Anyone else disappointing with picture quality?

[CanadaDrone]

It's only light at 1-2am in the middle of summer in Iceland. A couple of months from now (ref when @KS-6 says they'll be going) it'll be dark for a good 8+ hrs through the night.

I missed the 2 months part, but even outside of the peak Summer months the sun doesn't fully set and you still end up with a lot of light at 1AM. We were there in May.

 

[scro]

I missed the 2 months part, but even outside of the peak Summer months the sun doesn't fully set and you still end up with a lot of light at 1AM. We were there in May.

I lived in Iceland for several years so know well what it's like through the summer months, and youre right, there's plenty of light through the night in May-July time. The price for all that daylight in summer is very short days in winter!

We digress a bit from the thread topic though

 

[abruzzopat]

I'm fine with the photos from my Mini 3 so far. Not quite as good as the Air 2S, especially in low light.

But photography in general is more about subject, composition, etc.

This photo from my Mini 3 is not particularly sharp, but I've gotten a lot of positive response from it. This was a RAW HDR with obviously low light and high contrast.

 

[hjones62]

Coming from the Mavic 2 Pro, I'm blown away by the picture quality actually! It's definitely great at low light!!

 

[Dougcjohn]

I'm impressed how many use the Mini 3 in city shots, etc. Some have displayed beautiful results.
I find it a great little craft, I like the small size & quite flight; although light in performance and wind stability compared to larger M2P thru M3Cine.

Each time I've used it, the wind presents a challenge. From all comments & praise, thinking I should look at it a bit more serious.

 

[CanadaDrone]

I lived in Iceland for several years so know well what it's like through the summer months, and youre right, there's plenty of light through the night in May-July time. The price for all that daylight in summer is very short days in winter!

We digress a bit from the thread topic though

That's right. As much as we wanted to see the Northern lights, dealing with 3-4 hours of sunlight just wasn't worth it for the rest of the trip. Iceland is still in my top 3 most favorite countries and I have been to over 30. You're very lucky to have lived there!

 

[RogerDH]

I missed the 2 months part, but even outside of the peak Summer months the sun doesn't fully set and you still end up with a lot of light at 1AM. We were there in May.

Yeah, we're almost two months away from the summer solstice peak on June 21, but according to this site, it won't get darker than "nautical twilight" tonight in Reykjavik.

 

[KS-6]

I have been to Iceland and with the weather you are likely to encounter (particularly wind), I would bring the heaviest drone you have. I had my M2P with me and there were many times I simply couldn't fly - if I had a Mini with me I would have flown even less.

Also, most of the places you will want to fly (i.e. every tourist stop, major waterfall, major landmark, etc.), all drones are prohibited anyway (look for the signage), so anywhere you do fly you will likely be the only person for miles, especially if you leave the area around Reykjavik.

Regarding your Mini 3, some lens decentering is normal on all lenses, even full frame camera lenses costing thousands. It's also much more prevalent on wide angle lenses of all types, unfortunately. You need to do some controlled testing, and if one side or area of the image is extremely soft compared to the opposite area of the image, and that is repeatable, then you probably have a decentered lens. If you're looking at the extreme edges and corners and finding they are quite soft, that's normal.

Another thing to keep in mind is that at hundreds of feet in the air, fine details have almost no resolution on them, so when you zoom in, it's going to look soft due to the low pixel density. Other things can also affect sharpness such as atmospheric distortion and heat distortion, but that will affect the whole image. You probably already know most of that, but just in case.

Another thing to consider is swapping to a nocturnal schedule when you're there to avoid crowds, since you will have nearly 24 hours of daylight. I frequently went out around 1-2AM and it was nice and bright with absolutely zero people.

I did 2 months in the Faroe Islands last September through November and it was about the most windy and rainy place I have ever been, so I am considering that in planning for this much shorter scouting trip of 2.5 weeks. I did not even bring a drone on the last trip because it was all about shooting medium format B&W film and I had to limit the weight.

This time going to Iceland is my very first and even though I am going to try for some salable images that fit into the body of work I am creating, the place has been done to death now so I am really scouting it for the most part, don't really care to do the more touristy areas as I am planning to return for more serious work in the Winter. Aerial images that sell as fine art in my lane are all about tone, contrast, subtleties and symbiotic relationships to their ground level counterparts. But the image quality has got to be there and I and others are having trouble with odd zones of softness with the Mini-3.

I love the thing for motion work, used it yesterday for filming a TV commercial in a warehouse and it was just flawless, files look great in D-Cinelike and my editors are real happy with the output. I think it is decentered though, I get my best overall sharpness when I hit the focus somewhere in the right side. It's also better at 30' to 200' feet vs what would be infinity. Even with all 6 batteries (3x regular, 3x extended) and the controller, it weighs nothing and takes up hardly any room.

So out of the three drones I own, Mini-3, M2P and EVO II Enterprise, the logical choice to actually produce the best image quality in less than placid conditions would have to be the EVO. I'm not sure what capacity I will have once I kit out my ground based stuff so maybe I will be drone-less again on this trip...

 

[KS-6]

Coming from the Mavic 2 Pro, I'm blown away by the picture quality actually! It's definitely great at low light!!

For web, yes. I am seeing a lot of smeared detail in these and you are using the cropped aspect ratio which discards part of the sensor area in order to fit the video aspect when creating stills for a motion sequence.

My Mavic 2 Pro is much better than every sample I have seen from the Mini-3 for what would be full sized prints or retail / hospitality displays and that is truly where the rubber meets the road.

 

[davedrone 178]

I bought the Mini 3 and the Air 2s in the last couple of weeks. The 3 is a low light beast and is definitely better than the Air 2s at night. I love the S for it's excellent zoom capabilities. The 3 has incredible battery life with the plus battery. I never have any range or time anxiety.

