Does Mavic Shoot Video or Watercolor Paintings? Don’t settle. Get Involved!

[Robbyg]

Mine hasnt produced watercolor ive been using it every day in one form or another and it still produces good quality video. So its not all mavics that have the issue. If it was 100% all mavics then yeah the claim that it sucks might hold some water but its not.

Have you uploaded any videos of your camera at work? If not can you point me to a video of one that has good video quality? I am nearing my 200th YouTube video and I can honestly say I have never seen one that did not fall into the category of either lacking Dynamic Range, over saturated colors or in the case of brightly colored buildings it looks like CG, in terms of being void of the finer details that make a picture look real. I am hoping someone can point me to a really good Mavic video so that I can feel a sense of hope that maybe things can get better.

Rob

 

[Kestrel]

Have you uploaded any videos of your camera at work? If not can you point me to a video of one that has good video quality? I am nearing my 200th YouTube video and I can honestly say I have never seen one that did not fall into the category of either lacking Dynamic Range, over saturated colors or in the case of brightly colored buildings it looks like CG, in terms of being void of the finer details that make a picture look real. I am hoping someone can point me to a really good Mavic video so that I can feel a sense of hope that maybe things can get better.

Rob

Like i said before find a better drone in the price range and let me know.. how many cell phones have you seen flying around. Thats like someone saying well that picture you took from your drone isnt as good as a DSLR well of course not but are you going to fly your DSLR up a few hundred feet?

Ill post a video when i get off work. I dont really care about the finer aspects of your nit picking because its a consumer drone. Im not even a film maker like i said im a hobbyist I enjoy the video that comes out of it, its not a 10,000 dollar camera drone..


I dont undstand your complaining, it seems like it would be best just to sell your mavic if you hate the video quality so much.


Here is my channel, Quadcopter Crazy

Im not a film maker and im not good at editing so keep that in mind before bashing me. I make my videos for mine and my families enjoyment not to be famous.

 

[2nd2non]

I finally received my 2nd replacement from DJI (3rd unit).
For those not familiar with my plight- see post #421
Ran through 2.5 batts from bright sunlight (shutter1000) to 1hr B4 sunset (shutter240). Performed same pine tree tests as before with similar lighting conditions and settings:
-FW version .0500
-ISO 100
-shutter approx 240
- color none
- no filter
-sharpness across the range
This unit is razor sharp!
Finally a unit that has e2e sharp focus w/o watercolor with normal settings.
I still need to test at a lower shutter speed (i.e. nd filter) and with ART, D-LOG, but this is the best unit I've had yet for video.

Sharp=0

Sharp=-1

Sharp=-2

Sharp=+1

 

[devinkumar]

I finally received my 2nd replacement from DJI (3rd unit).
For those not familiar with my plight- see post #421
Ran through 2.5 batts from bright sunlight (shutter1000) to 1hr B4 sunset (shutter240). Performed same pine tree tests as before with similar lighting conditions and settings:
-FW version .0500
-ISO 100
-shutter approx 240
- color none
- no filter
-sharpness across the range
This unit is razor sharp!
Finally a unit that has e2e sharp focus w/o watercolor with normal settings.
I still need to test at a lower shutter speed (i.e. nd filter) and with ART, D-LOG, but this is the best unit I've had yet for video.

@2nd2non Awesome, congrats on a sharp Mavic! The +1 sharpening looks pretty ugly to my eye but I'm glad to see that -2 sharpening doesn't create totally mushy footage. And yes please try with ND filters and lower shutter speed and let us know if you have any problems with that! Also will be curious to see if you try a different color setting like D-Cinelike.

 

[devinkumar]

I updated everything earlier. Still had watercolour & muddy trees. Decided to try without the ND4 filter that I always have on. I've always had to use at least the ND4 to get anywhere near shutter speed of 60. That seemed to have a positive effect. No water colour and the definition of branches was greatly improved. Just wondering now if the Firmware can handle computing the adjustment that a filter requires? If we took a poll. How many of us having watercolour issues are using any type of filter? My default setup is ND4 filter. UltraHD (3840) at 30fps. Art -1,-1,0.

I also shoot 3840x2160 and have tried 0,0,0 and -1,-1,-1 or 0,-1,-1 though I shoot at 24fps so obviously not specific to a certain framerate. Almost always ND4 or ND8.
Good to know at least shooting with less ND and a higher shutter speed will yield better results until some other solution is found.

