How good is the MP2 Video and Low Light Capabilities.......Really

[robertmillin]

Hi Guys,

I've been toying over the idea of buying the Mavic Pro 2 after seeing the new Hasselblad implementation.

I own a Mavic Pro and to be honest I'm constantly underwhelmed by the quality of the video, especially the noise in low light and the Soft Images as
explained in this film poets tutorial.

(see here:

)

Especially as this imposes a great deal of my time to denoise my footage after it's been shot......and before you say it I know all the right settings!!

My point is, although I think its a great drone and I've gotten some amazing shots from my (albeit after some post work) I'm only willing to spent a whopping £ 1350 or $1500 if they've drastically improved the image quality.

Can anyone vouch for it?? anyone with a Mavic pro that can see drastic improvements

Could you shoot professional quality video with it?

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

 

[afarkas]

Hi Guys,

I've been toying over the idea of buying the Mavic Pro 2 after seeing the new Hasselblad implementation.

I own a Mavic Pro and to be honest I'm constantly underwhelmed by the quality of the video, especially the noise in low light and the Soft Images as
explained in this film poets tutorial.

(see here:

)

Especially as this imposes a great deal of my time to denoise my footage after it's been shot......and before you say it I know all the right settings!!

My point is, although I think its a great drone and I've gotten some amazing shots from my (albeit after some post work) I'm only willing to spent a whopping £ 1350 or $1500 if they've drastically improved the image quality.

Can anyone vouch for it?? anyone with a Mavic pro that can see drastic improvements

Could you shoot professional quality video with it?

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

I dont have the MP, M2P is my first drone... I also never shot videos before, only photos... and i must say - in low light conditions the noise of M2P at iso800 freaked the hell out of me... but OK... im used to use big sensor cameras...
On the other hand, the photo overall quality at iso100 - 200 and f/2,8 surprised me in a very lovely manner...

I think M2P is a masterpiece of technology and its camera performs surprisingly well (considering its size) in not-extreme conditions ...

 

[Hyperdark]

I don't have much time on the M2 and never had the original Mavic, I can only compare it to the Panasonic GH4 i use on my other camera-drone and I can say the one thing I find a bit disappointing with the M2pro is the low light video, even moderately low lighting produces a lot of noise.
but as I said, I don't know how bad the original Mavic was

 

[robertmillin]

I don't have much time on the M2 and never had the original Mavic, I can only compare it to the Panasonic GH4 i use on my other camera-drone and I can say the one thing I find a bit disappointing with the M2pro is the low light video, even moderately low lighting produces a lot of noise.
but as I said, I don't know how bad the original Mavic was

I'm used to shooting around dusk, how well does it perform at golden hour?

 

[TR Ganey]

I'm used to shooting around dusk, how well does it perform at golden hour?

It does a decent job as long as you keep the sky out of the picture. Any sky in the picture kills it. Once you pan down to the point the sky is out of the picture then the ground lights up and you can see decent detail.

 

[CanadaDrone]

It very much depends what you're used to. Even the best 1" sensors aren't very good, it's just that 1/2.3" sensors (the most common alternative) are so bad that it makes for a significant (relative) improvement from what a lot of people are used to in previous drones, point & shoot cameras, and their smartphones. A 1" sensor has 4X the area. If you're used to APS-C or FF then they are worlds apart - don't expect anything even close to that, especially if you're a stickler for quality. For what most people use them for though, they are more than adequate.

For me, it's more the fact that nothing else can put a 1" sensor in the sky for a reasonable price and remain very portable, so it's all we've got.

Also I see you mentioned Hasselblad in your OP - note that there is *nothing* in this drone whatsoever that you could ever trace back to Hasselblad in terms of what most of us think of when we think of Hasselblad hardware. The sensor is a 5-year-old Sony's 1" design (IMX183) and the lens is a DJI design. Apparently Hasselblad had a hand in the color processing, but most people are using their own LUTs anyway if they are shooting in 10bit DLog-M. DJI can put a Hasselblad sticker on it though because they bought a Majority stake in the company.

If you're coming from a Mavic Pro to a M2P, the improvement is quite dramatic, in my opinion - moreso because of how bad the Mavic Pro is (relatively speaking) rather than how good the 1" sensor is, but it's still a very significant improvement in my opinion. You also move up to a 100Mbps bitrate on the M2P. I am not sure what your definition of "professional quality video" is, but the results are good enough - I say go for it. If you want better video quality you are looking at a P4P 2.0 but portability is out the window. The M2P also offers quite a few improvements like 360 degree obstacle avoidance and Occusync 2.0 which are worth the upgrade.

 

[CanadaDrone]

It does a decent job as long as you keep the sky out of the picture. Any sky in the picture kills it. Once you pan down to the point the sky is out of the picture then the ground lights up and you can see decent detail.

To me that sounds like you have the drone in auto exposure mode and since the sky is likely to be a lot brighter than the foreground, once you pan down to just the foreground, the drone changes the exposure. There is no getting around that no matter what drone you have - you can only expose for one thing at a time.

If you do a lot of flying like this you can use manual mode with a graduated ND filter to solve the problem, but you need to be very aware of the horizon orientation and I would recommend a soft transition.

