10 Best Camera Drones in India 2021 (DJI, Mi, and more)

Do you need a drone for recreational flying, for capturing travel videos, or just for practicing before you invest in a professional and a more expensive one? Decide on that and choose from the list below, featuring products from top brands like DJI, FIMI, Mi, and more.

Read through to learn how to choose a drone depending on your needs and factors like range, flight time, camera resolution, and more. You will need this information while you are shopping for a camera drone later in the top 10 section.

Have you been to mountain valleys or rocky canyons that are difficult to trek? Only if you had a drone with you. You can sit in your car and explore the beautiful places by flying a drone in these places. Camera drones offer different ranges. 

Expensive ones may offer drone control and live video feed to your smartphone up to 10 km, while cheaper ones can have a range as low as 50 meters. If your need is to create content for social media or capture breathtaking videos of the places you visit, buy one with at least a 2 km range.

For recreational flying or capturing videos of house parties or aerial photos of yourself and your friends, a range of 100 meters is more than enough. When it comes to range, a drone's altitude limit is also a deciding factor.

The higher a drone goes, the larger the area that gets captured. But if your intention is to shoot a video of yourself in an aesthetically pleasing environment (for example, beaches, islands, canyons, lakes, etc.), you won't need to go any more than 50 meters. Check out this YouTube video to get an idea of how much area a drone 50 meters high can cover.

As the camera quality goes up, the price of the drone increases too. For drone racing or shooting travel videos for your personal use, a camera resolution of 720p is sufficient. Anything lesser can only produce blurry videos. But if you got the budget, go for products that offer 4K video quality. Who doesn't like crystal clear videos of nature and landscapes.

Beginner models may only offer 4K video shooting at 30 fps (frames per second). So if you want slow-motion videos, you may have to shoot at a lower resolution of 2.7K or 1080p to unlock higher frame rates of 48, 60, and more. Let's look at the types of video stabilization offered by drones.

Drones do not cause shaky videos when they are hovering. But it is possible when the drone is changing directions or if the wind is blowing against it. Video stabilization feature becomes necessary in situations like this. There are three types of stabilization technology available—mechanical, electronic, and digital.

A gimbal uses mechanical stabilization technology. It pivots a camera on a single axis to offer stabilization. Drones with a gimbal move the camera in the opposite direction of a force to keep it steady. Electronic stabilization is not as effective as mechanical since it compensates for jerks and shakes only by adjusting the lens inside the camera.

If you want a steady frame even while attempting complex cinematic shots, go for a drone with a gimbal. Digital image stabilization is the most inferior technology of the three. It zooms into a video or an image and actively adjusts the frames to remove the shakes. It is not a desirable solution as digital zooming in can reduce video quality.

Longer flying times are always desirable. But this factor too changes according to the price of the product. Inexpensive ones offer an average flying time of 10 minutes, while flight times can go up to 30 minutes for beginner drones as the price goes up. 

If your budget only allows drones with less flying times, plan and practice ahead to finish shooting quickly before the battery runs out. But for shooting public events like parties or capturing travel videos, you need to invest in a drone with at least 30 minutes of flight time. 

Some companies also offer combo packs that come with multiple batteries. This enables you to switch batteries when the current one runs out and continue shooting while the circumstances are ideal.

Camera drones come with several features to assist the user in flying them safely and easily. Let's go through the most common ones.

Imagine that the drone is facing you while you are controlling it. When you move the control stick in a specific direction, the drone moves accordingly. What if you go behind the drone? Now, moving the control stick to the left will make the drone move to the right, from your perspective.

When the headless mode is turned on, you can position yourself anywhere you want, and the drone will fly accordingly. Going back to the example above, the drone will now move left when you move the control stick left, even though you are behind it.

Wondering how to mimic your favorite shots in movies? You can do it using a drone, but it requires a lot of experience and practice. To make it possible for beginner drone pilots, companies pre-program complex shots into a drone. 

You can select the one you like in the smartphone app, and the drone will pull it off automatically. For example, for a "dronie shot", the camera will lock onto a subject and fly backward and then upwards. 

For a rocket shot, the camera will point downwards and lock on to the subject while moving up. You can also set your drone to track a subject. For example, you can set the drone to track your body while cycling and even click pictures using hand gestures.

What if the battery runs low when the drone is far away from you? Or your controller lost connection to the drone? In such scenarios, the return home feature will automatically bring the drone back to you. You can also use this feature to call back the drone without having to fly it back manually.

One of the most important features a drone should have is GPS. It makes the drone easier to control and a requirement to use the return home feature. GPS also allows you to draw a flight route on the map in the smartphone app, which the drone follows smoothly for easier video capturing.

It also makes the drone stop and hovers when it approaches a no-fly zone, thus avoiding accidents. Drone controllers normally have two control sticks and a smartphone holder for viewing live video footage.

But you can control it directly from your smartphone too, either using touch controls or using the gyro sensors. Some drones come with one-hand controllers too, which allows you to control the drone movement intuitively by hovering your thumb over a sensitive joystick.

Drones need to be lightweight and under a specific weight for two reasons—legal and portability. The legal reasons will be discussed in the following section. A lightweight drone is easy to carry when you are traveling. To make it even more compact and travel-friendly, companies make drones foldable, thus saving space in your luggage.

If you are a travel vlogger, it is advisable to go for a foldable drone for the reasons above. Another feature to look for is the propeller guards (a propeller is a rotating fan that lifts a drone up). Some companies sell propeller guards separately, while others incorporate them into the drone design. Beginner drone pilots tend to bump into walls which can damage the propeller and motors. 

Buying one with propeller guards will avoid such situations. When drones lift off or land on the ground, the high-speed propellers splatter dust and dirt off the ground. This can damage the drone and the camera in the long run. Buying landing legs for your drone is a good idea to prolong its life. Most beginner camera drones don't have landing legs, so you may have to buy it from third-party companies.

Beginner camera drones usually come in the nano or micro category. You must register your drone on the Digital Sky website and obtain a Unique Identification Number (UIN) if it weighs more than 250 grams (micro category and above). 

Drone operators require an Unmanned Aircraft Operator Permit (UAOP) except for nano drones flying below 50 feet and micro drones flying below 200 feet. Here are some rules you need to follow while flying. The drone must be in the visual line of sight of the operator while flying, and it must not go beyond an altitude of 400 feet. 

If the drone you are planning to buy is in the micro category or above, make sure it has the following mandatory features: Return-to-home (RTH), GPS, ID plate, anti-collision light, flight controller (with the capability to log flight data), and No Permission No Takeoff (NPNT), as these are mandatory as per the Government’s guidelines. 

Do you know you can connect a VR headset to a drone? You can use it for capturing videos of hard-to-reach places like mountain tops, valleys, and canyons easily. Like drones, cameras and power banks are also important pieces of equipment for a content creator.

Click on the links below to read the buying guides for choosing the best vlogging camera, VR headsets, and power banks in India. We also have a top 10 list with the best products available to buy online in India.

It is always best to invest in an inexpensive one to practice if you plan on buying a professional drone for work. But if you want one that's easy to control so you can learn to fly and later use them for your personal or professional needs, choose the best one that fits your budget. Some must-have features in a beginner camera drone are Return Home and Headless Mode.

For shooting videos during parties or landscapes, focus on the camera quality as well. A video with excellent quality is always fun to watch and ideal for social media uploads. Another important feature to look for is the stabilization system. A drone with mechanical stabilization produces smoother videos than one with digital or electronic stabilization.

Author - Arun F Xaviour