Air 3S photo samples

[okephoto]

I've had my Air 3S drone for a few days now and have been shooting both videos and images. This is a sampling of 48mp and 50mp photos processed with what has come out of the camera, no denoising or sharpening. They have been compressed to medium JPEG although that wouldn't hurt the quality a significant amount. Overall I can work with what I'm getting. I have not compared these images to what my Air 2S was producing but since that drone is under 300 feet of water it doesn't matter anyway.

 

[Steelgtr]

Nice!

 

[Air Pug]

Nice pics! I'm interested to see what you think once you compare images to the 2S. I have a 2S and looking to maybe upgrade if there's enough evidence.

 

[okephoto]

Nice pics! I'm interested to see what you think once you compare images to the 2S. I have a 2S and looking to maybe upgrade if there's enough evidence.

I'll likely compare images from the 2 later today although for me the 3S is what I've wanted, primarily for the 70mm lens. This is a game changer. What I am missing is having 5.4K video as that's all I shot with the 2S. If I can locate a cheap 2S I might purchase it for the video alone.

 

[Gadgetdude]

Stunning photos! Thank you for sharing and the inspiration!

 

[MARK (LI)]

I've had my Air 3S drone for a few days now and have been shooting both videos and images. This is a sampling of 48mp and 50mp photos processed with what has come out of the camera, no denoising or sharpening. They have been compressed to medium JPEG although that wouldn't hurt the quality a significant amount. Overall I can work with what I'm getting. I have not compared these images to what my Air 2S was producing but since that drone is under 300 feet of water it doesn't matter anyway.

Those pictures are stunning .....did you have an air 3 to compare it to?

 

[Air Pug]

I'll likely compare images from the 2 later today although for me the 3S is what I've wanted, primarily for the 70mm lens. This is a game changer. What I am missing is having 5.4K video as that's all I shot with the 2S. If I can locate a cheap 2S I might purchase it for the video alone.

Looking forward to that

 

[RC5728]

Thanks for sharing.

I'm so conflicted on whether to get the Air 3S or M3P/M4. My old drone was an M2P and I do a mix of photos and videos. I already sold it because it was very beat up from constant use.

It sounds like the Air 3S is better than M3P for video, based on that YouTube comparison by Tom Whazzup. But I'm not sure if I can live with the 12MP photo size, and there seems to be some hate for the 48/50MP.

These 48/50MP photos in the OP all look great to me. I'd be very interested to see a photo comparison against M3P.

 

[MavicPro2Pilot]

Thanks a lot for posting these. They clearly confirm my observations of other 50 MP RAW photos I had a chance to play with in Lightroom. If you buy the Air 3S, you should stick to 12 MP images, the colour artefacts and detail loss in the larger images are just too much (see two screenshots I took from one of the images at 100%).

 

[waynorth]

Thanks a lot for posting these. They clearly confirm my observations of other 50 MP RAW photos I had a chance to play with in Lightroom. If you buy the Air 3S, you should stick to 12 MP images, the colour artefacts and detail loss in the larger images are just too much (see two screenshots I took from one of the images at 100%).

This is typical errors/artefacts from the 50 MP mode.
I agree with you in that it's better to stay in 12MP mode, and if you need a larger size for printing big, it will be better and more predictable to enlarge the photo with special software like Topaz or similar programs designed for photo enlargement.

 

[okephoto]

I'm still a little undecided about whether the 12mp images are better or not. It appears as though the sensor at 48mp or 50mp has noise issues with some types of subjects and colours. The ocean in my marina photos is a good example. At the same time, if I apply the default denoise filter in Camera Raw, Photoshop 2025, it does a stunning job removing these artifacts. I'm attaching a photo taken at night as well (ISO 2800), raw and with denoise.

I compared the Air 3S images to similar images from my A2s. Are they better? I would say yes and no. If I'm willing to put a little post processing in and wanted to produce a large print I would say likely, in most circunstances. If both prints were the same size it appears as though the Air 3S has an advantage in raw sharpness. Where it lacks is there does appear to be a little more noise in the shadow at 48mp but denoise seems to do a great job of working with htis. I haven't spent much time using Topaz AI yet which is my preferred program for cleaning up images.

