finished up breeze review

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+The camera market has long been segmented into three basic categories of users: Professionals, the so-called "serious hobbiest" and the newcomer. Whether or not these hard and fast divisions actually exist, cameras aimed at each market certainly do. Being about 150 years younger, the aerial photography market is somewhat less segmented. Up til now there have been only two categories: Professional drones and hobbiest drones. 
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+With the new Breeze 4K, Yuneec is hoping to lure in the previously ignored newcomer market. Yes, it's the drone equivalent of a cellphone camera, complete with an over-emphasis on selfies.
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+As someone who falls somewhere between the professional and serious amateur markets (which is to say I make money off drone cameras, but have not, thus far, felt the need for a "pro" level drone like the DJI Inspire 2) the Breeze should be something I scoff at, but to tell you the truth it's a lot of fun. Would I bring it to a high end real estate photo shoot? No, but it's good at what it does, loads of fun to fly and produces the kind of results that will look good shared on small screens via Instagram and YouTube.
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+The Breeze is lightweight and designed to fit in a backpack. While it's light, at 13 ounces it still needs to be registered with the FAA. It comes in a plastic suitcase-style case that keeps it protected from accidents while in your bag, but overall the plastic feels stiff and it felt a little more fragile than the GDU Byrd, which I happened to be testing at the same time. The good news is that pretty much every part you're liable to break is for sale individually, making it easy, if perhaps costly, to get your drone back in the air should you crash or otherwise break it.
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+As the name implies the Breeze comes with a 4K capable camera (30fps) though there are several important caveats to bear in mind. First, there is no stabilizing gimbal so the steadiness of your video is directly tied to your skills as a pilot. Recognizing that the newcomer won't have those piloting skills yet, the Breeze includes a host of preprogrammed auto flying modes that go a long way to improving video results. In other words the auto modes handle the stability issues. There's also some built in digital stabilization, but, and here's the second caveat: digital stabilization only works with 1080p video, not the 4K footage. Sadly, that means that, while the Breeze clearly wants to tout its 4K capabilities, they're of limited usefulness without stabilization.
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+That doesn't mean, however, that the Breeze isn't capable of some great shots and video. Once I got my hands on a device new enough to run the companion app I had no trouble getting great looking 1080p footage of the kind that it took me months to learn how to get back when the first DJI Phantom was released. It was an eye opening view of how quickly the drone market has progressed.
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+But back to the controller, or rather lack of controller. Yes, the Breeze controller is a smartphone app. The controller consists of virtual joysticks that behave just like the real thing, minus all the tactile feedback that can help with your reaction times. But again, the manual controls are almost an afterthought here, the point is the plethora of automated flight modes. There's the usual suspects that every current drone has -- follow me and orbit -- and there's also a couple of others like the selfie mode, journey mode and the manual pilot mode.
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+Follow me and orbit work like they do in Yuneec's larger, more expensive drones. Selfie mode ditches the control interface entirely and simple offers a slider for controlling the camera. Journey mode was the most impressive, it starts with a fly away shot and then comes zooming back in producing some very nice, smooth video in the process. 
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+The image and video quality is surprisingly good for a $500 drone this small. Video can be a little soft at times and stills probably won't look good as 16x20 prints, but for online sharing it's more than good enough most of the time. The one place I found it just didn't work well was in follow me mode where too tight of a shot made for jerky camera movements as the drone tried to keep up. 
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+Backing it up a bit in altitude fixed the problem, but highlighted the other big shortcoming: the Breeze really only stays aloft for about 10 minutes. On the plus side Yuneec includes two batteries, which means you get 20 minutes of flight time out of the box (with one battery switch) which should be enough time to get all the selfies you need.
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+At $500 the Breeze feels maybe slightly overpriced for that it is. Fortunately since its release there seems to have been something of a price war going on between various retailers. I had no trouble finding it for $380 and even less at some stores. At that price I have no qualms saying the Breeze makes a great buy for anyone looking to get into drone photography without breaking the bank or their expensive new drone.
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+Wired: Automated flight modes make it possible to get good quality video and photos without the learning curve of more expensive drones. In app sharing lets you get the results out to the world with little effort. Surprisingly fun to fly when you do decide to try manual mode
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+Tired: Flight time is only about 10 minutes, no stabilization for 4K video makes it next to useless, follow me mode produced jerky flight (and therefore video) when it was lower in altitude.
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+Rating: 6? 7?
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-The Chinese company YI has jumped into the mirrorless camera game with a new micro four thirds camera dubbed the M1. It's not every day that a brand new camera maker comes out of the woodwork, and indeed this isn't YI's first camera -- the company makes an "action" camera which is, by most accounts, quite impressive -- but it is the first brand new entrant in the micro four thirds game in some time.
+The Chinese company YI has jumped into the mirrorless camera game with a new Micro Four Thirds camera dubbed the M1. It's not every day that a brand new camera maker comes out of the woodwork, and indeed this isn't YI's first camera -- the company makes an "action" camera which is, by most accounts, quite impressive -- but it is the first brand new entrant in the Micro Four Thirds game in some time.
 