 

[cardplayer71]

I think the in-camera processing is overdoing it on noise reduction, both on video and stills. It's a noisy little sensor, if you look at the raw files. Let's also remember that the sensor is smaller than your pinky nail. This is a cell phone camera in the sky. Even an APS-C like the Canon Rebel is 15 times the sensor size.

Here is a still I took a week ago. You can see the grain, but I don't have the watercolor effect. It seems that even the slightest NR, aside from chroma, turns it into a child's toy camera right away.

 

[Robbyg]

Like i said before find a better drone in the price range and let me know.. how many cell phones have you seen flying around. Thats like someone saying well that picture you took from your drone isnt as good as a DSLR well of course not but are you going to fly your DSLR up a few hundred feet?

No need to be the defender of the Mavic. Your hostility is not warranted. Have you read my other posts. I almost always end them by saying that "The Mavic Camera is built to a price point". We are on the same page you are not saying anything I have not acknowledged several times in this thread.

Ill post a video when i get off work. I dont really care about the finer aspects of your nit picking because its a consumer drone. Im not even a film maker like i said im a hobbyist I enjoy the video that comes out of it, its not a 10,000 dollar camera drone...

Thats great that you enjoy it, that still does not negate the problems in the video. If a company says they have "4K Ultra HD Video" and markets the Mavic the way they did, I start to get certain expectations about the video quality.

I was worried when I made that post that you would interpret it as some form of challenge and you did! I was honestly just trying to find out if you had made a video or seen a video that was better than the ones I have seen. I truly want to see if someone has figured out how to get better video.

I dont undstand your complaining, it seems like it would be best just to sell your mavic if you hate the video quality so much.

This is one of the reasons why I stayed out of this thread for the first 20 pages. I love my Mavic, its fun to fly and its a leap forward in drone technology but as so many professional photographers have stated the camera is not a leap forward, it is pretty much the last generations camera.

Im not a film maker and im not good at editing so keep that in mind before bashing me. I make my videos for mine and my families enjoyment not to be famous.

I had no plans on bashing you. I have not even uploaded a single video from the Mavic because I have been waiting 7 weeks for DJI to send me the ND filters.

Sorry you feel the way you do. I am not bashing you or the Mavic I am simply stating what I see when I look at the videos. Also please note I am not a professional photographer. I do take a lot of pictures but it is not what I do for a living.

 

[Robbyg]

I finally received my 2nd replacement from DJI (3rd unit).
For those not familiar with my plight- see post #421
Ran through 2.5 batts from bright sunlight (shutter1000) to 1hr B4 sunset (shutter240). Performed same pine tree tests as before with similar lighting conditions and settings:
-FW version .0500
-ISO 100
-shutter approx 240
- color none
- no filter
-sharpness across the range
This unit is razor sharp!
Finally a unit that has e2e sharp focus w/o watercolor with normal settings.
I still need to test at a lower shutter speed (i.e. nd filter) and with ART, D-LOG, but this is the best unit I've had yet for video.


Sharp=-1

This is pretty much what mine looks like. My problems really start up when I get it up to 100ft and things are further away. I am happy that you have a properly working Mavic.
I look forward to seeing what you can do with a proper set of ND filters.

Rob

 

[Robbyg]

I think the in-camera processing is overdoing it on noise reduction, both on video and stills. It's a noisy little sensor, if you look at the raw files. Let's also remember that the sensor is smaller than your pinky nail. This is a cell phone camera in the sky. Even an APS-C like the Canon Rebel is 15 times the sensor size.

Here is a still I took a week ago. You can see the grain, but I don't have the watercolor effect. It seems that even the slightest NR, aside from chroma, turns it into a child's toy camera right away.


View attachment 7633

Cardplayer that is one fantastic location you captured.
I agree the NR is really heavily applied.

You see how the picture just goes into that white haze in the distance. That is one of my pet peeves. I have actually stood on a Mountain top like that in the forest and taken video of the hills in the distance. With my own eyes I can see several more hills very clearly but with the Mavic at a certain point it just goes white. Half of what I can see with my eyes is lost. I was trying to chalk it up to the wide angle lens but then I used my phone and it captured everything.

Rob

 

[cardplayer71]

Cardplayer that is one fantastic location you captured.
I agree the NR is really heavily applied.

You see how the picture just goes into that white haze in the distance. That is one of my pet peeves. I have actually stood on a Mountain top like that in the forest and taken video of the hills in the distance. With my own eyes I can see several more hills very clearly but with the Mavic at a certain point it just goes white. Half of what I can see with my eyes is lost. I was trying to chalk it up to the wide angle lens but then I used my phone and it captured everything.

