About the 48MPXL camera question

[MarMel]

Hi guys, Im new in this fantastic forum.

I recently bought my first drone, mainly for photography.

I recently bought my first drone, mainly for photography. Before deciding on the Mavic Air 2 I spent a lot of time on the net looking for examples and opinions on the camera, coming across many conflicting opinions on the actual resolution of the sensor. I bring you my direct experience, with shots made by me, without manipulation. I directly compared the DNGs shot at 12MPXL and 48MPXL bringing the latter to the same resolution via PS. It's up to you to judge.
On the left the DNG at 48MPXL, on the right the 12MPXL.

Good flight!

 

[Thomas B]

Welcome to the forum from the deserts of Arizona! Enjoy.

a lot of “horsepower for relatively small difference.Still if you have a fast enough computer/graphics card always use the best possible resolution.

 

[itsneedtokno]

I prefer 12MP AEBs but that's just me.

 

[Heijst]

I prefer 12MP AEBs but that's just me.

Me too.

 

[Macinfo]

I've looked at both and the 48mp are a touch sharper, the difference comes in that the 48mb photos are 4x3 and you can set 12mp photos either way, wide or 4x3, unless I missed a setting when I took some 48mp shots.. which is always possible.

 

[WildcatDave]

There's not a whole lot in there. For website stuff or even normal size prints it probably will be a Nonpoint. However you can notice a little bit more clarity and resolution in the 48 megapixel images. This is especially noticeable in the brick of the building. However, I would say, if somebody asked me, what do you think that step up in resolution is? I'd say it probably went from 12MP to 16MP or something in that range. Obviously it's not a true 48 megapixel image or it would be astronomically different looking, especially in the crop zooms.

For my professional drone photo work, which is mostly commercial property and real estate shooting, I will probably leave it at 12 to keep the image files more manageable. No need to have those colossal files for a tiny bit of resolution that will never show to my clients or have any benefit in their uses.

 

[QLD-pilot]

I find myself using the Smart setting, which does some auto HDR. I take a DNG as backup. The 48meg shots are sharper and allow for zooming in and cropping, but in my work I usually don't do that

 

[adcimagery]

I did some pretty extensive testing between the photo modes when I first got my MA2, and there is almost no difference. You can easily take the 12mp up to 48mp via Photoshop's preserve details 2.0 upscaling and get just as good of a result. In fact, if you use Enhance Details demosaicing in Lightroom the 12mp photos will look better than 48mp after upscaling, as they'll have less false colors in fine details.

 

[boblui]

The difference is very tiny I would say. It has been said that the dynamic range of 12MP is better but I am yet to see image samples demonstrating that.

 

[QLD-pilot]

I would have preferred a 16MP sensor, or just a larger sensor, and no 48MP option, to be frank.

 

[nn666]

I would have preferred a 16MP sensor, or just a larger sensor, and no 48MP option, to be frank.

It's not a true 48mp, that's why. It's like the zoom function. Purely digital...

 

[MarMel]

It is true what is written, probably the 48MPXL are a useless complication, but look at the example below. The files are taken from the DPreview site, you can find them on the test page of the device. Why do I think the sensor is really 48Mpxl? The 12Mpxl file goes into crisis with the spatial frequencies in the fan grids, the 48Mpxl does not show it, this is how I am convinced that the 12MPxl shot of the drone is a reduction of the one taken from life. This is just my opinion, of course.

 

[QLD-pilot]

I think it's true that there is more detail in the 48, and I'm not convinced you can upscale (with 'Preserve Details v 2.0') the 12 to the 48 in Ps.