DJI Action 5 Pro: Everything You Need To Know About This Action Camera

This new action camera has more dynamic range than any other action camera on the market. It has incredibly good handheld stabilization, nearly unbelievable low-light performance for an action camera, and has a 10-bit log color profile that you can color grade to make your image look absolutely beautiful. When you’re in a location like this, having a small handheld camera that’s weather-sealed and can still capture incredible imagery, I can’t imagine using any other camera besides the new DJI Action 5 Pro.

To be clear, DJI isn’t sponsoring this video. They’re not paying me, they’re not paying for anything that I do in this video, but they did send me this camera to keep and to test and Review.

Subject Tracking

One of the things the Action 5 Pro has is subject tracking through a scene. Right now, you can see it’s tracking, and I’m out here in front of Columbia Glacier. It’s just cool if you want to add a little bit of motion and movement when you’re talking to the camera like this. And yeah, how spectacular is this location?

High-Resolution Photos

Another really cool update to the Action 5 Pro is that it now takes up to 40-megapixel photos. Now, those photos aren’t going to be like if you’re taking them with a pro-level DSLR or mirrorless camera, but they are pretty nice. The fact that it gives you that much resolution to be able to actually crop in a little bit and get all that extra detail, it’s really not that bad. The photos look pretty good; I was surprised. I expected them to not look as good as they do.

Accessories

Power Recharging Stick

One of the new things that DJI’s made is this power recharging stick, which, just like all of the other action accessories, attaches magnetically. The cool thing is, if you pull the cover off, it has a waterproof port. When you plug it in, it snaps in place top and bottom like that, and when you plug this in, it still maintains a level of weather sealing. Now, I wouldn’t TRUST it to be underwater, but it will maintain weather sealing for, you know, if you happen to be out in a place like this and there’s maybe a light rain or a light bit of mist or something like that. You don’t have to worry about it because it’s still weather-sealed. You can also start and stop recording all from this power stick here, which is pretty awesome.

Dynamic Range Comparison

This is what most action cameras would look like with their dynamic range. You can see this incredibly beautiful light behind me is pretty much blown out. But let’s switch to DLog M with 10-bit color and see what sort of dynamic range this camera actually has.

Now we’re in 10-bit DLog M, which is the highest dynamic range color profile that this camera has. You can see that there’s lots of detail in these sunlit clouds behind me, but also my face, which is totally in shadow. You can bring it up and expose it properly so that it looks good. It really does have a lot of dynamic range. I don’t know exactly if I would classify it as 13 and a half stops, but it definitely has more dynamic range than any other action camera I have ever used.

On-Location Challenges

So we landed out here in this epic spot, and then the clouds just totally came in and rolled. So we are now here until they move on. Good times.

Stabilization Modes

So we’re here on top of the mountain, and I think this would be a good place to show you exactly how well the stabilization in the Action 5 works.

RockSteady Off

Right now, RockSteady’s off. I’m just walking normally over some pretty rough terrain, and obviously, it’s not the most stable thing in the world. It’s not bad because the wide-angle view on this camera is huge.

RockSteady On

Let’s turn RockSteady on and show you the difference. This is the first level of RockSteady, and again, I’m not trying to hold the camera steady. I’m just walking normally on some very rough terrain, but it does a great job.

RockSteady Plus

Now we’re on RockSteady Plus. This is the highest level of stabilization while the camera can still tilt side to side.

Horizon Balancing Mode

It also has Horizon Balancing Mode in 360° all the way around in up to 2.7K, or up to 45° in 4K. Now I’ve got Horizon Leveling Mode, and you can tip it up to 45° because I’m filming in 4K, and it keeps the horizon level. It’s useful, especially if you’re not trying to worry about keeping the camera level, because you can tip the camera quite a bit. But if you’re filming in 2.7K, you can rotate the camera 360° and still get and keep a perfectly level horizon.

Channel Promotion

Hey, if you’re enjoying or getting value out of this video, then consider subscribing. I go out and test equipment here in Alaska in the harshest conditions I can find to see if it’s the right gear for you and also teach you the skills and tips you need to use the gear you might already have to its fullest potential. I’ll be doing a Hero 13 and Action 5 head-to-head comparison here real soon.

Water Resistance

Another new feature of the Action 5 Pro is that it is now waterproof up to 20 m. Okay, so this is what happens when I run around on the mountains without notes. It’s actually 20 m, not 40 m, but 20 m is still like 60-something feet. That’s quite a bit, and I happen to be by this incredibly cool, unbelievably beautiful mountain lake.

Slow Motion Capabilities

The other thing that is great about this camera is the fact that you get slow motion 4K 120 or HD 240. I wish it was 2.7K 240, but I will take what I can get. These are some fantastic examples of when slow motion is just the best thing to have.

The Action 5 also supports this 32 times slow motion, which, when you find a spot in the clip you want to slow way down, you touch the slow motion icon, and it will generate a clip that’s up to 32 times slow motion from whatever the original clip was. I’ve had mixed results; I think some of it’s depending on subject material, but it could be a very cool effect.

Internal Memory

There is one other huge update to the Action 5 Pro that makes this camera super useful, and that’s the fact that it now includes 47 GB of internal memory. When I first started messing around with this camera and testing it out, I went out kayaking and did the exact thing that you’re not supposed to do, which is forget an SD card.

I am super glad that the Action 5 has 45 GB of built-in memory because, true to form, I was in a hurry to get out here today because the wind wasn’t blowing, which is a rarity on this lake, and I forgot any extra micro SD cards. But because this has 45 GB of built-in memory (or 64, but 45 reusable), I can still record in 4K 30 up to an hour and 45 minutes on the internal storage, which is plenty for everything that I want to do today. Well done, DJI, really well done.

