Comparing Drone Cameras: Z30 vs. H20T
David: Hey everybody, David Plummer and Michael Ferguson here from Aerial Influence. It is that time, once again, to talk about drones. We’re continuing our AI Q+A series dedicated to answering your questions. Today we’ve got two questions about the H20T camera, which goes on the Matrice 300 RTK and has a thermal and zoom lens.
Our first question comes from Eboué Béécham, who says, “42 miles is simply mind-blowing. Imagine the level of detail zooming into a subject from one mile away.” Aerial Influence is out in Elburn, Ill., about 42 miles west of downtown Chicago. Eboué is referencing a video we posted in which I took a Zenmuse H20T up to 400 feet and was able to zoom onto the top of the Sears/Willis Tower. We actually saw the tower’s beacons flashing, which illustrated this model's 42-mile zoom range. The H20T is pretty incredible, and he’s right about this camera. It really does a lot of amazing things.
Michael: And it stabilized it. It framed it really nicely.
David: This model is a big upgrade from something like the Z30, which was sort of the predecessor to the H20T in terms of zoom range. That was a great camera too, but it definitely was not as stabilized as the H20T. This one is very nice, and it doesn’t matter what the wind speed is or how far you’re zoomed in. It will keep that shot steady.
Michael: Another nice thing is, even though the Z30 has a technically better 30x optical zoom and this one has 24x with the increased sensor size (and even though you’re using a digital zoom of 200), you actually get a better picture with the H20.
David: The Z30 has a bigger optical zoom, but it’s at about three megapixels, which is much lower than the H20.
Michael: That’s interesting. It does come down to the camera. You can have a camera that has a better optical zoom or one with a bigger sensor and more megapixels.
David: Bottom line is, hands-down, the H20 camera is way better than the Z30.
Michael: Soon after that first 42-mile zoomed shot, we went down to the city and captured that same shot up close. We were able to zoom in on one of the antennas on top of the building.
David: That second demonstration gives you a good idea of what a building inspector could do with one of these drones without flying it next to a building. We were a mile away and could still zoom right into it. We did this without putting people at risk — we were off flying in a safe area with no cars or people below us. This was an interesting example of what these drones can do in the right hands, especially in a busy metropolitan environment.
Let’s switch gears now — we have another submission to address. This commenter tries to correct us in one of our videos. Captain Bo says, “The new H20 is listed as a 4k camera, but it looks like, once you zoom in, it drops to 1080p. Very disappointing and misleading to the buyers. The Z30 is actually pretty close to being a 1080p camera.”
David: Here’s the thing — you’re wrong about this. Granted, I know this is a little confusing because there are three cameras on the H20T. It has thermal, zoom and wide-angle cameras, and only the wide-angle camera is at 1080p. The zoom camera, the one that maxes out at 24x optical zoom all the way up to 200x digital zoom, is a 4k camera. That means the image, even all-the-way zoomed in at 200x, while digitized, will be in 4k. The H20T is pretty incredible. The video quality is very high and the overlay on the thermal is also impressive. I don’t think many people would be disappointed in it.
Thanks for joining us for another installment of our AI Q+A series. We have one more left, and we’ll have something super juicy for you as the finale.
We are so excited about how drones can help your business or farm. Make sure to send us an email or contact us for a consultation if you’d like to learn how to incorporate drones into your business. As always, thank you for reading. We’re excited to share the future of drones with you.