Rob

For sure it has low dynamic range. I noticed that if you don't shoot in the golden light, you're not going to have a sky.

 

[devinkumar]

Here is a still I took a week ago. You can see the grain, but I don't have the watercolor effect. It seems that even the slightest NR, aside from chroma, turns it into a child's toy camera right away.
View attachment 7633

Very nice @cardplayer71 !! I was there last May with my Phantom 3 Pro but the grass was all brown and dead. nice you got some green!

 

[Robbyg]

For sure it has low dynamic range. I noticed that if you don't shoot in the golden light, you're not going to have a sky.

Thanks, it's good to hear someone else say that rather than use the term watercolour. The Low dynamic range is what causes the branches and leaves of the trees to just to meld together. The camera cannot detect small gradients of light change. I guess watercolour does describe it in some instances but it also makes some objects look like CG and others just blurry and others just vanish!

Anyway Ross has been able to work very well within the limitations and has produced a really good video.

SUPER proud of this

Rob

 

[borislip]

Thanks, it's good to hear someone else say that rather than use the term watercolour. The Low dynamic range is what causes the branches and leaves of the trees to just to meld together. The camera cannot detect small gradients of light change. I guess watercolour does describe it in some instances but it also makes some objects look like CG and others just blurry and others just vanish!

Anyway Ross has been able to work very well within the limitations and has produced a really good video.

SUPER proud of this

Rob

Most (all?) the videos with "watercolor" i've seen got that "watercolor" (which is seems more lile compression artifacts) are in the middle of the histogram, not overexposed, nor underexposed, so dynamic range has *nothing* to do with this. Resolution does, though. Resolution as in focusing and resolving details, optical, not pixel resolution. Get something realtively evenly colored, like those pine trees, out of focus (try it, on purpose), and you will have the compression hitting it hard, likely creating a similar/identical effect. If you do focus at the right distance, yet the objects are still out of foucus with compression artifacts all over them, its either a focusing issue in the FW or a faulty HW, missaligned lens that would cause some of the pic to always be out of focus, bad sensor, etc. Somehow, i have a feeling the Mavics affected by this, do, indeed, have a camera HW issue.

 

[2nd2non]

Focus definitely has an impact on the presence of the artifacting and watercolor effect. This is why I have kept replacing my mavic until I got one razor sharp. Had the same issue with the P3P.
Net- I'm not saying all the watercolor problems are due to focus and hardware, but mine were. I work in IT and knows it's important to distinguish between hardware and software issues. You could have multiple problems, but it's easier to separate out hardware first then work on software.

 

[JPMavic]

Like i said before find a better drone in the price range and let me know.. how many cell phones have you seen flying around. Thats like someone saying well that picture you took from your drone isnt as good as a DSLR well of course not but are you going to fly your DSLR up a few hundred feet?

Ill post a video when i get off work. I dont really care about the finer aspects of your nit picking because its a consumer drone. Im not even a film maker like i said im a hobbyist I enjoy the video that comes out of it, its not a 10,000 dollar camera drone..


I dont undstand your complaining, it seems like it would be best just to sell your mavic if you hate the video quality so much.


Here is my channel, Quadcopter Crazy

Im not a film maker and im not good at editing so keep that in mind before bashing me. I make my videos for mine and my families enjoyment not to be famous.

If you don't mind me saying your statement that this attempt to sort this issue out amounts to nit picking & needless complaining isn't really very helpful & you've kindof high jacked what we're trying to achieve here. You may want to open up another thread if you'd like to discuss price points & expections etc.

 

[Owen Manderfield]

I must clarify something here. The majority of us are using the term "Watercolour Effect" to describe a fault - not a general quality issue.

I have performed "test bed" trials where I film a scene with the Mavic stationary (not flying) with known camera settings. Then performed a PAL/NTSC reset and with *identical* settings, subjects, lighting and images taken only seconds apart - I get vastly improved image quality. I am not the only person here to have tried similar tests with similar results.

Just to reiterate, this is not an inherent quality issue with the Mavic, it is a fault with some units, or maybe the majority if you happen to stumble on whatever set of inputs triggers the over active NR, sharpening or compression. For several of us the PAL/NTSC cures the problem, for a while at least.

So please, do not confuse this thread with one about camera quality. This thread is to try and get a solution to an almost certain software issue. True, the fault can be worsened by bad focus, low light and maybe even NDs - but it is a correctable fault non the less. As several have proved.

 

[SLVSRFR]

I must clarify something here. The majority of us are using the term "Watercolour Effect" to describe a fault - not a general quality issue.

