Cold weather focusing problems

[PhotoDB]

It was a perfect morning for flying, except for the cold, so I bundled up and was ready to fly 30 minutes before sunrise. We had just had a snowfall the day before and our town center keeps the lights on all night. The temperature was just 11Farenheit, and the winds were about 10MPH.
My problem however, was that the camera would not keep focus. After touching a focus point, it would hold focus for maybe a few seconds, and then wander off. I was able to capture a few stills like the attached, but just about all the video seems to be unusable as focus kept drifting away.
I pulled it down a couple times to make sure the lens wasn't fogged up - it wasn't - and I tried restarting everything a couple times - didn't make a difference.
Anyone have an answer as to something I coulda, shoulda, done differently?

 

[Conservative Nihilist]

This is a sublimely beautiful winter wonderland photograph, DB, and I tip my hat to your professional skill.

Over at the RCGroups FimiX8 forum, there are similar complaints about degraded camera performance in cold weather, so there are likely some significant drone camera design challenges to overcome in order for focus and filming performance to pass muster when temperatures dip very low.

 

[brett8883]

It was a perfect morning for flying, except for the cold, so I bundled up and was ready to fly 30 minutes before sunrise. We had just had a snowfall the day before and our town center keeps the lights on all night. The temperature was just 11Farenheit, and the winds were about 10MPH.
My problem however, was that the camera would not keep focus. After touching a focus point, it would hold focus for maybe a few seconds, and then wander off. I was able to capture a few stills like the attached, but just about all the video seems to be unusable as focus kept drifting away.
I pulled it down a couple times to make sure the lens wasn't fogged up - it wasn't - and I tried restarting everything a couple times - didn't make a difference.
Anyone have an answer as to something I coulda, shoulda, done differently?
View attachment 120149

Here’s a Pro tip. The variable focus of the Mavic Pro is basically useless. I can explain the technical reasons if you’d like but I don’t want to bore you. Best thing to do is set the lens to infinity focus by focusing on something at least 50 meters away and then switching to manual focus to lock it in. Now everything will be in focus always and you never have to focus ever again.

The later Mavic Air went away with the variable focus all together because there’s nearly no benefit to the variable focus. It’s even if questionable value with the larger sensor drones. We just tend to use drones to view things far enough away from the camera that this doesn’t matter.

 

[Dave Maine]

I agree with Bret above with my P4adv. The autofocus is almost never necessary, and it will decide to focus on a near object instead of the wide expanse which is usually what I want. It also gets very confused if you fly in snow, where it tries to focus on random snowflakes. I always get an infinity focus point and turn it to manual.

 

[PhotoDB]

Here’s a Pro tip. The variable focus of the Mavic Pro is basically useless. I can explain the technical reasons if you’d like but I don’t want to bore you. Best thing to do is set the lens to infinity focus by focusing on something at least 50 meters away and then switching to manual focus to lock it in. Now everything will be in focus always and you never have to focus ever again.

The later Mavic Air went away with the variable focus all together because there’s nearly no benefit to the variable focus. It’s even if questionable value with the larger sensor drones. We just tend to use drones to view things far enough away from the camera that this doesn’t matter.

That sounds like a plan. I'll have to look again, I thought the only "Manual" control was just for exposure. I don't recall seeing a manual focus selection. I'll look again though, as that makes perfect sense. Thanks!