 

[Lister]

My Mini 2 still does a pretty good job. Original is 5600 px wide.

 

[WildcatDave]

This image was originally 12MP reduced to 2MP for the client's listing. Corners are nearly as sharp as everywhere else in the image. Dynamic range is excellent, even amazing, for the size of the sensor. Colors are terrific and accurate. This was a DNG file edited to taste in Lightroom. Definitely a lot more workable RAW file than was coming out of my Air 2. Worth the upgrade and couldn't be any further from disappointed for how inexpensive this drone and the new built-in screen controller combo pack were.

If anyone wants to see the full 12MP image or access to the RAW files from this shoot let me know, I can post those up. I've been shooting RAW for over 15 years and I'm very versed with how to get the most out of an image and what to expect. This little drone is quite magnificent for what you pay and what you get. If you're not getting images you don't like you may possibly have a misaligned lens or just need to learn how to work (RAW) files better. I can't speak to low light noise levels as I don't do any drone shooting in that regard. I'm sure it gets a bit noisy as it's a tiny sensor, to be expected. That should not disappoint you as every sensor of that size will produce similar noise levels.

When I get a chance this weekend I will post the completely unedited image so you can see how much you can pull out of the Mini 3 Pro RAW file. Likely create a seperate thread for that.

 

[hjones62]

For web, yes. I am seeing a lot of smeared detail in these and you are using the cropped aspect ratio which discards part of the sensor area in order to fit the video aspect when creating stills for a motion sequence.

My Mavic 2 Pro is much better than every sample I have seen from the Mini-3 for what would be full sized prints or retail / hospitality displays and that is truly where the rubber meets the road.

Your thoughtfulness is appreciated. All that technical mumbo jumbo crap you can save, I'm having fun with a drone not creating a motion picture for Hollywood.

 

[KS-6]

This image was originally 12MP reduced to 2MP for the client's listing. Corners are nearly as sharp as everywhere else in the image. Dynamic range is excellent, even amazing, for the size of the sensor. Colors are terrific and accurate. This was a DNG file edited to taste in Lightroom. Definitely a lot more workable RAW file than was coming out of my Air 2. Worth the upgrade and couldn't be any further from disappointed for how inexpensive this drone and the new built-in screen controller combo pack were.

If anyone wants to see the full 12MP image or access to the RAW files from this shoot let me know, I can post those up. I've been shooting RAW for over 15 years and I'm very versed with how to get the most out of an image and what to expect. This little drone is quite magnificent for what you pay and what you get. If you're not getting images you don't like you may possibly have a misaligned lens or just need to learn how to work (RAW) files better. I can't speak to low light noise levels as I don't do any drone shooting in that regard. I'm sure it gets a bit noisy as it's a tiny sensor, to be expected. That should not disappoint you as every sensor of that size will produce similar noise levels.

When I get a chance this weekend I will post the completely unedited image so you can see how much you can pull out of the Mini 3 Pro RAW file. Likely create a seperate thread for that.
View attachment 153235

Good informative post, you have been using raw almost as long as I have. And on that note, the issue is not how the image is being processed but the lens or sensor it self.

Quite simply put, there are samples out there that just don’t deliver in terms of uniform sharpness and this is on DJI in terms of Q/C. In the 35+ years I have been in this career I have never seen randomly appearing zones of softness in any photograph, even perspective control lenses have a predictable roll off of sharpness depending on the angle of the image circle.

It is even happening on the Mavic 3 in some cases:

Unhappy with Image Quality

I am writing to see if anyone else has a bad image quality from the mavic 3.I have a decent IQ at the centre of the image but not far to the left and right the image degrades quickly but then unlike other lenses it seems to get slightly better again towards the edges, I have cleaned the front...

forum.dji.com

Having said this, the editing team that works on my films and TV commercials are loving the D-Cinelike footage out of this thing so it’s not like it is not worth keeping.

I’d be curious to see your DNG but I also know where I run into the most trouble with my copy of the Mini is at distances greater than 200’ feet. I’m going to still play around with the focus points on the stills a little more but for this upcoming work in Iceland I have decided to take my EVO II Enterprise, it’s an absolute beast in the wind and image quality is about the best you can get outside of an Inspire or larger.

 

[tlyons]

Don't get me wrong I was not expecting super high end DSLR camera quality, but look for yourself

https://imgur.com/2wZMJg7

https://imgur.com/eBUasxB

If you zoom in even just a little bit, the quality goes right out the window, graininess everywhere, it just looks like pictures my old iphone 5 or 6 used to take... that was 8 years ago

I read most of this thread in spite of myself. The upside was a handful of useful suggestions but buried in a big pile of nonsense. You've probably figured out that even a hint of implied criticism of the brand brings out a mod of fanboys telling you either your eyes were broken (they weren't); you're too dumb to fly (you aren't); you didn't sacrifice a dead chicken (you don't need to); or for some reason the need to share the opinion that Windows s*cks.

Stick with it. Have fun. The Mini has faults (I'm looking at you geofencing, no precision landing and no real mission mode) but is fundamentally a real revolution in capability vs. size. In good light, nothing from DJI but the Mavic 3 is better for 3x the price.

Advice: Youtube is a better place to learn photography than here. Have you tried panorama yet? Lots of fun particularly if you have access to a VR headset or Google Photos. Google Photos will automagically let you look around 360 degrees with an Android tablet.
Tutorial:

This photo is nothing in particular but is an example I took:

New item by Timothy Lyons

photos.app.goo.gl

It your tablet has a gyro and a compass in it, try sitting an office style chair and spinning slowly around.