Best Picture settings?

[Faronas]

Hi there,

Let me shortly introduce myself (it's my first posting):
I'm coming from Brunswick, Germany, 39yo, Engineer.

I bought the Phantom Vision mostly for Aerial picture use. The experiences on the flight stability are just awesome, but concerning the camera, I sometimes get the impression that maybe the camera is good for videos, so far the picture performance convinces me not fully. Maybe you have some hints for the settings for me.

Today, I made some pictures, let me explain on one example:

The picture as it comes from the copter:

lens corrected and rotated it looks like this:

with a detail like this:

Is this really most like you can get out of this camera ? May tweaking the settings improve something? If so, which settings have potential?

Patrick

 

[ginster]

That's about right
Remember this is 14 mp on a very wide angle lens
You can't really be zooming right in to small objects and expecting great results
I find the photos to be acceptable if you don't enlarge them too much and you expose correctly.

Hopefully when we can start using the raw files we might get some better results and a bit more
Flexibility for higher quality.

I've took some great shots with the vision so far, but don't be expecting to make a huge piece of wall art with it !

 

[jadebox]

It looks like your original photo was taken in lower light. In brighter light, it would be at least a little sharper. And, the detail that you cropped is of a small area. It's like doing a 16x digital zoom. In any case, the PV is a small camera with a small lens mounted on a platform that's vibrating and moving. With all that in mind, I think the original photo looks pretty good.

It probably won't take photos as sharp as a DSLR or even a decent P&S. But, it should make up for that by allowing you to get shots that would be harder to capture with a camera that doesn't fly!

-- Roger

 

[Mactab]

I think at the moment without the capability of converting the Raw files we do not really know how good the camera is.
Certainly I would compare the jpeg artifacs with cameras from probably 10 years ago. Canon G5 era
It will as you will have probably already worked out that the camera only shoots 14MP at the widest setting 140fov so when you crop that to give you a narrower field you are in effect maybe only getting 8MP. which is fine so long as the sensor is a good sensor and the lens is up to the job.
Bearing in mind that I think this camera is designed really for video as a direct competitor with Go-Pro. I think that DJI are being a little bit disingenuous with their advertising. It does what it says on the tin (ie. it takes pictures from up high at 14mp) but its no great shakes for stills, quality wise at the moment.
Its good fun though. I'm giving it 7 out of 10.

 

[jimre]

You might try setting the camera to take a burst of 3 or 5 images when you push the shutter button. Given that we're on a moving, vibrating platform - without actual optical image stabilization - it's a matter of chance how sharp the picture will be due to random gusts of wind, etc. Taking multiple shots improves your odds that one of them will be taken when the Phantom is perfectly still. The first camera setting "Capture Mode" controls this.

I haven't done any experiments, but it might also be worth setting the camera ISO to its maximum (200). This will ensure the fastest possible shutter speed for a given light exposure, and presumably minimize camera movement blur. Not a lot of variation here - either 100 or 200 - but ISO 200 will give twice as fast as shutter speed as ISO 100.

 

[Faronas]

Hi there,

I am the way disappointed by the camera as I am enthused by the flying capabilities of the PV.
So after watching the GoPro Website, I am fancying with a Hero 3 with WiFi connection - there would be even the possibility to use a zenmuse gimbal (once the hole in the wallet is fixed ).

So, I was wondering if this may fix my camera problem. The FPV functions of the DJI App are great, but knowing that the PV will fly longer than I usually need, I could abstain from the OSD features - the live preview can be done with the GoPro App.

It would be ideal, if DJI and GoPro would cooperate, I guess they would complement each other, DJI builds great flying stuff, GoPro great cameras...

Has anyone experiences about the range of the GoPro? Is it possible to tweak the range with some WLAN Repeater or so?

Patrick