Is there actually an answer to the camera settings question?

[rmb]

hello everyone,

This is a very helpful and informative thread. i am new to this. i have my mavic for 3 weeks now and it is my very first drone or even 4k camera. i have spent hours and hours on the web and youtube looking for all kinds of information about best camera settings and learning basic camera information like sharpness,contrast ,saturation,iso and shutterspeed grain and noise. I think i understand most of it but i am also stuck at the negative or positive sharpness.when all youtubers were posting to go negative i followed 1 youtuber to go positive.
I am the biggest noob when it comes to pc and yes i say it my self. so i want to get the best possible image from my drone without having to edit it. Now i notice with the sharpness +1 in 4k a good amount of grain/noise. It looks a bit like a mist sometimes and this with 100 ISO in normal daylight. I didn't really try to film at 0 or -1 sharpness because i saw all the movie's online with those settings and they make my video look good.But then again when i see video's with +1 sharpness they do look better because somehow they have a lot less grain/noisy image without editing.
Now i did the test mentioned above in 4 and 2K at +1/0/+1 0/0/0 -1/0/0 each. I was expecting this oilpainting looks in my greens at -1 sharpness but its not. basically the +1 is sharp and detailed but noisy and in 2K better then 4K.
And the 0 or -1 is for my untrained eyes less sharp but also less noisy atleast on my screens and tv screen.

I would very much appreciate it if some of your well trained eyes and knowledge would take a look at my test results and tell me which settings you would take and comment on it but keep in mind to choose for no editing afterwards.

they are all at 30FPS, 100 ISO, 60 shutter, true collor with WB at sunny and ND4 filter.

this is the link of vimeo album with the 6 test results. and like i said i am a noob with pc so i didnt make a fancy edited video. test mavic on Vimeo

Thank you in advance and thank you for the information given to all newbie's like me.

Thank you Roy84. Newbie or not, you are the only person in 2 forums that has bothered to share settings and accompanying by footage. Therefor we should all thank you and treat you like the pro you are. I've said it before and I will say it again. Vomiting out numbers without sample footage is a wasted vote. So here's what I have done to thank you and possibly help/educate us all. I have posted your samples on Vimeo in the form of a test. Here is the identical text you will find there to explain it.

"These samples were assembled in a native 2.7k sequence (obviously the 4k was scaled by 71% to fit). Technically a purist would want to judge the 4k at 4k, but as most delivery and viewing is still done in 1920 by 1080 iI figured there would be no reason to go above the 2.7k. This is a blind impartial test. The samples were created and posted by Roy84. I downloaded the actual upload (not the Vimeo compressed version) and put this together and uploaded it with as little compression as possible. Please vote for A, B, C or D. Once we have a handful of votes (with or without comments) I will reveal Roy's clip settings."

Now lets see if we can at least get some votes from the "pros".

Again, thanks a million Roy84 for taking the time.

Let the voting begin!

rb


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The Password is "roy"

 

[Roy84]

Thank you Roy84. Newbie or not, you are the only person in 2 forums that has bothered to share settings and accompanying by footage. Therefor we should all thank you and treat you like the pro you are. I've said it before and I will say it again. Vomiting out numbers without sample footage is a wasted vote. So here's what I have done to thank you and possibly help/educate us all. I have posted your samples on Vimeo in the form of a test. Here is the identical text you will find there to explain it.

"These samples were assembled in a native 2.7k sequence (obviously the 4k was scaled by 71% to fit). Technically a purist would want to judge the 4k at 4k, but as most delivery and viewing is still done in 1920 by 1080 iI figured there would be no reason to go above the 2.7k. This is a blind impartial test. The samples were created and posted by Roy84. I downloaded the actual upload (not the Vimeo compressed version) and put this together and uploaded it with as little compression as possible. Please vote for A, B, C or D. Once we have a handful of votes (with or without comments) I will reveal Roy's clip settings."

Now lets see if we can at least get some votes from the "pros".

Again, thanks a million Roy84 for taking the time.

Let the voting begin!

rb


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The Password is "roy"

Very much appreciated RB. Really nice off you to put your time in it. Thank you very much.

 

[Stepco]

Thank you Roy84. Newbie or not, you are the only person in 2 forums that has bothered to share settings and accompanying by footage. Therefor we should all thank you and treat you like the pro you are. I've said it before and I will say it again. Vomiting out numbers without sample footage is a wasted vote. So here's what I have done to thank you and possibly help/educate us all. I have posted your samples on Vimeo in the form of a test. Here is the identical text you will find there to explain it.

"These samples were assembled in a native 2.7k sequence (obviously the 4k was scaled by 71% to fit). Technically a purist would want to judge the 4k at 4k, but as most delivery and viewing is still done in 1920 by 1080 iI figured there would be no reason to go above the 2.7k. This is a blind impartial test. The samples were created and posted by Roy84. I downloaded the actual upload (not the Vimeo compressed version) and put this together and uploaded it with as little compression as possible. Please vote for A, B, C or D. Once we have a handful of votes (with or without comments) I will reveal Roy's clip settings."

Now lets see if we can at least get some votes from the "pros".

Again, thanks a million Roy84 for taking the time.

Let the voting begin!

rb


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The Password is "roy"

Hi all and to everyone BIG Thanks. i have been reading but not posting for sometime (this is my first post)
and i like rmb am very interested in getting the most out of the mavic for its camera and size. First
my vote A and C the pic's from what i saw gave room for change in post and good sharpness in movement
when the wind was blowing. rmb i have not yet had time to film a test but love this thread please keep this
going so we can get good feedback just as you said for the size of the sensor i believe y can do good
film work with this drone. Will keep looking and get more involved.