 

[Rufus34]

I'm new to flying drones so I watch a lot of YouTube video's.
This guy talks about filming in darker conditions and compares the image quality of the original Mavic to the Mavic 2.
After about 2 minutes in the video he starts with the imaga quality of the original Mavic, after about 10:30 in the video he shows the quality of the Mavic 2

 

[CanadaDrone]

YouTube is definitely the most easily accessible platform, but most people are uploading their videos with well under half the bitrate of the original footage, so it's really hard to judge quality on there. It can give you an idea though. The Mavic Pro was quite bad, even the Mavic Air is a huge step up in video quality - the Pro 2 is in another league with 10bit DLog-M / HQ.

 

[4wd]

Basically you hardly need any de-noising even well after sunset.
I'd rather forgotten how important it was most times with the Mavic Pro, probably not used it more than once with M2Pro footage so far, though no doubt if pushing in to more extreme low light it would be worthwhile.

 

[ems12]

Look it's all relative right? If you want ultra quality video and photos out of a drone then be ready to fork over 8K or more for a I2 or Drone capable of carrying around a FF or a APS-C camera. Those drones are big and expensive. The M2P and P4P are small and relatively inexpensive.

The M2P and the P4P are really the first drones with a 1" sensor on them. As technology progresses I would love to see a APS-C sensor on a small drone, until that time the M2P and P4P bridge a gap between the I2 and it's incredible X7 and the micro 2/3 camera on the Air.

M2P Downtown Jax

 

[Wilmer Schock]

It very much depends what you're used to. Even the best 1" sensors aren't very good, it's just that 1/2.3" sensors (the most common alternative) are so bad that it makes for a significant (relative) improvement from what a lot of people are used to in previous drones, point & shoot cameras, and their smartphones. A 1" sensor has 4X the area. If you're used to APS-C or FF then they are worlds apart - don't expect anything even close to that, especially if you're a stickler for quality. For what most people use them for though, they are more than adequate.

For me, it's more the fact that nothing else can put a 1" sensor in the sky for a reasonable price and remain very portable, so it's all we've got.

Also I see you mentioned Hasselblad in your OP - note that there is *nothing* in this drone whatsoever that you could ever trace back to Hasselblad in terms of what most of us think of when we think of Hasselblad hardware. The sensor is a 5-year-old Sony's 1" design (IMX183) and the lens is a DJI design. Apparently Hasselblad had a hand in the color processing, but most people are using their own LUTs anyway if they are shooting in 10bit DLog-M. DJI can put a Hasselblad sticker on it though because they bought a Majority stake in the company.

If you're coming from a Mavic Pro to a M2P, the improvement is quite dramatic, in my opinion - moreso because of how bad the Mavic Pro is (relatively speaking) rather than how good the 1" sensor is, but it's still a very significant improvement in my opinion. You also move up to a 100Mbps bitrate on the M2P. I am not sure what your definition of "professional quality video" is, but the results are good enough - I say go for it. If you want better video quality you are looking at a P4P 2.0 but portability is out the window. The M2P also offers quite a few improvements like 360 degree obstacle avoidance and Occusync 2.0 which are worth the upgrade.

Very informative and insightful, it's this kind of response that makes the forum so valuable and useful. Thanks.

 

[robertmillin]

Hey Guys,

Thanks for all your responses they're very informative and helpful.

I'm not at the point where I'm about to fork out thousands for a professional full-frame hanging underneath an expensive drone (well not yet anyway) and the main reason I went for the Mavic pro in the first place was the portability as I travel a lot and fly the done on my various trips.

It's interesting (CanadaDrone) that you say the Mavic air was an improvement on image quality, that's a tempting avenue just from the portability and price point

I should reword professional......I accept that the sensor is still quite small so won't be providing the kind of quality a FF or APS_C would but I really mean......could it provide footage good enough to sell (ie on Shutterstock or equivalent) without huge denoising etc as I would like to start investigating this with the purchase of another drone.

quality wise....If you have time take a look at what I've manages so far with the Mavic pro, its not professional by any standards but a quality improvement on the footage would be welcomed

Shutter Stream

It looks like I'm leaning towards buying it, but will wait until the summer when hopefully it will be a bit cheaper. OR they bring out an amazing Mavic Air 2

One last question

Has anyone had any issues with the gimbal........my MP had the ribbon issue recently and im hoping this is something that DJI has improved.

 

[CanadaDrone]

It's interesting (CanadaDrone) that you say the Mavic air was an improvement on image quality, that's a tempting avenue just from the portability and price point

The Air has a better image processor, better lens, and a much higher maximum video bitrate of 100Mbps. The video quality is quite a bit better than the original Pro. Same size sensor though (1/2.3", 12MP) so there aren't any miracles happening. Still image quality is very poor on the Air, as with the original Pro and M2 Zoom.

I think the results you can get from nicely graded 10bit DLog-M are still excellent and I doubt you would have trouble selling it (if it's good haha) - I suspect Shutterstock has defined their minimum accepted quality somewhere, so you can probably check that as well.

No issues that I have ever experienced or read about with the M2P gimbal - it's a much better design than the original Pro.

 

[robertmillin]

Thanks CanadaDrone for all your help....much appreciated.