Today the French drone maker Parrot launched the all-new Anafi drone in New York. Parrot took inspiration from insects such as wasps and beetles to design this light-weight, foldable drone. The drone is very light-weight (320 grams) and folds up to a very small package, however, this does not mean it doesn’t pack a punch. The Anafi features a 21MP Sony sensor, shoots 4K video, HDR photos and a host of intelligent flight features. The drone is also very quiet, making it much less obtrusive to bystanders than most of the drones consumers are used to. The new Parrot drone can be pre-ordered today for $699.99 and will be available at retailers as of July 1st. Shipping will start as of July 2nd. Meet Parrot’s Anafi drone The designers and engineers of the French drone company Parrot were very much inspired by the wasp and the beetle for the design and form factor of their latest drone. In fact, some of the first slides in today’s launch presentation showed the similarities between the unmanned aircraft and these insects. The body of the drone is long and slender and at the end there’s a free moving gimbal that can move 90° upward and downward, showing some similarities with the head of a wasp. The folding legs of the drone and the protection around the gimbal were inspired by the beetle. The Anafi drone has four folding legs that fold and unfold very easily. Much more straightforward than for instance to DJI Mavic Air or Mavic Pro, which tend to confuse people. The latest drone from Parrot only weighs 320 grams (0.7 lbs.) and has a maximum flight time of 25 minutes. The propellers are wider, shorter, more rounders and made of a softer semi-transparent material. Most importantly they are much quieter than the typical drones consumers are used to. The Drone can be launched by hand and has a maximum speed of 34 mph. Charging the intelligent battery takes place through USB-C. In terms of photo and video capabilities, the Anafi features the 1/2.4” CMOS Sony 21MP IMX230 sensor with lossless zoom up to 2.8x, in combination with the Ambarella video processor. It offers 4K HDR video and photos that provide 2 additional stops of light. It features a new gimbal design with 2 mechanical axes and 1 digital axis for stabilized video footage, including a 4K Cinema mode (17:9 ratio) with P-Log that allows for greater flexibility for color grading in post-production. The drone offers the following video modes: 4K Cinema: 24 fps 4K UHD: 24, 25, 30 fps 1080p: 24, 25, 30, 48, 50 or 60 fps The drone is controlled by the Parrot Skycontroller 3 and the FreeFlight 6 mobile app. What’s in the box? 1 Parrot Anafi Drone with Smart Battery 1 Parrot Skycontroller 3 1 storage case 1 micro SD card 16 GB 1 USB-A / USB-C cable 8 additional propellers 1 screwdriver Pricing and availability The Parrot Anafi is available for preorder today at $699.99. Shipping will start as of July 2nd but it will be available in the stores and online as of July 1st. We flew the Anafi today and walked away very impressed with this latest drone from Parrot. Expect our first impressions and a full review soon. Photo Gallery Specifications What do you think about Parrot’s Anafi drone? Let us know in the comments below. STAY IN TOUCH! If you’d like to stay up to date with all the latest drone news, scoops, rumors and reviews, then follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram or sign up for our email newsletter DroneRise, that goes out every weekday morning at 6 am. If you’d like to help us grow, you can buy your next drone through one of the following links directly from manufacturers, such as DJI, Parrot, Yuneec or retailers like Amazon, B&H, BestBuy or eBay. We will make a small commission and it will not cost you anything extra. Thank you! Subscribe to DroneDJ on YouTube for exclusive videos<doc-sep>It’s been a while since Parrot released a new consumer-level drone, but today, June 6, at a press conference in New York City, the company pulled the curtain back on a new addition to its fleet: a high-end, folding quadcopter named Anafi. Whereas Parrot’s earlier drones were more on the toyish side of the spectrum, and were arguably more focused on fun flying than capturing video, Anafi is purpose-built for aerial photography and videography. As such, it’s outfitted with all the requisite bells and whistles we’ve come to expect from UAVs in this category — including a camera that shoots 4K video and 21-megapixel stills, range of over two miles, a 25-minute max flight time, auto-follow functionality, and a folding form factor that makes it easy to transport. If that sounds somewhat milquetoast and standard-issue, it’s because it is. You can already buy drones with the aforementioned capabilities, but Parrot is well aware of this fact — so it equipped Anafi with a handful of innovative features and functions that help it stand out from the rest of the pack. Here’s a quick rundown. Raising the bar with HDR The first and most notable of these is Anafi’s ability to shoot high dynamic range (HDR) video. We’ll spare you the gory technical details of how it works and why it’s a big deal, but in a nutshell, this means that this drone can capture video at multiple different exposure levels simultaneously, and blend all those exposures together to create a single shot that has outrageously good contrast. As far as we can tell, Anafi is the first consumer-level drone on the market with HDR video capabilities, which is a pretty big deal. Even some of the best drones you can buy right now tend to have trouble with high-contrast scenes, and HDR could help mitigate that issue — which gives Parrot a leg up on competitors like DJI and Yuneec. Tilt and whirl Second, Anafi is eqiupped with a 3-axis gimbal stabilizer that has 180 degrees of tilt freedom. In other words, not only can this drone look straight