DJI put the Osmo Pocket 4P on sale today in Europe, the UK, Canada and Australia. The camera was shown back in May and had already been selling in China and across Asia, but until this morning you could not buy it in Italy. Now you can, for 599 euro, and it is worth a proper look even though it is not a cinema tool.

Two lenses, not one

The real news is the dual-lens module, a first for the Pocket series. The wide is a 20mm equivalent at f/2.0 sitting in front of a newly developed 1-inch CMOS sensor: DJI claims 17 stops of dynamic range achieved with LOFIC technology, a different approach from the dual-gain designs almost everyone else uses. The second lens is a 60mm equivalent at f/1.8 on a 1/1.28-inch sensor, with a quoted equivalent depth of field of f/6.3 and 3x optical zoom relative to the wide, extendable up to 12x in supported modes.

Frame rates are generous: 4K up to 240 fps on the wide camera, 4K up to 200 fps on the telephoto, plus standard 4K and 1080p from 24 to 60 fps and vertical 3K and 1080p modes. There is a Low-Light mode in 4K up to 30 fps with ISO extended to 51200 on the wide camera, and a Slow Shutter Video mode for light trails.

D-Log 2 and the bridge to LogC4

The part that interests us most is the new 10-bit D-Log 2 profile. DJI quotes a theoretical maximum dynamic range of 19.4 EV and highlight latitude up to 11.3 EV, and says a simple hue transform brings D-Log 2 material into an ARRI ALEXA 35 LogC4 workflow. On the first point it is worth being honest: manufacturer theoretical figures almost never match the stops you can actually use, and until independent measurements land we treat them as claims, not data. The workflow compatibility, though, is a practical fact: if a colourist has to drop two shots from a pocket camera into an edit shot in LogC4, the job gets a lot shorter.

Our take, as a rental house

Let us be clear: the Pocket 4P is not a rental item and it will not be joining our catalogue. It costs about two days of a cinema camera, so you just buy it. But it ends up on sets anyway, and on our sets we see three good uses. First, as a crash cam: where you would never send a Sony FX6 or an ARRI ALEXA Mini (inside a car, strapped to a helmet, into the crowd at a village festival), a 230-gram body with a three-axis gimbal will go. Second, behind-the-scenes: social material for the client shot in parallel, without pulling the main operator off the job. Third, location scouting, where you want to come home with something watchable rather than crooked phone snaps.

Two practical notes. One: if you use it as a B-cam next to a Sony body in S-Log3, budget for an extra conversion step, because the two log curves do not talk to each other on their own. Two: 103 GB of internal storage sounds like plenty until you start recording 4K 240; bring a microSD, it takes cards up to 1 TB, and offloading over USB 3.1 hits 800 MB/s. Quoted runtime is 210 minutes under lab conditions, with charging from zero to 80 per cent in 18 minutes: in practice one battery covers a morning, not a full day.

If what you actually want is real, controllable movement, this is the wrong tool: for a proper moving shot you still want a DJI RS 3 Mini with a mirrorless on top. The Pocket 4P is a complement, not a replacement. You will find the rest of our production-ready rental packages here.

Price and availability

  • Standard Combo: 599 euro (VAT included, prices may vary slightly between EU countries)
  • Vlog Combo: 689 euro
  • Colours: black available from day one, pearl white later
  • Firmware v01.01.58.03 at launch: 10-bit HDR colour mode, automatic transfer to iOS, fill light with automatic brightness and colour temperature

One notable absence: the Pocket 4P is not on sale in the United States, where authorisation is still pending. It is the same pattern seen with recent DJI releases, with Europe and Asia served ahead of the American market. For anyone producing in Italy, for once, we are on the right side of the calendar. Full details are on the official DJI product page, while complete specs and first impressions are on CineD.