P3Pro ISO limits? Soft focus images

johnnyeaker · Aug 20, 2016

I'm a video director working my way around phantoms. First bought a Standard and moved up to the P3Pro. I was playing around and noticed that at ISO 800 (manual camera setting) and shooting the image RAW, there is a bunch of noise and the focus looks pretty soft.

What has been your experience with the DJI camera when it comes to ISO settings? Not go over ISO 400?

When I'm using ISO 100 in the middle of the day with ND filters I'm pretty happy with what I'm getting.

What about shooting video at night? Haven't tried that yet with the P3Pro. I realize photo wise that the shutter will stay open to 8 seconds but for video you really don't want to drop below 1/30.

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Flipsonic · Aug 20, 2016

I have a P3P and I have it set to manual ISO 100 and double fps. On sunny days (no clouds) I use ND16. I find the EV meter is close to 0. I have it set to D-log. I haven't done much shooting at night, but I just leave it to auto when I do. I find it noisy (grainy) due to ISO 1600. Gonna do more testing at night after more research in this forum.

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johnnyeaker · Aug 20, 2016

Thanks for the reply. Trying to figure out ISO limits of the camera. Obviously can go test it myself but wanted to see if others had best practices. Appreciate it!

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WetDog · Aug 20, 2016

Think of it as a cell phone camera from 3 years ago, an iPhone 4S or maybe a 5. It's OK at base ISO, falls apart rapidly after that, especially if you try to push anything in post. I'll use ISO 200 without thinking about it, 400 if I have to but that's about it. Unless you can nail everything and use it as is.

Obviously depends on what you plan to do with the images and what kind of look you need. But it's anything but a high ISO queen.

About the same as a GoPro 3, maybe a tad worse (but a better lens).