-If you've ever wondered what would happen if you took the camera interface of your average cellphone and bolted it onto a Leica-inspired compact micro four thirds body, well, the M1 is here with the answer. The M1's design owes a debt to the Leica T. The compact body with flush dials, minimal buttons and even a distinctive red logo mark all recall the Leica T, along with some of Panasonic's Leica partnered efforts. With a sticker price of only $700 though, the M1 is definitely not a Leica T. 
+If you've ever wondered what would happen if you took the camera interface of your average cellphone and bolted it onto a Leica-inspired compact Micro Four Thirds body, well, the M1 is here with the answer. The M1's design owes a debt to the Leica T. The compact body with flush dials, minimal buttons and even a distinctive red logo mark all recall the Leica T, along with some of Panasonic's Leica partnered efforts. With a sticker price of only $700 though, the M1 is definitely not a Leica T. 
 
-The M1 sports an almost entirely touchscreen UI. There's a mode dial and a control dial for setting shutter and aperture (depending on which mode your in) and just two buttons on the back, one for playback and one for AF selection. There's a hotshoe, but the package I was sent did not include a flash of any kind.
+The M1 sports an almost entirely touchscreen UI. There's a mode dial and a control dial for setting shutter and aperture (depending on which mode you're in) and just two buttons on the back, one for playback and one for AF selection. There's a hotshoe, but the package I was sent did not include a flash of any kind.
 
-Holding the M1 is comfortable, it's a lightweight, mostly plastic camera that feels more like a point and shoot than anything. For comparison's sake it's about one half of an inch narrower and shorter than the Panasonic GX 85 I tested last month. The shutter button is well placed and easy enough to find by feel, not that you'll have the M1 held to your eye, but just picking up the camera puts your fingers where you want them, something a surprising number of compact camera's get wrong. There's a dedicated video button in the center of the mode dial that's somewhat less easy to find by feel.
+Holding the M1 is comfortable, it's a lightweight, mostly plastic camera that feels more like a point and shoot than anything. For comparison's sake it's about one half of an inch narrower and shorter than the Panasonic GX 85 I tested last month. The shutter button is well placed and easy enough to find by feel, not that you'll have the M1 held to your eye, but just picking up the camera puts your fingers where you want them, something a surprising number of compact cameras get wrong. There's a dedicated video button in the center of the mode dial that's somewhat less easy to find by feel.
 
-The control dial is similarly well placed, just under where my thumb rested with holding the M1. I primary shoot in aperture priority mode and had no trouble with the control dial. The mode dial also manages to find the sweet spot between "easy to turn" and "doesn't accidentally turn in your bag". Aside from the playback button and AF select button that's it for the physical interface of the M1.
+The control dial is similarly well placed, just under where my thumb rested while holding the M1. I primarily shoot in aperture priority mode and had no trouble with the control dial. The mode dial also manages to find the sweet spot between "easy to turn" and "doesn't accidentally turn in your bag". Aside from the playback button and AF select button that's it for the physical interface of the M1.
 
 The rest of what you'll want to control in the M1 will be done through the touch interface. The menu is simple enough and follows touch UI conventions with swipe gestures as well as tab buttons supported. The interface works quite well and is responsive enough, though it's nowhere near as fast as the UI of a phone. I bring this up mainly because the target market here seems to be cellphone users who want to move up to a "real" camera. The UI won't be a problem for anyone who's well versed in mobile device photography, but the experience is somewhat slower. 
 
@@ -14,19 +14,18 @@ The lack of physical buttons means that you'll need to dive into the menus quite
 
 The UI itself is simple to use. There are three tap-target circles on the left edge of the screen in shooting mode. They are, from top to bottom, aperture, shutter speed, and EV compensation. To adjust them you can just select by tapping and use the control dial. Alternately you can tap on them and adjust via the touch screen though this takes much longer.
 
