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Flying with a 4:3 photo crop

jweaver

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One of the last thing I needed to change on my Mini2 was the Photo ratio from 16:9 to 4:3.

I managed to get a quick flight in this evening and changed the ratio but was surprised that it also affected the "live" view too.. And since I use Photo mode more than Video, this means that the majority of time that I am flying, the view is cropped to 4:3.
This means that if i use the 4:3 mode, I will lose around 1/3 of my view when flying.

Is there a way to "zoom" the live view so that I can still fly in 16:9 but capture photos in 4:3?
 
You could fly in the "video" mode with the full 16:9 screen, press the top right button to switch to "photo" mode (4:3) whenever you want to take a picture, then press it again when you're done taking the picture to switch back to the 16:9 screen.
 
@jweaver ,the idea of the display changing as well is to give you the view that the resulting picture will contain ,the change takes place in the drone so it sends what it sees back to the display device ,its the same if i select portrait with my MPP then the picture on the device flips ,from 16.9 to portrait and will stay like that till i change it back
 
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One of the last thing I needed to change on my Mini2 was the Photo ratio from 16:9 to 4:3.

I managed to get a quick flight in this evening and changed the ratio but was surprised that it also affected the "live" view too.. And since I use Photo mode more than Video, this means that the majority of time that I am flying, the view is cropped to 4:3.
This means that if i use the 4:3 mode, I will lose around 1/3 of my view when flying.

Is there a way to "zoom" the live view so that I can still fly in 16:9 but capture photos in 4:3?

isn't the 16:9 a crop from the 4:3, or am i mistaken?
 
This means that if i use the 4:3 mode, I will lose around 1/3 of my view when flying.
You have it backwards.
With the aspect ratio set to 4:3, there is no cropping as the sensor natively records 4000 x 3000 (or 8000 x 6000).
In 16:9 you are looking at a cropped image.
The top and bottom of the image have been cropped from the 4:3 original.
 
Last edited:
You have it backwards.
With the aspect ratio set to 4:3, there is no cropping as the sensor natively records 4000 x 3000 (or 8000 x 6000).
In 16:9 the top and bottom of the image are cropped.
You are missing my point, in 4:3 you get the highest resolution on the saved photos. But the LIVE/FLYING view is cropped by 30% and it doesnt fill the phone screen.

so whilst you get better photos with more pixels, you loose the sides of the live view.
 
I don't believe that is true. The "width" of the 4:3 image covers the same field of view as the 16:9 image. However, the "height" of the 4:3 image covers a larger field of view than that on the 16:9.

In order to provide the 16:9 perspective, the top and bottom of the field of view is cropped. Therefore, you actually are viewing a cropped image when viewing in 16:9.
 
I don't believe that is true. The "width" of the 4:3 image covers the same field of view as the 16:9 image. However, the "height" of the 4:3 image covers a larger field of view than that on the 16:9.

In order to provide the 16:9 perspective, the top and bottom of the field of view is cropped. Therefore, you actually are viewing a cropped image when viewing in 16:9.
Try it for yourself.. you will see what i mean..

forget the photo that is taken for a minute.. when you set the camera to 16:9 the LIVE view almost fills the phone screen... but when you set it to 4:3 you get a rectangle in the middle with black bars left and right.

there is no doubt that the photo taken in 4:3 is “better” as it has more pixels... and in 16:9 the image is simply a crop from the 4:3 so it has less pixels

but the LIVE view is inferior.

so you have 2 choices.

1. 4:3 - higher resolution photos but a cropped/smaller live view
2. 16:9 - lower resolution photos but full screen live view.

The point i am making is that when flying, the view you get from the 16:9 mode is MUCH better than 4:3 as it fills then screen.
 
It fills the screen... but it doesn't show as much area.

I wouldn't say it "fills" the screen (unless your phone has a 4:3 ratio screen)... It shrinks the image to fit, leaving black bars on the sides.

There is no doubt that you get more of the image at the top and bottom shown.. But the overall experience is that you have a smaller image on your phone to fly with... And consider the phone screen is already pretty small, this isn't ideal.

But there is something I have thought about overnight.. Its could be useful t see more of the top and bottom (certainly the bottom) of the image when flying as it will allow you to see a bit more of whats below you... So it actually could be used as a good feature, and flick between 16:9 and 4:3 using the Video select button (top right) as suggested by screwthepap above.

I don't think there is much more to discuss here.. My quesiton was simply whether I could 'zoom' the image on the phone, to fill the screen when I have the photo mode set to 4:3, that wouldn't be hard to do in software.. But its a non-issue really.

So I thank you all for your help

Jon
 
As mentioned before, the simplist solution is to fly in video mode 16:9 and switch to photo mode 4:3 when you want to take a shot. It is just one click on the remote to acheive this and I have found it an ideal way of using the system.
 
My quesiton was simply whether I could 'zoom' the image on the phone, to fill the screen when I have the photo mode set to 4:3, that wouldn't be hard to do in software.. But its a non-issue really.

So I thank you all for your help

Jon
To my knowledge DJI hasn't, wouldn't or won't program that in. I presume it's complicated because in addition to the live view image coming from the camera they have data superimposed on it, which in its own quirky way DJI might deem a legal liability. I don't know. It's DJI. But something you might try is if you have an iPhone is the zoom feature in the Accessibility menu under Settings.

1616090122284.png
 
One of the last thing I needed to change on my Mini2 was the Photo ratio from 16:9 to 4:3.

I managed to get a quick flight in this evening and changed the ratio but was surprised that it also affected the "live" view too.. And since I use Photo mode more than Video, this means that the majority of time that I am flying, the view is cropped to 4:3.
This means that if i use the 4:3 mode, I will lose around 1/3 of my view when flying.

Is there a way to "zoom" the live view so that I can still fly in 16:9 but capture photos in 4:3?
Fly on video mode then change when taking stills
 
I have a bunch of DJI/iOS devices, and have experimented with this quite a bit.

Flying with an iPad Pro in 4:3 photo mode (with occusync 2) is by far the best for latency, bitrate and IQ.
 
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