 

[TTFullTimer]

No worries. I'm working on two other comparison videos also after the weekend.
I'll be sure to share.


I personally think people forget over 50% of the people watching each other's videos do it from a phone and a tiny screen now a days and if something over sharpened it can make the whole screen just appear a mess.

I had an interesting experience with exactly the same but photos. I have a decent Lumix point and shoot. Had to abandon my D200 because I just don't have the space to stow it. One of the grandsons made a tribute slide show when my wife his grandmother died and we had a celebration of life. All the kids and some of the adults contributed pictures. All the others from phones and mine from just a point and shoot. The slideshow was shown on a nice Sammy 65 inch TV. The phone pics were horribly soft and pixelated, the Lumix shots were crisp and clear. In my experience, a lot more than 50% only use the phone for all media even streaming movies. They would not be able to determine if a photo or video is good or bad. Any photo or video is good to them. As long as you can tell it is a human in the picture or video it is just fine. Oh novels are now just strings of text messages.

 

[cptlores]

Despite the small camera sensor size on the Mavic, it is actually surprisingly good. The internal JPEG and video processing on the other hand, is really, really bad. Here is a quick still image comparison showing internal Jpeg straight from the Mavic vs DNG raw data from the same shot.

 

[TTFullTimer]

No surprise, compressed file versus not compressed. Sumpin got to go. No different in the most expensive DSLRs in the world.

 

[cptlores]

ehh..? The image you are looking at now showing the difference is a jpeg.

 

[PROMOLOZO]

I know how you feel. There are lots of self professed experts on YouTube.
I've finally settled on D-cinelike, +1,0,0 at 2k 30fps.

+1 at 4k is just to crunchy and 0 introduces the water colour effect whereas +1 at 2k looks natural.

I guess it's just a case of testing thing and figuring out what suits your personal taste.

Im more a video guy than a drone guy and id have to say, i agree with you

 

[PROMOLOZO]

Thanks man. Nice stuff. I found your opening shot to be on the "mavic" scale of 1 - 10 a solid 12! Some of the downward stuff I saw a lot of that telltale smudginess associated with the millions of lines of detail in leafless trees. Basically in these cases I think we are simply asking too much of the camera that including the gimbal, is the size of a golfball. My favorite setting to date is D-Cinelike with either a 0 -2 -1 or for busier stuff like the branches a +1 -2-1. Here is an example of something I did at that setting.

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Nice

 

[Blacklock]

I am keen to see where everyone's thoughts lie know in March 2018. Have they changed?

 

[Fmoots]

I am keen to see where everyone's thoughts lie know in March 2018. Have they changed?

I'd also like to know this. After returning my Air for a MPP I have so far being quite disappointed with the camera in comparison (as an aircraft I'm very impressed). I initially started with 4k 24fps +1,-1,-1 and was shocked at how noisy the footage was, no matter what the conditions were. Now I've been trying out 2.7k 0,-1,-1 and it is slightly better, but seems to fall apart when you start to colour grade (D-Cinelike).

 

[Stolz]

After more than one year with the mavic Pro, these are the settings I use:

- If I don't want to post process my videos at all: MP4 24fps 4k D-Cinelike 0,0,1
- If I want to post process my videos but without noise reduction treatment: MP4 24fps 4k D-Log 0,-1,0
- If I want to post process my videos including the extra effort of reducing noise: MP4 4k D-Log 1,-1,0

The one I get more satisfactory results is the later, but the huge amount of time required makes me use the second more often.

 

[Blacklock]

I am preparing and testing the MP for a long form documentary which will have the drone footage cut in with cinema cameras. I am not sure exactly what cameras yet but they will more than likely be Arri Alexa Mini's or Amiras. Post production will be done by a post house so I need to supply the highest quality images. Sorry I should have put that in my initial post.

 

[4wd]

+1 sharpening and 4K is the way to go if you have a computer can apply noise reduction in post - without taking hours.
2.7K will speed that up and usually looks less flickery.
In good light results are OK with sharpening on zero.
Contrast and saturation are relatively easy to tweak afterwards, you may as well leave them on zero.
I use D-Log, cinelike can be OK but I find the colours a bit weird in some conditions especially bright sun.

Underexposing is bad news with this camera, you can make a clip look darker when editing if need be.
.

 

[bushie]

I have been reading with interest. I am looking at combining my dro e footage with a panasonic videocam. I use an old copy of Premier pro CS4 for post. If i film in 4k re dering takes for ever. Would love a faster computer and later software but budjet only streaches so far an and the MP already stretched it. Still experementing. Currently using-2 0 0.

 

[bizzy]

I have been following along with this thread and have been blown away by the depth of discussion that has happened. I have learnt a ton, so thanks! I have a question though in terms of still photos what are people's recommendations? I have been using d-cinelike +1,0,0. Any feedback would be fantastic.

 

[4wd]

I have been following along with this thread and have been blown away by the depth of discussion that has happened. I have learnt a ton, so thanks! I have a question though in terms of still photos what are people's recommendations? I have been using d-cinelike +1,0,0. Any feedback would be fantastic.

For photos if at all possible use the RAW file.
The extra settings don't affect the RAW file, but the preview is a jpg and will show any changes you have applied.
RAW files are affected by exposure, from ISO and shutter of course