Made the wrong decision!

[Lon Denard]

Since DJI have owned a majority stake in Hasselblad for 2 or so years the name means nothing any longer. It's just an exercise in badge engineering.

The Mavic 2 Zoom (which I own) is the only R.P.A. for less than 3 times that asking price with an optical zoom function. I've found it invaluable. it however is a rolling software shutter causing image distortion at speed and barrel effect which while that can be corrected in post the distortion of straight objects photographed at speed can not be.

The Mavic 2 Pro has the same limitation of the rolling software shutter as well as a further controversy ongoing that it crops the sensor image and either pixel bins or line skips in it's operation. You are certainly not getting the full use of your 1" sensor. DJI have simply admitted that they use "advanced image sampling techniques" to make the best out of the hardware. There are various theories as to why this has been done from sensor overheating in the small housing to inability of the image processor to handle the stream. It does have a very rich hue as the tones are purposely over saturated which makes the images very vibrant but a little soft.

Don't get me wrong, the M2P is one of the two finest compact R.P.A. in the world today along with the Zoom and the average pilot who wants to image and publish online without any post production will LOVE it.

Technically the best camera at that price point is still the Phantom 4 Pro V2.0 with it's one inch Sony sensor and hardware shutter. It manages twice the frame rate in video modes and full 3:2 4K not the cinematic 4K of the M2P. The raw shots from the Phantom tend to be less saturated and less vibrant than the M2P but this is easily sorted in Post which I expect would be easy meat for a professional photographer.

This is why I own the Mavic 2 Zoom and the Phantom 4 Pro V2.0 so as to have the best of both worlds. I can assure you as a commercial operator when asked to do aerial mapping and photogrammetry it is always the P4P that is considered the benchmark at that price point and specified by the customer not the M2P.

Regards
Ari

Oh no not the "line skipping" thing again? I won that debate months ago. Hahaha! All cameras over 8MP down sample into 4k. I do agree that the P4P is a better camera but I'm not sure you'll get it into a jacket pocket.

 

[Remote Pilots Australia]

For video, I may agree, but for still photos which is likely important to the OP, the M2P is certainly not a downgrade. Quite the opposite I would say.

Exactly correct which is why I have the P4P to compliment my M2Z.

Regards
Ari

 

[Remote Pilots Australia]

I do agree that the P4P is a better camera but I'm not sure you'll get it into a jacket pocket.

I'll give you that without any argument but as my equipment all travels in "Suitcase" style protective storage due to the need to travel over rough roads for hours and enter worksites my Mavic setup is not exacly in a shoulder bag either. For a someone traveling or who wants to take with them on the light the M2P is going to more than meet their needs but (I think?) I said that earlier.

Professionals are going to be the people who will appreciate the extra capabilities of the P4P and pay the extra "luggage tax" to carry it around.

Edit. Also for my money I actually find the "line skipping" issue (or whatever it is) far secondary to the lack of a mechanical shutter. Be it 2.7k or 4k, and the stills are full 4k it's only the video that seems to suffer, the images and resolution from the M2P is quite acceptable and the colour hues are wonderful for people don't want to do post where the P4P images can always benefit from a little digital help to look their prettiest.

Regards
Ari

 

[SteveCA]

There is one other area where the Mavic 2 Pro excels and that is low light long exposure photography. Many of us have gotten sharp 4-8 second long shots, some even in winds as high as 25mph. My P4 and my buddies Inspire 2 have never managed such shots Here’s one from this evening just before the storm rolled in.

 

[Remote Pilots Australia]

That doesn't surprise me in the slightest. When stationary the mavic has a much smaller "sail profile" or cross sectional profile than the P4 making it a far more stable long exposure platform that was true even of the original Mavic.

Funnily enough it changes once you start to move, more so the faster you go due to the increased angle the smaller Mavic must assume to reach higher speeds making the P4 the way to go for shots on the move which is one of the reasons it's considered the standard for aerial mapping. Of course we're arguing artistic merit vs commercial merit so it's not an "apples for apples" fair comparison I know.

I don't have figures for the Mavic 2 but the form factor of the original Mavic Pro (I.E. size and shape) are close enough to draw the conclusion they would be similar. @40MPH and P4P is still 72% as battery efficient as at hover where the Mavic shape has fallen to 43% due to the angle it must maintain making it suddenly the larger sail area. This translates to it being more wind effected at speed and a less stable camera platform.

Yes, that's right if you're thinking that far ahead, the one minute endurance advantage the M2 has over the P4P V.2 at hover disappears once you pass 15Mph and swings the other way over 20Mph

Those figures are compiled as an average over 2 million flights. BTW

It just serves to re enforce the "horses for courses" nature of R.P.A.'s. There is no "One best R.P.A." there's the best one for your main application and you should always take that into account before you buy. If your main bread and butter is photo's like above ... don't even think twice. BUY THE M2P!! Likewise if you're traveling and or hobby flyer who needs to lug it on and off aircraft or public transport. If you're going to be filming or photographing with the aircraft on the move with resolution the main aim the choice is not anything like so clear cut ... well it is, you get a P4P but saying things like that start fights so I usually shut up LOL

Regards
Ari

 

[Lon Denard]

I'll give you that without any argument but as my equipment all travels in "Suitcase" style protective storage due to the need to travel over rough roads for hours and enter worksites my Mavic setup is not exacly in a shoulder bag either. For a someone traveling or who wants to take with them on the light the M2P is going to more than meet their needs but (I think?) I said that earlier.

