark around the subject and Rocket which takes the drone straight up for great high angle shots.

The Spark is being marketed as a selfie drone that can be operated by the users with either a smart phone app or the controller for both stills and video. In stills mode the 12 megapixel camera can be controlled by hand gestures. Once the drone has locked onto its subject using face recognition it can then perform a variety of functions using hand gestures such as hovering, moving the drone and telling it to shot an image.

VIDEO QUALITY

Being a smaller, cheaper option the Spark will only shoot video in 1080p at 30fps, compared to the 4K offered on the Mavic Pro. The camera is on a two axis gimbal, giving pitch and roll movement.

Flight time is around 16 minutes depending on wind conditions and how vigorously the Spark is flown.

With a price of around £500 ($500) being roughly half that of the Mavic Pro and its size and portability the Spark looks set to open up the drone market to a whole new audience.