Perhaps best known for its range of drones, the Chinese company DJI has announced a new pocketable camera featuring a radical mechanical image stabilization system.
Dubbed ‘Osmo Pocket’, the new camera is the world’s smallest camera with a built-in 3-axis gimbal and it looks quite unlike any camera you’ve seen before.
Standing 4.8 inches tall, and fitting easily into the hand, the Osmo pocket is like a much smaller and lighter version of DJI’s popular Osmo Mobile 2 smartphone gimbal which uses its own miniature 4K camera instead of your phone.
It’s designed to be operated entirely one-handed with its integrated touch display falling conveniently under the thumb. It can also be connected directly to your smartphone for viewing images on a larger screen or sharing directly from the camera.
Osmo Pocket: Key Specs
The camera uses a 1/2.3” sensor with 1.55nm pixels and is capable of recording video at up to 4K resolution at 60 fps. It features an 80-degree field of view and an f/2.0 aperture. Stills can also be captured at 12MP resolution.
These are fairly standard specs for a consumer-grade camera, but what really sets the Osmo Pocket apart from the competition is the gimbal. The obvious comparison to be made is with GoPro’s Hero 7 Black. Both are designed to capture 4K video in an ultra-portable format and the GoPro is even marketed as offering ‘gimbal-like stabilization without the gimbal’.
However, the gimbal is about much more than mere stabilization and this is where I think the Osmo Pocket can shine, just as long as DJI’s customers ‘get it’. The gimbal isn’t just about keeping the camera as still as possible, it’s also designed to move the camera in a variety of creative ways, most of which are complemented by intelligent functions built into the camera.
The camera and lock onto and track a subject as it moves, panning the camera automatically to follow it. It can also create ‘motionlapse’ videos which can enhance time-lapse footage with slow, smooth panning through the shot. The camera can move automatically to take a series of photos in a three-by-three grid before stitching them into an ultra-wide angle panorama. In ‘selfie-mode’ the camera can automatically lock on to your face as you move around.
To get a better idea of what the Osmo Pocket can do, and how it intends to deliver ‘cinematic video anywhere, any time’, take a look at DJI’s three promo videos.
Priced at $349, the Osmo Pocket is clearly designed to compete with GoPro’s Hero7 Black which currently sells for slightly more at $399, but the two devices offer a very different set of features and capabilities.
For example, both offer a wide range of mounts and accessories, but the Osmo Pocket doesn’t offer the rugged, waterproof housing of the GoPro and relies instead on an optional underwater housing which is considerably bulkier and less convenient.
In a world full of superb smartphone cameras, any new device like the Osmo Pocket is bound to be a hard sell, especially to consumers who may have no idea what a gimbal can do for them or why they would want to spend such a large sum of money on another device.
Only videographers already familiar with gimbals are likely to have enough of an understanding of its capabilities to get excited about it, but its price and specifications mark it out squarely as a consumer device rather than a piece of professional video equipment.
However, put in the right hands, I think it will deliver shots quite unlike what can be achieved with a smartphone alone.
The Osmo Pocket is available to order now with shipping in 10-15 days from purchase.
