MA2 lense distortion towards the top - how much is normal?

[swoermck]

Hi,

just did a quick check with my MA2 regarding the lense distortion towards the top:

Gimbal pointing down (I inserted the red rectangle to get an idea what is really straight):


from this picture I have the impression, that the distortion is more towards the right??

For comparison here a screenshot with the line of my beamer screen not at top, but more towards 2/3 of the picture:





Here everything looks ok to me.

I wouldn't be worried, if the distortion towards the top is more or less balanced to the left and to the right, but in my case I see the distortion more to the right edge?

For comparison I did the same test with my old MP1 - beamer screen towards the top of the picture.





and screen 2/3 of the picture:





So do you think the distortion of my MA2 towards the top is normal??

 

[MavicAir2Marc]

Distortion at the edges of wide angle lenses are normal. Most lens/camera manufacturers try an minimize it as much as possible by keeping the edge of distortion out of the field of view as much as possible. With small sensors and wide angle lenses, that's tougher because there isn't as much space between the lens and the sensor to work with. Also, were you certain that you were square left to right? That would also change the apparent distortion more to one side or another. It's nothing to be concerned about and most likely won't even notice it on video. Photoshop has lens distortion specs for some of the DJI cameras (but not the Air 2 yet) that will compensate for that particular camera's distortion. If you see a bowed horizon (a problem with most wide angle lenses to a degree) you can manually correct it in Adobe Camera RAW if they don't have a lens profile. Even if you shoot in jpeg, you can use the camera RAW in Filters to add the lens distortion compensation.

 

[swoermck]

Also, were you certain that you were square left to right?

exactly this was my concern as well. So I started over again:

First I did an auto-calibrate of the gimbal - which seems to made things worse. So I did a manual gimbal adjustment (-0.3 degree horizontal): now it was level at the top, but not anymore in the center.

Finally I searched for an exact 0.0 degree level floor tile on my floor for a new auto-calibration (I was amazed about the variations within level of the floor tiles in my room ;-), after that I put the drone on this exact floor tile (not on a table like in my first shot), distance around 30cm to the wall to make sure it is is really square left to right - and, voila, spot on!

So why seems the MP1 appear better? For a level horizon, I had to do a -0.3 degree manual gimbal adjustment (and in fact flying with this adjustment for 3 years now), and when looking at my picture in my post above with the MP1 I realized that the floor was not level: so no, the MP1 was not square left to the right.. and If I would do the test again with the MP1 on the floor tile 30cm in front of the wall, I'd assume the result wouldn't be straight anymore.

So final verdict: MA2 is all good, but my old MP1 maybe not..