Xiaomi FIMI Palm Moroccan Camera Test - Even Much Better!

A great Xiaomi vacation, sports, birthday videos so you can make really professional shots.

Xiaomi FIMI Palm - Introduction

For the first time, I’m sincerely glad for him that my camera didn’t arrive earlier. He tossed in the shipping catwalk caused by the coronavirus for weeks, first captured by the Chinese airport, then touring in Belgium, but now he is finally here in my hands.

Of course, now you’re wondering why I was glad he didn’t arrive earlier. I'll tell you. According to reports on the net, the software was half-finished, to put it mildly, and it was a godless suck to use the camera. There was no problem with the picture quality even then, and with that I shoot the joke, not now either.

While I was waiting for the FIMI Palm, I kept an eye on the software updates and it can be seen that FIMI is trying to fix the bugs because a new version comes almost every week. This has now resulted in a usable camera, but details will be provided below.

Packing, outer

For the FIMI Palm box, I think simple is the best term. He did a little nothing, especially knowing the packaging of Xiaomi’s other products. FIMI is operating under the wings of Xiaomi, so I would have expected a slightly better box.

The desolation continues inside. I took the camera out with great difficulty, I found a guide written in ornate Chinese and a less ornate English that explains the basics. After all, enough to get started, anyone interested in the topic should read a test on the net.

From the outside, the camera is just like the device DJI Osmo Pocket, launched last year, and a very successful one, the first of its kind among Moroccan cameras with gimball. DJI cameras are damn good pieces, to put it mildly, I’m an extremely happy owner of a DJI OSMO Action myself, so I know what I’m talking about when I say quality stuff.

In the case of the DJI, the camera hardware isn’t really the big bang, I would give the Nobel Prize to someone who realized that the gimbal used in their drones formed a frank unit with a camera and a grip that just fit in the palm of their hand.

FIMI really did nothing but copy and modify the recipe a bit. Since FIMI also excels in making drones, we could have hoped to put the FIMI X8 SE’s great (or at least quite good) 4K camera in their handheld camera, as it is, from furry to leathery. Well, that didn’t quite happen that way, but let’s not run so far ahead.

So, the camera looks like this from the outside:

At the bottom, at the base, is a USB Type-C connector, through which we can connect a microphone, connect it to the computer to save pictures and videos, and, of course, charge them.

Returning to the software anomalies mentioned last in the introduction, it was characteristic of the semi-finished state of the software that initially the camera was not connected between the drives when connected to the computer, so the videos could not be saved either. Dementia. Fortunately, this “mistake” has already been remedied.

On the side of the handle facing us, we find a small joystick on the left and the power button on the right. Above them is a display, and at the top is the kingdom itself, with the three-axis gimbal, with the camera on it. So much for that, you see everything in the pictures.

abilities

Here, really, only dry facts follow, experience and usability will come later. If you’re not angry, I’m not going to burden you with comparison charts between the twice as much DJI Osmo Pocket and the FIMI Palm. If you have a lot of money, you will stay with the former anyway, and if you are looking for a cost-effective but very usable alternative, then at Palm.

The total structure weighs 120 grams, which means it doesn’t have much weight. The dimensions are not large either, only 30,6 x 22,8 x 132 millimeters. The display is of course touch sensitive, with a diagonal of 1,22 inches, a resolution of 240 x 240 pixels and a brightness of 600 nit.

The built-in battery with its 1000 mAh capacity seems tiny, but if I tell you that it can take 4 hours of 1080p video, the girl’s position isn’t that bad anymore. The kind of sensor that works in it is only known at FIMI, they are pretty shy in terms of information. We know it's ½.6 inches and 12 megapixels. The only relevant information they are willing to disclose is that the central unit (SoC) is supplied by Hisilicon. The name of the manufacturer is not bad, but of course this is invisibly a guarantee of nothing. The wide-angle camera sees a maximum of 128 degrees and the aperture is f / 2.4. What’s welcome, though, is that we also get HDR, which really has a beneficial effect on the color scheme of our films.

The maximum resolution of the videos can be 4K, in this mode we get 30 FPS in NTSC and 25 FPS in PAL mode. For 2,7 K and 1080p, the maximum frame rate can be 60 FPS and 50 PAL for PAL. Video compression can be H.264 or better, H.265 is available under the name HEVC. 