A professional photographer friend was over yesterday and I showed him what I was working on. He was blown away by the quality. I have two 32inch 4K monitors and they do look really fantastic.

This is all very subjective but I do know that for my professional needs the Air 3S will get the job done well and I love having the 70mm lens. I'm enjoying reading others comments on this.

 

[Macinfo]

From my perspective, the difference between the de-noise photos and not, is highly subjective as to whether there is any real difference between them. Perhaps a little, but perhaps a different photo would make use of de-noise filters and make a more obvious difference than what I am seeing here.

 

[waynorth]

I'm still a little undecided about whether the 12mp images are better or not. It appears as though the sensor at 48mp or 50mp has noise issues with some types of subjects and colours. The ocean in my marina photos is a good example. At the same time, if I apply the default denoise filter in Camera Raw, Photoshop 2025, it does a stunning job removing these artifacts. I'm attaching a photo taken at night as well (ISO 2800), raw and with denoise.

I compared the Air 3S images to similar images from my A2s. Are they better? I would say yes and no. If I'm willing to put a little post processing in and wanted to produce a large print I would say likely, in most circunstances. If both prints were the same size it appears as though the Air 3S has an advantage in raw sharpness. Where it lacks is there does appear to be a little more noise in the shadow at 48mp but denoise seems to do a great job of working with htis. I haven't spent much time using Topaz AI yet which is my preferred program for cleaning up images.

A professional photographer friend was over yesterday and I showed him what I was working on. He was blown away by the quality. I have two 32inch 4K monitors and they do look really fantastic.

This is all very subjective but I do know that for my professional needs the Air 3S will get the job done well and I love having the 70mm lens. I'm enjoying reading others comments on this.

Thank you for the sample photos. They clearly show the noise issues in the 48/50 MP mode, but they also show what a good job the de-noising algorithm have done. The difference is huge, especially in the shadow areas.

 

[Walt]

Where are you flying?

 

[GFields]

Nice photos. I'm moving your thread to the photo section

 

[okephoto]

Where are you flying?

These are all shot in the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island. British Columbia, Canada for the ones from far away.

 

[Filmarik]

These are all shot in the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island. British Columbia, Canada for the ones from far away.

Denoising made a markable improvement to the photos. Excessive (color) noise and strange artifacts in shadows seems to be a real issue with the Air3S 50MP photos.

 

[Mrauwolf]

Here's my curiosity: I previously owned the original Air 2, with a 12mp/48mp camera, and it was extremely noisy. But, if I took a burst of photos, even at low light, and stacked them in photoshop, I could get a really good image out of it. At the time there was no burst mode for 48mp mode, so I would have to use super resolution in Lightroom to attempt the same thing and it gave passable results. This drone appears to have a burst mode up to five frames in its large format modes. I'd love to see how stacking those images would clean them up. It could potentially be phenomenal given the larger sensor, newer technology, etc... I'm particularly interested to see how this would turn out with the 70mm camera (I know it's a smaller sensor as well).

 

[Mrauwolf]

Another thought: The Air 3 is a smaller, but stacked sensor, yielding unusually good image quality for its size. The 1 - inch sensor on the Air 3S appears to be a normal CMOS? I'd be curious to see how they compare in photo quality.

 

[Filmarik]

Another thought: The Air 3 is a smaller, but stacked sensor, yielding unusually good image quality for its size. The 1 - inch sensor on the Air 3S appears to be a normal CMOS? I'd be curious to see how they compare in photo quality.

I am not familiar with Air 3 but from the samples I've seen so far from Air 3S the 12MP mode delivers what one would expect from a 1" QB sensor, pretty decent quality though only 12MP which is a bit on the lower end of the spectrum. The 48MP mode pictures have lots of undesirable artifacts and uggly color noise, especially in shadows. Low light makes the situation much worse.