Just received the 2s - some thoughts and some whinging.

[Ziggy01]

In comparison to the Mavic Air 2:

It's heavier.

It's noisier, not so much in hover but noticeably so when flying. Any flaring is deafening compared to the Air 2.

One the positive side, It's immediately familiar to any Air 2 pilot, which is good. Walk right in, fly right out. No problem.

No ability to shoot only RAW. What? Why? The jpg's are utterly useless but they are written onto the card whether you want them or not.

The video image quality is far better, Im doing some RAW stills tests now, but it looks promising as I found the stills from the Mavic Air 2 to be completely unusable.

Some oddities:

When shooting in interval mode the drone locks up after 20 or so shots. That is, it is still spinning the timer, but you lose the picture and the screen goes blank. A bit disconcerting at first, but immediately rectified by GTH function. Could be my card, but I doubt it.

Secondly, where the $#^@ is hyper lapse?

Thirdly, perhaps someone can explain to me why, when shooting 4K @60fps the footage properties show up as variable frame rates somewhere between 50fps and 58fps. What is that all about?

 

[zentenk]

I looked through a few raw photos side by side between the air 2 and 2S and I found the air 2 48mp images much sharper than the 2S.

kind of disappointed as I was looking to get the 2S but seems the lens isn’t great

would love to hear your thoughts on the raw stills compared to the air 2

 

[Sjkieffer]

What happened to the option to auto download hd photos?

 

[TheRock]

This guy points out some of the imaging oddities of the Air 2 S:

 

[Ziggy01]

I looked through a few raw photos side by side between the air 2 and 2S and I found the air 2 48mp images much sharper than the 2S.

kind of disappointed as I was looking to get the 2S but seems the lens isn’t great

would love to hear your thoughts on the raw stills compared to the air 2

In my opinion there's no comparison. The DR of the 2S is far superior to the A2 and the picture quality in RAW is totally workable. Finally I can take aerial photos that don't look like a Sony digital camera from 2004.

 

[Ziggy01]

What happened to the option to auto download hd photos?

Beats me, but they were pretty awful so there's no great loss as far as Im concerned. In fact, the whole HDR Mavic experience was generally pretty awful. Im not going to miss it.

 

[TheRock]

Beats me, but they were pretty awful so there's no great loss as far as Im concerned. In fact, the whole HDR Mavic experience was generally pretty awful. Im not going to miss it.

In my opinion there's no comparison. The DR of the 2S is far superior to the A2 and the picture quality in RAW is totally workable. Finally I can take aerial photos that don't look like a Sony digital camera from 2004.

I would agree. The Air 2S (just got it yesterday) has great RAW files. I have never been a fan of the "48MP" composite files. When you start working on the Air 2S RAW files they are really nice.

 

[ninja_geezer]

In comparison to the Mavic Air 2:

It's heavier.

It's noisier, not so much in hover but noticeably so when flying. Any flaring is deafening compared to the Air 2.

One the positive side, It's immediately familiar to any Air 2 pilot, which is good. Walk right in, fly right out. No problem.

No ability to shoot only RAW. What? Why? The jpg's are utterly useless but they are written onto the card whether you want them or not.

The video image quality is far better, Im doing some RAW stills tests now, but it looks promising as I found the stills from the Mavic Air 2 to be completely unusable.

Some oddities:

When shooting in interval mode the drone locks up after 20 or so shots. That is, it is still spinning the timer, but you lose the picture and the screen goes blank. A bit disconcerting at first, but immediately rectified by GTH function. Could be my card, but I doubt it.

Secondly, where the $#^@ is hyper lapse?

Thirdly, perhaps someone can explain to me why, when shooting 4K @60fps the footage properties show up as variable frame rates somewhere between 50fps and 58fps. What is that all about?

1. we know its heavier its got a larger camera and more sensors....a mere 25 grams for all that kit is great with me.
2 .how is it noisier in flight same props same motors ? i think it was (Ian of London )who did a side by sound comparison with the air 2 and they was the same in sound.

