Infinity focus....

[Joedeertay]

This may be a dumb question because the mav pro might not even be physically capable of 'infinity'/auto-focusing, but in theory, could DJI come out with a update/firmware that would allow infinity/auto-focusing for the mavic pro?

As in, is the camera capable of auto-focusing with the right software or is it hardware limited?

Just wondering, I like the manual focusing as it allows better control of my shots, but autofucusing would also be appreciated.

Thanks!​

 

[ditography]

Since the camera itself has a tap to focus function that means the focusing lens inside is capable of moving to achieve a particular focus distance (triggered by a tap on for now), I believe it's definitely not difficult to add a software update to "tell" the focusing lens to set the focus on infinity (or close enough to infinity since it won't make much difference).

A simple "focus at infinity lock" to C1 or C2 function buttons at the back of the RC would be more than sufficient for most people.


Sent from MavicPilot iOS app

 

[Zatx]

It already has this. The latest firmware update sets focus automatically to infinity whenever the Mavic is powered on.

 

[tomnjfl]

It already has this. The latest firmware update sets focus automatically to infinity whenever the Mavic is powered on.

Wait...really?

So do you still have to tap to focus or can you basically treat it like the P4 camera.

 

[Zatx]

Tap to focus is still needed if you don't want to be focused to infinity.

I recommend that you use one the customizable buttons to set focus on whatever is in the center of the screen for quick focusing. The infinity setting is weird on this lens, it's not tack sharp as you would hope.

 

[DarkEnergy]

It already has this. The latest firmware update sets focus automatically to infinity whenever the Mavic is powered on.

Are you sure? The focusing is, I believe, done by analyzing the image after tapping. To setup a particular focus by default, for example infinity, would require a way to tell the lens that a particular distance from the lens to the detector corresponds to infinity.

 

[Zatx]

My apologies... my information may have been incorrect. Here is some information about why you would not want to set the Mavic to infinity very often:

People keep asking how to keep the Mavic focused on infinity. Actually if you focus on infinity, you most likely will get poor results from the Mavic camera. For those that understand photography, you all ready know that every lens at a given aperature has what they call a hyperfocal distance. In landscape photography, where you want as much as possible in focus, you will focus at the hyperfocal distance and then everything at some distance in front of that distance all the way to infinity will be in focus. An example of this would be on a certain 28mm lens with the aperture set to f/11, the hyperfocal distance is about 4 yds (3.7 meters). So you would focus the camera at that distance, and then everything from about 2 yds to infinity would be in focus. If you were to actually set the focus to infinity, a lot of the scene at distances getting closer to the camera would be out of focus.

I do not know what the hyperfocal distance of the Mavic camera is, (but the depth of field is rather large) but it is very safe to say that you would want to actually focus on something more in the neighborhood of 20-30 yards out and then everything from say 15 yards to infinity would be in focus. When I get my Mavic, I plan on experimenting to try and figure out what the actually hyperfocal distance is, with how small it is, and considering that it has a rather large depth of field, it will be very forgiving. But for best results, don't try to focus on infinity, set your focus on something much closer. Experiment and find out what works best.

 

[DarkEnergy]

My apologies... my information may have been incorrect. Here is some information about why you would not want to set the Mavic to infinity very often:

People keep asking how to keep the Mavic focused on infinity. Actually if you focus on infinity, you most likely will get poor results from the Mavic camera. For those that understand photography, you all ready know that every lens at a given aperature has what they call a hyperfocal distance. In landscape photography, where you want as much as possible in focus, you will focus at the hyperfocal distance and then everything at some distance in front of that distance all the way to infinity will be in focus. An example of this would be on a certain 28mm lens with the aperture set to f/11, the hyperfocal distance is about 4 yds (3.7 meters). So you would focus the camera at that distance, and then everything from about 2 yds to infinity would be in focus. If you were to actually set the focus to infinity, a lot of the scene at distances getting closer to the camera would be out of focus.

