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Air 3S photo quality is... disappointing

I don't do pixel peeping. I shoot into the light A LOT, so shadow latitude is very important to me - that is what I was looking for. The observations about mushiness and purple fringing were an accidental discovery.

No amount of stitching will overcome poor performance in shadow performance. And the Air3S seems to be struggling in that department. I just don't understand how DJI can claim improved DR based on the images I have seen so far.

I would love to get my hands on more DNGs shot in contrasty situations, especially into the sun. I am surprised at the relative dearth.

Just a quick question, have you comapred both 50 mp and 12 mp modes ?
As its the 50mp that suffers terribly with noise and potential artifacts.
12 mp shots on 24 mm do not look much worse or possibly quite the same as air2s in terms of shadows and noise - just different aspect ratio of 4:2 instead of the "standard" 3:2 and lower pixel count as its 12 mp vs 20 mp (so possibly some minor details loss also when pixel peeping)
Still disappointing despite what the other guys here in the topic said about too high expecations etc ... the complaints arent about its not being better than mavic 3 pro, they are about its not being better then the predecessor air2s ..two upgrades later.. and the marketing gimmick of 50 mp they selling us adds to the confusions.
 
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Just a quick question, have you comapred both 50 mp and 12 mp modes ?
As its the 50mp that suffers terribly with noise and potential artifacts.
12 mp shots on 24 mm do not look much worse or possibly quite the same as air2s in terms of shadows and noise - just different aspect ratio of 4:2 instead of the "standard" 3:2 and lower pixel count as its 12 mp vs 20 mp (so possibly some minor details loss also when pixel peeping)
Still disappointing despite what the other guys here in the topic said about too high expecations etc ... the complaints arent about its not being better than mavic 3 pro, they are about its not being better then the predecessor air2s ..two upgrades later.. and the marketing gimmick of 50 mp they selling us adds to the confusions.
I was all set to get the Air 3S, but have got hold of some 12MP and 50MP JPG and DNGs. The 12MP shots seem to lack the detail you'd expect from 50MP pixel-binned to 12. The 50MP shots are sharp but noisy, and sometimes have colour artifacts like fringing and moire as you'd expect with less colour resolution from the Quad Bayer sensor. The Air 3S 24mm camera seems quite prone to a hard blob of flare into the light, much more than the Air 2S. I'm sticking with my Air 2S for now, as its native 20MP 3:2 sensor is still better for stills, which are my main interest. It's disappointing that all recent DJI drones have gone for 4:3 sensors. I think 3:2 works better for most single wide shots without the hassle of stitching.
 
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I was all set to get the Air 3S, but have got hold of some 12MP and 50MP JPG and DNGs. The 12MP shots seem to lack the detail you'd expect from 50MP pixel-binned to 12. The 50MP shots are sharp but noisy, and sometimes have colour artifacts like fringing and moire as you'd expect with less colour resolution from the Quad Bayer sensor. The Air 3S 24mm camera seems quite prone to a hard blob of flare into the light, much more than the Air 2S. I'm sticking with my Air 2S for now, as its native 20MP 3:2 sensor is still better for stills, which are my main interest. It's disappointing that all recent DJI drones have gone for 4:3 sensors. I think 3:2 works better for most single wide shots without the hassle of stitching.
My exact observations from the files in the first link I posted in this thread. The binning reduces the noise as you would expect, but the loss of detail is - to me at least - unacceptable.

I have to go back and take a closer look at the 70mm binned images, I don't recall seeing any in the links I have access to. To me at least free pano is helpful but not critical, if I am going to stitch it does not matter if I have to crop later - just shoot that 180 degree pano and crop later. Or just do a manual pano series like you would do with a stills camera.
 
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Any camera, be it a drone or your cell phone, that uses "technology" to create higher resolution images is a gimmick at best. Native pixels is what matters.
 
Well people are paying over a thousand on some of these phones, in large part for the newest cameras on those phones.

They're selling in the tens or hundreds of millions.

Apple, Google and Samsung though do the processing to make sure they look as good as possible. People don't pixel-peep phone camera photos as much but people would notice if there were obvious color artifacts.
 
Any camera, be it a drone or your cell phone, that uses "technology" to create higher resolution images is a gimmick at best. Native pixels is what matters.
That is incorrect. If you have tons of tiny noisy pixels and enough compute power you can do some amazing things - choose focus points after the fact, apply a broken of your choosing, etc etc. Except for readout noise, which is usually small,here is nothing inherently different between the signal from 1 large pixel vs the sum of 4 small pixels. The mushiness in the 3S images likely comes from post processing corrections for distortion, diffraction, etc.
 
Any camera, be it a drone or your cell phone, that uses "technology" to create higher resolution images is a gimmick at best. Native pixels is what matters.

What is a "native pixel" so I can understand what you mean by "gimmick".
 
The widespread ignorance among so many that should know better is sad.

So many think Quad Bayer is some sort of "gimmick" where simple Bayer sensors produce faithful, precise detection of R, G, and B values at each pixel.

Every time you hear someone talking about a "true" or "native" image produced by a Bayer sensor, you know you're listening to someone that doesn't actually know what they're talking about, but is simply parroting wrong information they read on the internet, thinking they sound knowlegable.
 
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The widespread ignorance among so many that should know better is sad.

So many think Quad Bayer is some sort of "gimmick" where simple Bayer sensors produce faithful, precise detection of R, G, and B values at each pixel.

Every time you hear someone talking about a "true" or "native" image produced by a Bayer sensor, you know you're listening to someone that doesn't actually know what they're talking about, but is simply parroting wrong information they read on the internet, thinking they sound knowlegable.
That is generally true about any color sensor. The fact that the sensor itself is color-blind, and any color it produces is a mathematical construct does not seem to widely appreciated.

But quad Bayer sensors are, in a sense, a marketing gimmick. At least their high MPx output is. I think earlier in this thread someone asked "how is it possible that a 48Mpx image is worse than a 12 mpx". Camera makers are now playing the MPx game the same way CPU vendors played the MHz game in the early 2000s.
 
That is generally true about any color sensor. The fact that the sensor itself is color-blind, and any color it produces is a mathematical construct does not seem to widely appreciated.

But quad Bayer sensors are, in a sense, a marketing gimmick. At least their high MPx output is.

Please explain. How is a QB sensor any more of a "gimmick" than a standard bayer sensor? Do you believe a 12MP simple bayer capture produces a 12MP image?

Or are there color errors in 2 channels at every pixel, just as with a QB capture, and the missing two channels are computed?

I'm objecting to the idea that QB is some sort of phony gimmick, while Bayer sensors are accurate and true. This is completely mistaken, and this opinion exposes an ignorance about sensor technology.

Functionally, Bayer and Quad Bayer are essentially the same. Every pixel accurately captures the intensity of one of red, green, or blue at that location. The other two channels are interpolated from neighbor pixels that captured that color in their location.

As such, the accuracy, fidelity, and resolution is highly dependent on computational algorithm. What is the resolution of a 12MP bayer capture? Less than 12MP. What is the resolution of a 48MP QB capture? Less than 48MP.

The QB filter pattern results in larger errors than Bayer using the same interpolation algorithm, because the neighbor pixels are further away. However "greater error" by no means renders it a "gimmick", and using more sophisticated and complex demosaicing algorithms can reduce those errors close to a Bayer capture.

A drone imaging SoC doesn't have the horsepower (yet) to do this, so we get more color errors out of the drone for 48MP captures.

If resolution is important, take 48MP raw, and demosaic in post with a sophisticated QB algorithm. Stunning results most of the time that blows 12MP out of the water.
 

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