 

[JustADude]

In my opinion there's no comparison. The DR of the 2S is far superior to the A2 and the picture quality in RAW is totally workable. Finally I can take aerial photos that don't look like a Sony digital camera from 2004.

Wow, I have to wonder if you had a defective drone. I don't find that to be the case at all unless your Sony digital camera was far better than anything available to the general public.

 

[LA 2020]

In comparison to the Mavic Air 2:

It's heavier.

It's noisier, not so much in hover but noticeably so when flying. Any flaring is deafening compared to the Air 2.

One the positive side, It's immediately familiar to any Air 2 pilot, which is good. Walk right in, fly right out. No problem.

No ability to shoot only RAW. What? Why? The jpg's are utterly useless but they are written onto the card whether you want them or not.

The video image quality is far better, Im doing some RAW stills tests now, but it looks promising as I found the stills from the Mavic Air 2 to be completely unusable.

Some oddities:

When shooting in interval mode the drone locks up after 20 or so shots. That is, it is still spinning the timer, but you lose the picture and the screen goes blank. A bit disconcerting at first, but immediately rectified by GTH function. Could be my card, but I doubt it.

Secondly, where the $#^@ is hyper lapse?

Thirdly, perhaps someone can explain to me why, when shooting 4K @60fps the footage properties show up as variable frame rates somewhere between 50fps and 58fps. What is that all about?

Stills on your drone will likely never be acceptable especially if you compare to even modern cellphone stills. RAW doesn't get you much since it just allows you to adjust the data yourself and jpeg does the adjusting for you. The real secret is how big is your sensor and the Air 2 just doesn't have a big sensor. I fly a M2Pro with the best (1") sensor and it gets reasonable stills but nothing approaching my Sony A7R4 camera so I am never satisfied with drone stills. BTW the M2Pro's videos are incredible because of it's 1" sensor

 

[jonthecourier]

There is always an alternative thats just released and at £400 seems a good buy, no names so work it out yourselves.

 

[RicGPDX]

RAW doesn't get you much since it just allows you to adjust the data yourself and jpeg does the adjusting for you. T

I haven't had a chance to evaluate the 2S yet, but offering better adjustment is a major understatement. There's a lot more data in the sensor than a JPEG can make use of, including more detail in the highlights and shadows and no white balance information. Put a RAW image in a program like Adobe Lightroom and you can do more with that sensor data than any phone can (assuming you know how to fly Lightroom). I always shoot RAW in my DSLR, and it's really nice when I can edit RAW video. (My dream is DJI partnering with Blackmagic Designs and putting one of their 6K BMD Raw sensors in a drone.)

 

[Ziggy01]

RAW doesn't get you much since it just allows you to adjust the data yourself and jpeg does the adjusting for you.

Um.

No.

 

[ninja_geezer]

ok so i am going to take back what i said in regards to Ziggy01,s comment the other day with him saying it was noisier ,
on full chat it does seem to scream a bit compared to the Air 2 ,i had 2 of those so i can compare and yep the Air 2 S is louder but seems the same in a hover.my guess is the motors are either more powerful or they have been tweaked to rev higher,its more responsive than my Air 2 that's for sure it climbs like a (love sick angel ) !!! and descends twice as fast as my buddys M2p. if im downwind i can hear it for hundreds of yards when im pushing it.
on the bright side i love it so far, ive tested all the sensors and they work as they should and the 03 wow what a signal....
ive flown out shall we just say quite some way to where i would lose the connection on my air 2 and this was rock solid i was amazed,all whilst battling 30mph winds ,the footage ive tested out on my large UHD tv looks stunning,the best so far is 5.4k exported down to 4k in post .now i need some better weather,its been shocking recently where i live currently gusting 44mph on the uav forecast as i type this,its meant to be MAY for gods sake ........