So can you imagine you get out to a location like this where it’s like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and you realize you have no way to record? But now, thankfully, there’s internal memory. I don’t know why nobody has done this before in action cameras especially, but the fact that there’s now internal memory in the Action Pro 5 is just fantastic.

Vertical Video

And of course, if you’re one of those cool kids that shoots vertical video (definitely not me, ’cause I’m too old apparently to shoot vertical video or be one of those cool kids), but the Action 5 does do vertical video. And if you have the cage on it, then it’s really easy to switch it from horizontal to vertical modes. It still shoots in 4K 30 even though it’s vertical. You get the full sensor readout, and I mean, I guess vertical video might be here to stay. So if you’re going to film vertical video, might as well get the best quality you can.

FPV Capabilities

So the real question is, because this camera has integration with GyroFlow and has RockSteady, RockSteady Plus, which is all insanely great stabilization, how well does it handle FPV? I think I found a spot. I think I found a good spot. The key for good FPV is you want really good stabilization and you want a really wide-angle field of view, and so fortunately, the Action 5 has one of the widest angle field of views without any extra lenses.

This is an instance where internal storage is really useful because I can’t find my other SD cards, and I don’t want to send this camera out with SD cards in it that already have good footage on. So that’s nice that it has 45 gigs of internal storage ’cause that’s plenty for FPV.

Audio Performance

One thing that action cameras have typically done really poorly at is have decent audio in the wind. Now pretty much every action camera now has some sort of wind reduction built in, so I’m going to just turn that off so that you can see exactly what this sounds like without any wind noise reduction.

So this is the Action 5 Pro, no wind noise reduction, straight out of camera. There’s, you know, some pretty decent wind blowing basically straight from this way. Let’s turn the first level of wind noise reduction on. And now you’re hearing the first level of wind noise reduction with the Action 5 Pro. So it’s a little better, but there’s still—I mean, it’s a strong wind. Let’s turn it up a little higher.

Now we’re shooting on the Action 5 Pro with the highest level of wind noise reduction. But the coolest thing is, you can directly connect up to two DJI Mike 2s. This one right now is connected to the Pocket 3, but you can connect up to two transmitters and record two very clean sources of audio, which is amazing.

So I’m going to turn this one on, and you’re going to see what a difference that makes. And now you’re listening to the DJI Mike 2 directly into the Action 5. You can still hear some wind noise, but it’s a lot better than it was, and especially if I just tuck it in my jacket a little bit, it cleans up the wind noise even more.

So having this direct connection, especially if you work in areas where it’s like less than ideal conditions like I am today, where there’s a pretty dang strong wind coming out of that way, it makes a huge difference for being able to get good, clean audio.

Low Light Performance

Now for low-light performance, you’ve got to be realistic about any action camera. It’s a small camera with a small sensor, but the Action 4 had really good low-light performance for an action camera, and the Action 5 seems like it has even improved on that, which is pretty impressive considering that it’s still a tiny camera and tiny sensor.

Now right now, I’m shooting in the night mode, and it’s all auto settings. You can lock the shutter speed, but you can’t do anything with the ISO, and you can lock the white balance. I’ve locked the white balance, and everything else is just on auto. But now I want to switch to the DLog regular footage and just see what it looks like at higher ISOs.

So this is DLog M at 1600 ISO. This is 3200 ISO in DLog M 10-bit. And now we’re at 6400 ISO, which is probably about where I would expose this, but we’ll go ahead and keep going up. And now we’re at the top, which is 12,800 ISO, which is really high for a camera like this. I’m sure it’s noisy as crazy, or noisy as I’ll get out, but I’ve been pretty impressed in the past.

And all of that was shot with noise reduction at minus two, which is the way I prefer to shoot. But now I’ve got noise reduction on zero, which is the default, just to see what sort of difference it makes in the image.

Additional Features

Now there’s a ton of other features that they’ve added that I don’t have really time to go into, like pre-recording, burst shooting, a bunch of other stuff if you do scuba diving.

Battery Life

But one of the big things that stood out to me is the insane amount of battery life. All the stuff that you saw shot on the helicopter over two days, several hours of footage, was recorded on one battery. And almost all the talking head stuff recorded on the Action 5, including the FPV shots, was also recorded on one battery over the course of two days.

So the battery life on this camera is absolutely insane, and we weren’t exactly in warm conditions all of the time either. So whatever DJI’s done to adjust the chemistry of the battery or to adjust the way the camera uses power from the battery, the battery life is nuts—better than any other action camera I’ve ever seen.

Conclusion

Now for me, an action camera is a really useful tool, especially when I put out the vlogs where I take you along with me on a day in the life of my work here in Alaska. It’s a great camera to just have to get a POV shot or to get some odd angles because they’re pretty robust, they can handle a lot of really crappy weather and just keep getting some great footage.

The Action 5 has now definitely taken the place of any of the other action cameras I’ve used in the past. I will have a comparison with the new GoPro Hero 13 coming up shortly on this channel, so subscribe if you want to see that ’cause I’ll be doing lots of head-to-head footage tests and comparisons and all the different modes.

But in the meantime, you’re going to want to watch this video here next. I’ll see you over there. As always, if you have questions, ask me in the comments below or join my live stream, which happens most Wednesday nights at 4:00 PM Alaska time, 8:00 PM Eastern, where we can have more of a conversation. I can maybe get to questions I didn’t get to in this video.

I’ll see you again soon in the next one.

Cheers!