Does Mavic Shoot Video or Watercolor Paintings? Don’t settle. Get Involved!

twitchyzero · May 8, 2017

OK, just did a bunch of tests.

It looks like it's my Polar Pro Vivid CPL/ND. Which is so strange because the still photos I took yesterday with them on looked just fine. I couldn't replicate them today with the filters on.

Ugh, gotta remember spending more money doesn't mean you're getting better quality.

My previous polar pro with the GoPro was giving me weird lens flare. Funny enough the lens flare on these Vivid series are beautiful, but what good is that if the trees are absolute mush.

No one else makes CPL/ND combo filters that can sit through Mavic's gimbal initialization without throwing it off?

BTW, sharpness at 0 is quite strong IMHO. It's like DJI uses some weird algorithm for it. I like it at -1 then up the sharpness in post...it turns out much more natural looking.

Ziggy01 · May 8, 2017

Ok. Here's the thing with the PP filters: They really have to be ON. That is, there should be no discernible "shoulder" between the Mavic lens and the filter. The first time I tried one the video came back as you describe and then I realised where I'd gone wrong. There is a bit of technique required in taking them on and off and I generally use the gimbal lock to steady the process, but once you get it together they work like a dream.

Check the point of attachment.

twitchyzero · May 8, 2017

So I looked up the how to attach filter guide, I do remember seeing it not sitting complete flush before, so ta-da, thought problem solved.

Went for another test flight, nope!

No color, sharpness, contrast etc all set to 0.

Same problem as yesterday, beautiful still images, but in video foliage is a watercolor mess.

I triple checked the filter was on correctly. Popped off the filter and the problem goes away.

Strange, I can't explain it either. But these filters are going back.

Ziggy01 · May 8, 2017

That's pretty weird.

Hope you get it sorted. I've heard good things about the Taco filters.

ecoleman · May 9, 2017

I tried +1 sharpening this weekend and whilst the watercolour effect I had gone, the footage looks way over sharpened to me. Going to try 0 this afternoon and see how that goes.

ecoleman · May 9, 2017

As above, I took my Mavic out this weekend for the first time in a while and as per the advise here upped the sharpness to +1. I found the footage to be very crunchy and over sharpened to my liking.

This morning I've been playing around with different settings and changing the sharpness to 0 at 4K starts to display the watercolour effect. Moving to 2K was a lot more natural looking with very little compression artifacts but I felt was a little soft. Leaving it at 2K, I pushed the sharpness back to +1 and am much happier. No watercolour effect and the +1 sharpness looks pretty good on 2K. Nowhere near as over sharpened as it was on 4K.

I think I've finally settled on my settings of D-Cinelike, +1,0,0, 2k 30fps

Edit: All of the footage at the weekend and this morning was shot with a TACO ND16 filter

JPMavic · May 10, 2017

Craig540 said:
Question guys ? How do i see the Exif data from Mavic video files.

The best info I've got is rightclicking the movie file in Windows and looking at the properties tab. Doesn't give too much info but knowing what colour setting was used is useful.

dv8ed · May 10, 2017

MediaInfo works with Mac or PC.

changyang1230 · May 13, 2017

dv8ed said:
MediaInfo works with Mac or PC.

I tried Mediainfo but it doesn't seem to display the colour codec, shutter speed etc?

michaeldk · May 13, 2017

For those people who associate waterpainting with ND / pola filters :

You are reducing the amount of light that reaches the sensor. The camera software hence assumes that it's getting dark, because shutterspeeds are low. It will probably respond diferently to 1/1000th shutter speed than 1/100th shutterspeed. It might possibly even have changed ISO from 100 to 200, for example.

michaeldk · May 13, 2017

AyeYo said:
I realize your crops aren't spot-on the same size, but did you notice that +3 was almost double the file size of -3 in spite of only being slightly larger in dimensions? What's the difference in full frame file size? That alone looks to be pretty telling.

Sharpening is inhibiting succesfull operation of JPG-like compression algorhythms. Without sharpening the compression can take place in areas that lack fine detail, with (strong) sharpening there are effectively very few such areas and hence the filesize will go up

Craig540 · Jun 1, 2017

JPMavic said:
The best info I've got is rightclicking the movie file in Windows and looking at the properties tab. Doesn't give too much info but knowing what colour setting was used is useful.

Thanks i will try that, any info will be helpful

peros550 · Jun 8, 2017

New firmware announced today: 01.03.0800 and one of the what's new says:

Optimized color shading in for improved footage quality.

I am wondering if this topic will get hot again...

borislip · Jun 8, 2017

Don't want to be the guinea pig, but please do talk ;-)

peros550 · Jun 8, 2017

I may try to be this time. I 'll let you know today or tomorrow...

peros550 · Jun 8, 2017

Today it was very cloudy. Not a lot of light. Ideal circumstances for the water effect to appear. I did a few tests, maybe I'm wrong but I think the water colour effect was not noticeable. I'll try to upload a test video for whoever don't want to update to check.

julius13 · Jul 9, 2017

Bilbo said:
I am having issues with still image quality as well. Do you have any pointers on how to set up camera for those of us not wishing to do any post processing

I may be wrong but if you don't want to do anything but download images then you should just shoot jpeg. Or even jpeg/raw setting, this way you can always download and have the ability to edit raw later if you wanted to. I prefer to shoot everything in D log. It gives a good detailed but flat image I can compose in post to my liking and not the camera.

HTRABIN · Jul 9, 2017

OK I had this issue, it was awful and I thought it was me doing something wrong. Turned out the sensor was defective on my Mavic. I sent it in, they sent me back a whole new Mavic and problem gone.