been seeing all the hype about the inspire 3 and yeah the specs look insane on paper but im curious if anyones actually using it for legit professional shoots. like not just testing it out but actually delivering footage to clients and stuff

i mean the price is around $16,499 for the combo kit which is brutal compared to what we paid for inspire 2 setups back in the day. one guy calculated his full inspire 3 setup would cost over $26k after taxes to match what he has with his inspire 2

the 8K imaging system with full-frame sensor sounds amazing but im wondering if its actually making a difference in real world scenarios or if clients even care. most of my stuff ends up being delivered in 4K anyway so not sure if the 8K is worth the massive price jump

also heard some mixed things about rolling shutter issues making footage unusable from someone working on wildlife docs. anyone else running into problems like that?

yeah ive been running the inspire 3 for about 6 months now on commercial projects. honestly the image quality is pretty incredible, especially the 14+ stops of dynamic range when shooting sunrise/sunset stuff. clients definitely notice the difference in post

the rolling shutter thing is real though, you gotta be more careful with your movements compared to the inspire 2. not a deal breaker but definitely requires adjusting your flying style a bit. the lack of continuous autofocus is annoying for single operator work too

price wise... yeah its painful but if youre doing high end commercial work the clients are willing to pay for it. the timesync support and professional workflow integration actually saves time on bigger productions

honestly i think the inspire 2 with x7 is still the sweet spot for most people. the price delta is much higher than the actual benefits and inspire 2 wins for most use cases

used market is full of inspire 2s since the I3 release, got one with X5S for ?1300 in excellent condition. unless youre specifically doing feature film work or need that full frame sensor i'd save the money

plus the DL lenses from inspire 2 work with inspire 3 so if you upgrade later you dont lose everything