The capabilities include Timelaps and Hyperlaps, and if you already have a gimbal to rotate the camera with, you can use the much more spectacular Motion Laps option one day. The latter, i.e., a case where not only can we set how many times to shoot an image, which is then cut into an accelerated video, but the point of view also changes. This is the latest, pity that there is no trace in the software (or I'm just lame).

Obviously, slow motion recording was not out of the question either. Unfortunately, fourfold deceleration is only available in 1080p, eightfold is only available in 720p. . The first is horizontal, the second is vertical, and the last is normal.

As I mentioned above, the gimbal, i.e. the camera balancing structure, is the better construction, not the cost-effective two-axis piece, but the three-axis piece capable of much more pleasant movement. The engines in it are, of course, carbon-free.

So far, everything is super, but how to use FIMI Palm?

Use

I don't even know where to start. Maybe there should be that after I first turned it on, I almost hit the ground and trampled it. Maybe it was only saved by the fact that it cost 60 thousand forints, which is more than what I want to throw out the window due to a tantrum. By the way, I did well to restrain myself.

So the first time I turned on, I somehow managed to set the language to Chinese (or maybe I didn’t even have a choice), and by the time I found the language selection menu with the unusable scrubbing touchscreen, my hair had fallen out.

Well, I overcame this problem, trying to set what I could, but it was pretty patient. The menu, so to speak, failed to make the most sense. Anyway, I quickly tossed a software called FIMI Play on my phone, which immediately announced that it had found a firmware update and would like to install one. I reached for the button like drowning after the Unique Bottle, and in return, the software slapped it again with a sobering slap. I can't download it because the phone is connected to the camera via wifi and my mobile net is not available due to lack of coverage. To kick the horse. Okay, I disconnected from the camera, put on the local wifi. I downloaded the software update, reconnected the camera, and installed the downloaded update.

It was here that I began to understand what those who had to struggle with this unclassifiable software could feel. As I wrote above, I was glad for him that the camera hadn’t come sooner because then I wouldn’t have been able to gather the strength to write this article.

After installing the update, a lot changed, the camera really started behaving like a camera. The menu is still pretty unreasonable, the touchscreen is still insensitive, but it seems to have improved, albeit minimally, and the reaction is no longer as much as trying to bring a pebble to life with my fingertips.

So the menu could be better used, but let’s not be insatiable. The camera no longer forgets the settings even after it is turned off, and the beep at the beginning of the videos can finally be turned off. I know these don’t seem like important things, but believe me, even the tiniest nonsense can be the most annoying.

At the same time, I am more, less satisfied with the telephone software. All right, more. It was quite fairly put together and everything could be set on it. The real happiness will be activating the Bluetooth connection promised in the specification (this is not available at the moment either), so if I connect the phone to the FIMI, I will have wifim next to it.

So the phone app is good, it’s much easier on this to adjust the camera than on the tiny display. By the way, this is what we need to really generate a panoramic image from the finished panorama image, because otherwise we will only have four or nine separate photos without merging.

Now, let's jump back to the camera and the controls on it. It hurts that we can't use the joystick, which is already good for use in the menu that appears on the display. I swear I would be more happy with this capability than the touch screen, everything could be set up much faster. This is because the joystick can not only be moved left and right, up and down, but also pressed, and these options would be just enough for the menu.

In practice, however, you can either adjust the camera up and down, left and right with the lever, or move it up and down after pressing to get a software zoom (completely unnecessary capability), and move it to the side to change the brightness of the image. You can also change the ISO value, but it is better to leave it automatically (100 in sunlight), so the recorded image will be the best.

You can also use the right power button to turn off or start and stop recording. If pressed twice quickly, the gimbal will reset the camera, if three times, the camera will switch to selfie mode, and face tracking will also be activated. It works pretty well if we don’t jerk our heads too fast. I just curiously tried what the twin would react to my sons, well, he was a little confused. I'm not surprised by this, sometimes even I'm used to it, even though I have a little more food than the FIMI Palm. I hope at least.

Finally, another important piece of advice. I’ve been using high-speed Samsung memory cards for video for a long time, which I also need because the amount of data on 4K recordings is significant, a slow card can’t handle that pace. I’ve used the cards in a lot of cameras and drones already, there were cheap, expensive, and very expensive categories among them, but I never had a problem with speed. Until now. FIMI Palm, in the case of h.264, reduced the bandwidth provided by the card and refused to take 4K recordings. Fortunately, the HEVC with a better compression ratio, i.e. h.265, did not have such a problem. You need to know that this is not a panacea either, you need to buy a fast card for 4K video, you will not be able to save on this.

