so ive been running an Inspire 2 with the X7 for about four years now and honestly it's held up better than i expected for the kind of work i do, mostly corporate stuff, some real estate but also a few short film projects where the DCI 4K raw from the X7 was genuinely needed by the colorist downstream. the thing is my main client is starting to ask about 8K and whether we can deliver ProRes RAW and im sitting here wondering if the jump to the Inspire 3 is actually justified right now or if im just getting pressured into a gear upgrade that doesnt change the final product that much.

the Inspire 3 with the DL-mount and the Zenmuse X9-8K is obviously a different beast, full-frame sensor, up to 8K CinemaDNG which sounds insane for a drone platform, and the dual battery setup supposedly fixed a lot of the thermal issues people complained about with the I2. but the price difference is just brutal and im not sure the rental income would offset it fast enough. anyone actually running the I3 on paid jobs, not just playing with it? curious what the real world workflow looks like with the X9 footage, file sizes alone must be a nightmare.

we made the switch to the I3 about eight months ago and honestly the X9-8K footage is genuinely something else, but you need to be ready for the pipeline headache. shooting CinemaDNG 8K at anything above 25fps will eat through CFexpress cards faster than you expect and if your client's editor is not running a serious workstation they're going to be crying when they try to pull those files into Premiere. we had one job early on where the post house wasnt prepared and it turned into a whole thing. the drone itself flies beautifully though, the O3 Pro transmission held solid at distance in a way the lightbridge on the I2 sometimes didnt and the locking mechanism on the gimbal port is way more confidence inspiring when you're swapping the X9 in the field.

that said if your I2 and X7 combo is delivering what clients actually need right now i'd hold off. the 8K ask is often more of a checkbox thing than a genuine production requirement, most of the time it just gets downsampled anyway.

slightly off topic but are you renting out the I2 between jobs or just sitting on it? asking because ive been looking at renting one for a project and the local market near me is pretty dry for Inspire rentals. the X7 specifically is what the DP on this job wants.