I do not know what the hyperfocal distance of the Mavic camera is, (but the depth of field is rather large) but it is very safe to say that you would want to actually focus on something more in the neighborhood of 20-30 yards out and then everything from say 15 yards to infinity would be in focus. When I get my Mavic, I plan on experimenting to try and figure out what the actually hyperfocal distance is, with how small it is, and considering that it has a rather large depth of field, it will be very forgiving. But for best results, don't try to focus on infinity, set your focus on something much closer. Experiment and find out what works best.

The hyperfocal distance for Mavic is about 10m according to the camera parameters provided by DJI.
See this discussion: Mavic Focus

 

[slbynum]

Why didnt they leave the focus the same as the Phantom series? That seems to be the biggest beef folks have with the Mavic...the method of how it focuses.

 

[jjmucker]

Why didnt they leave the focus the same as the Phantom series? That seems to be the biggest beef folks have with the Mavic...the method of how it focuses.

I really really wish they did. Im having terrible problems with focus and simetimes having really soft muddy image on the right hand side.

 

[shelterbored]

What tricks are people using to get around this? I'm struggling to understand much less remember to use the tap to focus, or the c1 center focus button. So im getting lots of out focus footage... any help?

 

[Motley]

Why didnt they leave the focus the same as the Phantom series? That seems to be the biggest beef folks have with the Mavic...the method of how it focuses.

They may not have been able to leave it the same as the Phantom due to the size of the camera, it is much smaller than a Phantom camera.

FYI, I am pretty sure the new "auto-focus" feature is only available in the Go 4 app, not the original app.

 

[shelterbored]

They may not have been able to leave it the same as the Phantom due to the size of the camera, it is much smaller than a Phantom camera.

FYI, I am pretty sure the new "auto-focus" feature is only available in the Go 4 app, not the original app.

How do you access and use the new "auto-focus" feature?

 

[Motley]

How do you access and use the new "auto-focus" feature?

I am not sure since I have not upgraded to the Go 4 app, I still use the original Go app. There are YouTube videos about it and it seems like it just automatically works. I personally would hate to have the camera trying to re-focus all the time without my asking but that is just me. I think you will end up with video ruined with a bunch of auto-focusing every few seconds.

 

[shelterbored]

I have both the Go 4 app and the original Go app on the same phone? Was one supposed to get deleted?

Agreed, I'd want to be able to turn it off... but sometimes its nice to not have to think about it, and it would be great if it didn't auto-focus so much that it cuts into the viewing experience. Frankly auto focus to infinity once at the beginning would be fine for me rather than a full continuous focus feature

 

[msinger]

I have both the Go 4 app and the original Go app on the same phone?

They are separate apps, so it's possible to have both installed at the same time.

 

[jerryflah]

The hyperfocal distance for Mavic is about 10m according to the camera parameters provided by DJI.
See this discussion: Mavic Focus

Thanks for the insight

 

[kona]

I just experienced related issues during a night flight. Unfortunately I couldn't even force it to infinity focus by moving the focus slider to infinity -- the imagery came out very blurry. Any new ideas since this thread was last active for ways to force the Mavic to infinity? That is really 99.9% of my use case.

 

[NightRunner417]

Well, I was going to suggest to use the slider but I see that you tried that already. Did you make sure not to push it TOO far into the hyperfocal distance? Most cameras can do that and the result is imagery focused "past infinity", and again blurry just as too close focus would be. For night flight, what I'd probably do is find a very bright object, say the moon or a sign or a bright streetlight, at a good distance, and tap autofocus on it, making sure to keep real-time AF turned off. This is a trick I use to do simple astrophotography of the stars at night with my DSLR, and it works quite well, but you MUST have a good, bright object to set the focus on. Also, in conjunction with attemtping to set focus on your target, try with the focus aid turned on, again if you haven't already. It draws red patches in the view where objects are in focus, so if you see a touch of red on your scenery, you know you've got it. I've never tried that at night so I don't know if it works, but it's maybe something.