Image quality

Before you start reading this chapter, it’s important to note that I didn’t trim the test videos (except the first one), I didn’t manipulate them in any way, so you can see the raw 4K footage.

My experiences are mixed. With the camera, photography is not a great pleasure, it is still much better for a medium cell phone. Luckily, we mostly want to use a gimbal-tipped camera not for photography but for video.

If I’ve written bad things about the camera so far, let’s forget about it now, because the point is what they came up with, which is to make good videos with it, well, it’s flawless. With the gimbal-balanced camera, we can take beautifully gliding shots with a butter smoothness, after which any Hollywood director would have licked all twenty fingers in the past. Looking back at what monster the cameraman had to move for his cycling scene in the Glow Corridor, and knowing that the quality that approximates this is now known to a tiny Moroccan camera, I think we can say the development is tumultuous.

Well, there won’t even be a cinema like in Shine, and there are two reasons for that, the small size and the small weight. The camera is so light that it can only compensate for larger oscillations in a way. Understand: If you go and hold the hand holding the camera down in front of you, the wavy movement that appears due to your steps will disappear quite well from the recording. However, if you stretch your arm in front of you, the weight of your arm is already so great that even if you want to, you can’t keep it motionless. A heavier device would help with this, because you would have to resist it against gravity, and that would dampen the movement up and down a lot already.

If you don’t have a gimbal but have, say, a big tripod, give it a try. Put any video camera on the tripod and video while walking while holding the camera with the tripod. Then try with the camera in your hand. You will see the difference.

What's the point? It’s just that the FIMI Palm is also a camera, and I’ve never come across a camera I didn’t have to get used to to get the most out of it. The Palm is like that too, you just have to figure out the little tricks like the right hand posture.

Users also complained about the sound of the camera for a while. The manufacturer has installed two microphones, but these are small, not least because of the size of the Palm. That is, no one should expect studio quality, and as with any camera’s built-in microphone, the wind can whistle at the FIMI Palm. Luckily, there’s a relatively inexpensive external microphone for the stuff, so if you might want to use your Palm for vlogging, that’s also possible.

I like the image quality of the camera, it is also quite detailed, the pillow effect, i.e. the image distortion caused by the optics and the wide viewing angle, can be corrected from the software. There’s a Pro mode where white balance and ISO can be adjusted manually, but if you want to be good, just try adjusting it from your phone because the small display makes it impossible to shoot things properly.

What’s most striking is that the camera’s dynamic range is pretty anemic. There is nothing wrong with the extreme values ​​being bad. Even in relatively low light conditions, image quality remains tolerable (I mean, it can really be used), noise filtering is good, and beautiful videos are taken even in scorching sunshine. What causes the problem is the switch between light and shadow. At the forest walk, where the sunlight flashes in between the foliage, the problem is clearly visible. The almost dark, shady forest, and the bright light of the peeping sun fools the camera, and we get nasty flickers in return.

I tried to make evaluable test videos. I cut it together in 3p for a longer 1080 minutes, it pretty much shows what I was able to get out of it on the second day. I didn't cut the cycling, hiking, motorcycling video (or only minimally), they show the point, the picture quality.

Closing Remarks

As I mentioned in the introduction, it’s very lucky that the camera didn’t arrive sooner, because then you wouldn’t have read much good about it now. However, in its current state, it is more than usable, and if the software is further honed, it will be almost flawless.

If you’re asking if it’s a worthy competitor to the DJI Osmi Pocket Camera, I have to say it really is. Of course, it must be admitted that the DJI is better for the then double price, this is an indisputable fact, there is nothing to be surprised about. However, the FIMI Palm, more than just usable, is simply an excellent companion for any trip, be it a family vacation, a hike on foot, horseback, bike or even a motorcycle!

It's awfully comfortable to use, it doesn't pull our pockets, it's always at our fingertips, so it's definitely fun to video with it! God is really hard to convey in words the experience, the freedom that this camera gives, it would be best if everyone could try it.

If someone picks up the price, let them do a little calculation! If we buy a usable action camera, we won’t swim much under $ 120-130. If we take a good gimbal with it, it’s the same item as the price of the camera, and then we still only have a bulky stuff. Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, as there are already friendly sized gimbals, but you won’t find as much as the FIMI Palm.

So, overall, the $ 200, more specifically coupon for $ 180 FIMI Palm is well worth the price.

Buy here:

Xiaomi FIMI Palm Gimbal Camera - Coupon code: 183PAXKKVG

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