-Changing the metering mode, adjusting white balance, ISO or other setting mean going deeper into the UI with a swipe the right. This will bring up three screens worth of settings and adjustments. Swiping the main screen to the left bring up some different output settings, like vivid, high contrast black and white among other. 
+Changing the metering mode, adjusting white balance, ISO or other setting mean going deeper into the UI with a swipe the right. This will bring up three screens worth of settings and adjustments. Swiping the main screen to the left bring up some different output settings, like vivid, high contrast black and white among others. 
 
-Overall I would put the M1's UI at about average for the field. It is almost entirely touchscreen base, which while not completely original, but is not common in m4/3 either. As with any new camera spending some time learning the quirks of the UI will pay off down the road.
+Overall I would put the M1's UI at about average for the field. It is an almost entirely touchscreen base, which while not completely original, but is not common in Micro Four Thirds either. As with any new camera spending some time learning the quirks of the UI will pay off down the road.
 
-One place the M1 shines is that the $600 base price gets you not one, but two kit lenses. One is a macro-capable 42.5mm f1.8 prime lens (85mm equivalent for 35mm). The other is a 12-40 f3.5-f5.6 zoom (24-80mm 35mm equivalent). They are both lightweight, plastic lenses with about the build quality you'd expect at this price, which is to say they didn't fall apart, but they're a long way from solid. 
+One place the M1 shines is that the $700 base price gets you not one, but two kit lenses. One is a macro-capable 42.5mm f1.8 prime lens (85mm equivalent for 35mm). The other is a 12-40 f3.5-f5.6 zoom (24-80mm 35mm equivalent). They are both lightweight, plastic lenses with about the build quality you'd expect at this price, which is to say they didn't fall apart, but they're a long way from solid. 
 
 Optically the zoom is predictably soft at the edges until you get above F8. The prime is much sharper and makes a decent portrait lens. Unfortunately the manual focus wheel is just for looks. This makes the macro feature next to useless on what would otherwise be a pretty decent "macro capable" prime lens.
 
-The other reason the lack of manual focus is disappoint is that autofocus is not the M1's strong suite. Focusing is slow, and not just in low light. The M1 take a noticeable amount of time to lock onto static targets and if anything is moving, forget it. You might think switching to continuous AF would help, but alas, it does not. Combine C-AF with burst mode and you'll get some hilariously bad results. I tried to shoot this way while my kids were flying a kite at the park and found that the M1 was never actually able to refocus after the first shot, to say nothing of tracking. Suffice to say that if shooting fast moving subjects, and possibly moving subjects at all, is a requirement, then this is not the camera for you. It would be possible to overcome this a bit by going old school with a manual focus lens and small aperture, but if that's how you shoot you probably aren't in the target market for the M1 in the first place.
+The other reason the lack of manual focus is disappointment is that autofocus is not the M1's strong suit. Focusing is slow, and not just in low light. The M1 takes a noticeable amount of time to lock onto static targets and if anything is moving, forget it. You might think that switching to continuous AF would help, but alas, it does not. Combine C-AF with burst mode and you'll get some hilariously bad results. I tried to shoot this way while my kids were flying a kite at the park and found that the M1 was never actually able to refocus after the first shot, to say nothing of tracking. Suffice to say that if shooting fast moving subjects, and possibly moving subjects at all, is a requirement, then this is not the camera for you. It would be possible to overcome this a bit by going old school with a manual focus lens and small aperture, but if that's how you shoot you probably aren't in the target market for the M1 in the first place.
 
 The M1 uses a 20MP Sony sensor that produces either JPEG or DNG RAW files (but not both at the same time). The image quality of both the RAW and JPG files is quite good. I found the color rendition of the JPGs to be a bit washed out, but the RAW files had decent dynamic range and you can easily pull out an extra two stops of detail in the shadows before the noise gets too bad. Speaking of noise, the M1 will shoot up to ISO 25600, though in my testing anything over 6400 was largely unusable (very noise in RAW and a blurry mush in the camera-corrected JPGs).
 
 The M1 is capable of quality video at 30fps, which is an impressive spec for a $700 camera with two lenses. Unfortunately to shoot in 4k it does some serious cropping, which means wide angle shots are largely impossible. There's also no external mic jack, and, as with stills, AF speed is an issue. 
 
 Should you pick up the M1? Probably not. It's a decent first release, but there are other options in this price range that are considerably more capable. Both the Olympus PEN E-PL7 and Panasonic GX85 are only $100 more than the M1 and can run circles around in it nearly every category. If you really want to step up, the APS-C based Sony alpha 5000 is currently available with kit lens for roughly the same as the M1. It's not that the M1 is incapable, in fact I look forward to seeing what YI comes up with in future releases, just that in its current incarnation it's not a good value for the money.
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