down, it can also look straight up. This feature presumably gives you a broader range of creative freedom while you shoot, and allows you to capture footage from above or below your subject. Shooting like this simply isn’t possible on the vast majority of today’s camera drones, as they almost always carry their cameras below the hull, or inside nose-mounted stabilizers with limited upward motion. Zoom, zoom, zoom Another uncommon feature that Anafi boasts is lossless digital zoom — something that’s notably absent from just about every other drone in the sub-$1,000 category. Parrot’s shooter can zoom up to 1.4x in 4K and 2.8x in 1080p without distorting image quality in any way. Functionally, this allows you to get closer to your subject without actually flying closer — which could come in handy for, say, wildlife shots where you risk scaring away the animals if you buzz your drone too close (although it’s worth mentioning that Anafi also happens to be relatively quiet for a quadcopter). Aside from that, Anafi’s lossless zoom also enables an awesome shooting trick that, until now, was rather difficult to achieve with a flying camera: the dolly zoom (also known as the vertigo zoom or Hitchcock zoom). You’ve probably seen this before in movies. It’s the shot where the central subject remains the same size while the background zooms in and out, creating a vertigo-inducing visual effect. Parrot’s setup automates the process so you can take dolly zoom shots at the press of a button. Sprinkles on top, and a competitive price There’s also a handful of small, thoughtful design elements that help round out the package — things like a launch-from-hand function, 3D mapping software, a USB-C battery that can also be used as a smartphone charger, and the ability to fly Anafi with or without a controller. The best feature, however, is the price. You can pre-order Anafi today for the comparatively-low-but-admittedly-still-kinda-high price of $700 — which puts it squarely in competition with DJI’s infamous Mavic drones. Whether or not Anafi can stand toe to toe with the Mavic Air has yet to be seen, but if you’re curious, be sure to circle back later this month to check out our in-depth review. Editors' Recommendations<doc-sep>
Yes, the major public clouds offer a lot. But what you may not know are the limitations, and how open clouds make the difference. Elevate your enterprise data technology and strategy at Transform 2021. At a press event in New York City today, France’s Parrot announced the Anafi, a new drone with a 4K high dynamic range (HDR) camera. Anafi is available for preorder today starting at $700 and ships on July 1. The Anafi, which Parrot says was two years in the making, focuses on four core pillars: image quality, flight performance, foldability, and ease of use. The diminutive drone weighs just 0.7 pounds and is 25 percent quieter than its predecessor, the Bebop 2, thanks to a carbon fiber filled with hollow glass microbeads. Its arms fold and unfurl in less than three seconds, and even the controller is designed for portability — unfolding in around a second. On the image quality front, the new drone doesn’t disappoint. The aforementioned 4K HDR camera has a 21MP Sony IMX230 sensor with optics “specifically designed” for the Anafi. It’s able to withstand extreme temperatures (14 degrees to 104 degrees Fahrenheit), can shoot up to 30 frames per second in 4K at 100Mbps, and has a lossless zoom of 1.4x, 3x digital zoom in 4K, and 2.8x in Full HD (1080p). Highlights include a hyper-lapse shooting mode that speeds footage up to 240 times, and a high frame rate mode of 60 frames per second. A companion smartphone app, FreeFlight 6, allows pilots to adjust the resolution, photo format, shutter speed, white balance, exposure, and other options on the fly. The camera is mounted on a 3-axis gimbal that’s both mechanically and digitally stabilized and is able to tilt up to 90 degrees vertically. On the performance side of the equation, the Anafi comes through once again. Parrot’s FreeFlight 6 app boasts two manual control modes, both with adjustable rotation, incline, and camera tilt settings: Film and Sport. In Sport mode, the drone can hit speeds of up to 32 miles per hour and withstand wind speeds up to 33 miles per hour. A a polymer lithium battery at the heart of the Anafi delivers up to 25 minutes of flight time. The drone continuously self-monitors charge time and has a chemistry-protecting hibernation mode that allows it to quickly return to take-off position. An integrated charger with a USB-C port supports fast charging — Parrot says it takes about an hour and a half for Anafi to reach full capacity. Gallery: Anafi Carrying Case and Controller The Anafi’s dual-band, four-antenna Wi-Fi chip supports 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, which connect to Parrot’s Skycontroller 3, with a range of up to 2.48 miles. A microcontroller constantly monitors nearby Wi-Fi signals in order to switch to another channel when one becomes too crowded. Last, but not least, Parrot’s companion app features all-new modes that “adapt to all users.” Beginners have access to automatic control settings, such as Smart Dronies and CineShots, and advanced users can select or customize camera settings. There are three modes to choose from: Smart Dronies, Cameraman mode, and Follow me, which uses a neural network to lock onto a subject on the ground. The app conveniently syncs with the Skycontroller 3 remote, which connects to an Android or iOS phone via USB-A. Setting changes on the app reflect on the remote, and vice versa. The Anafi, it seems clear, is Parrot’s answer to DJI’s top-of-the-line offering, and HDR on a drone is a first. We’ll have to see how it performs in practice, but from the spec sheet, the Anafi is competitive out of the gate.