I have performed "test bed" trials where I film a scene with the Mavic stationary (not flying) with known camera settings. Then performed a PAL/NTSC reset and with *identical* settings, subjects, lighting and images taken only seconds apart - I get vastly improved image quality. I am not the only person here to have tried similar tests with similar results.

Just to reiterate, this is not an inherent quality issue with the Mavic, it is a fault with some units, or maybe the majority if you happen to stumble on whatever set of inputs triggers the over active NR, sharpening or compression. For several of us the PAL/NTSC cures the problem, for a while at least.

So please, do not confuse this thread with one about camera quality. This thread is to try and get a solution to an almost certain software issue. True, the fault can be worsened by bad focus, low light and maybe even NDs - but it is a correctable fault non the less. As several have proved.

From reading this thread, the switch from PAL/NTSC "fix" didn't work for some users so I dont see how many are certain to put the blame on software. To caveat, downgrading doesn't solve this issue either, so I fail to believe that this fault is a software issue. The facts don't add up.

It's like the gimbal 'jump' that plagues some users when yawing, or the 'roll' when flying left or right quickly that only effects some users, the soft focus in left/right corners that some users face, or the notorious noisy compass that causes redundancy switching in sport mode. People originally thought these issues could be fixed with software, and they were all hardware faults. The issue can be covered and reduced with software changes but that isn't a fix.

I had a bad gimbal jump on my Mavic right out of the box, DJI released the firmware in late December that *reduced* the 'jump' and it only occurs occasionally in sport mode. That's not a fix, just a band aid over an underlying problem due to bad R&D. Probably the result of high demand, a choking supply chain, and the rush to fill orders to capitalize as much as possible.

I personally don't have this watercolor effect that is described in this thread and I run the same software as MILLIONS of other Mavic users. If it were software, the complaints and uproar would be on a much larger scale. Just like any other platform that has firmware issues during its early production stages. So to say it is software at this point is a crap shoot. DJI can't even OFFICIALLY comment on it because they know this product has had a rough launch, things were overlooked, and so many different problems plaqued early production Mavics that they're still working out the kinks.

 

[jjmucker]

I'm a professional photographer but this doesn't matter. Professional or not, when the heavy noise reduction kicks in anyone can see it.

The heavy noise reduction problem is horrendous. When you do the reset and get clean footage I'm more than happy with the footage from this quadcopter, and it's certainly on a par with the P3P when it works as it should.

I'm still hoping dji will fix this with an update. Until then I'll just keep doing the camera reset.

 

[JPMavic]

I must clarify something here. The majority of us are using the term "Watercolour Effect" to describe a fault - not a general quality issue.

I have performed "test bed" trials where I film a scene with the Mavic stationary (not flying) with known camera settings. Then performed a PAL/NTSC reset and with *identical* settings, subjects, lighting and images taken only seconds apart - I get vastly improved image quality. I am not the only person here to have tried similar tests with similar results.

Just to reiterate, this is not an inherent quality issue with the Mavic, it is a fault with some units, or maybe the majority if you happen to stumble on whatever set of inputs triggers the over active NR, sharpening or compression. For several of us the PAL/NTSC cures the problem, for a while at least.

So please, do not confuse this thread with one about camera quality. This thread is to try and get a solution to an almost certain software issue. True, the fault can be worsened by bad focus, low light and maybe even NDs - but it is a correctable fault non the less. As several have proved.

I agree . I also did a side by side trial and got differing (not always better) results. My theory is that there is a glitch wherein every adjustment that is made following a camera reset, isn't being correctly implimented by the software. The thing may tell you that it's setting is at -1 sharpness but that's not the setting that it's actually working at. Therefore if this is the case, the fewer camera adjustment that are made the better. So for any of you that are golfers here is the pre shot routine I'll be using for the next few flights will be as follows. (HD 3840, NTSC, Art, -1,-1,0). 1. Boot up. 2. Reformat SD card. (why not?) 3. NTSC>PAL>NTSC. 4. Hover. 5. Get the right ND filter on to give a slight overexposure. (This isn't what I would do with an DSLR where I'd set up the histogram towards the left but I don't think this applies to the Mavic camera).

 

[JPMavic]

I'm a professional photographer but this doesn't matter. Professional or not, when the heavy noise reduction kicks in anyone can see it.

The heavy noise reduction problem is horrendous. When you do the reset and get clean footage I'm more than happy with the footage from this quadcopter, and it's certainly on a par with the P3P when it works as it should.

I'm still hoping dji will fix this with an update. Until then I'll just keep doing the camera reset.

I Totally agree