Professionals are going to be the people who will appreciate the extra capabilities of the P4P and pay the extra "luggage tax" to carry it around.

Edit. Also for my money I actually find the "line skipping" issue (or whatever it is) far secondary to the lack of a mechanical shutter. Be it 2.7k or 4k, and the stills are full 4k it's only the video that seems to suffer, the images and resolution from the M2P is quite acceptable and the colour hues are wonderful for people don't want to do post where the P4P images can always benefit from a little digital help to look their prettiest.

Regards
Ari

Nice reply! My only "rebuttal" is that you should buy an Inspire if that's your logic stream. I mean the lack of swappable lenses on the P4P makes it less than ideal for professional work....Hahaha! Of course I'm joking.

I believe the video from my M2P is very good and no offense but the pictures aren't "4k" they are 20MP which is over twice the resolution of 4k.

In any case, either are excellent choices, let's agree on that. They both make concessions in one area to excel in another.

 

[Remote Pilots Australia]

Nice reply! My only "rebuttal" is that you should buy an Inspire if that's your logic stream.

Don't think it didn't occur to me! I came -----><------ close to buying an Inspire but realised at the last minutes commercially it would have been a HUGE mistake for me. I do mostly mapping and Photogrammetry, the P4P has twice the endurance as an Inspire and a camera that is the "industry standard" for that purpose without having to swap lenses so the Inspire would have given me way less return for outlay (specially at 3x plus the price of the P4P) and let's face it. They're horribly squirly things to fly at the best of times. Just won't keep still.

Also on the Inspire 1 in particular I'd have to option another multi thousand dollar camera on top to match the 20MP of the P4P ... so..... pass.

Yes the inspire has a swap able payload but that's it's only advantage. In Australia to get overflight of populous area or close to crowd exemption you need battery AND engine redundancy and of course the Inspire is still a quad. That's why my ReOC procedure manuals specify the Matrice 600 .

As far as MP vs K resolution goes, I tend not to get hung up on technicalities and speak in "layman speak" that most people use day to day. I fully and openly admit to being a flight specialist. I can get an aircraft in and out of areas that few others can. My photography is certainly a distant second in my strengths ... but I'm not in the "pretty pictures" game so I get away with it

Edit. Yes agreed, BOTH are excellent choices. Choose for your intended application is certainly the rule here


Regards
Ari

 

[Lon Denard]

Don't think it didn't occur to me! I came -----><------ close to buying an Inspire but realised at the last minutes commercially it would have been a HUGE mistake for me. I do mostly mapping and Photogrammetry, the P4P has twice the endurance as an Inspire and a camera that is the "industry standard" for that purpose without having to swap lenses so the Inspire would have given me way less return for outlay (specially at 3x plus the price of the P4P) and let's face it. They're horribly squirly things to fly at the best of times. Just won't keep still.

Also on the Inspire 1 in particular I'd have to option another multi thousand dollar camera on top to match the 20MP of the P4P ... so..... pass.

Yes the inspire has a swap able payload but that's it's only advantage. In Australia to get overflight of populous area or close to crowd exemption you need battery AND engine redundancy and of course the Inspire is still a quad. That's why my ReOC procedure manuals specify the Matrice 600 .

As far as MP vs K resolution goes, I tend not to get hung up on technicalities and speak in "layman speak" that most people use day to day. I fully and openly admit to being a flight specialist. I can get an aircraft in and out of areas that few others can. My photography is certainly a distant second in my strengths ... but I'm not in the "pretty pictures" game so I get away with it

Regards
Ari

Well we have that in common. I've been flying for a decade but really only got into video editing/sharing in the last few years. I do a lot of indoor flying myself. I also have TBs of through the woods stuff.

 

[Remote Pilots Australia]

Well we have that in common.

No we don't ... you posted your picture above remember? You're better than me at that side of it. I plead no contest LOL

 

[CanadaDrone]

Oh no not the "line skipping" thing again? I won that debate months ago. Hahaha! All cameras over 8MP down sample into 4k.

This is simply not true - many cameras only use a 4K portion of the sensor and there is no down sampling involved (Like HQ mode on the M2P, for example). Further, many cameras use the entire sensor readout without line skipping or throwing away any data, but the M2P is not one of them. Sony makes versions of the 1" sensor with a stacked design, front side LSI, and integrated DRAM that can move massive amounts of video data allowing for full sensor readout at 60fps, giving you a 4K image without pixel binning or line skipping, and no crop factor. I'm sure DJI knows how all this works, but apparently the processing task was too much for the M2P.

 

[Remote Pilots Australia]

many cameras only use a 4K portion of the sensor and there is no down sampling involved (Like HQ mode on the M2P, for example)

I understand that the HQ mode is cropped though even if not down sampled? (I only own the Zoom in the M2 series so only skimmed the specs)

allowing for full sensor readout at 60fps, giving you a 4K image without pixel binning or line skipping, and no crop factor. I'm sure DJI knows how all this works, but apparently the processing task was too much for the M2P.

I'm sure DJI know it. I understand that the P4P is able to do all this so It actually puzzles me why the M2P does not (I won't say cannot as I think it is being throttled by design) after all it has the next generation processor chip to the P4P so you would think it has greater capacity / bandwidth. Lends more weight towards the overheating angle in my eyes.

How much truth there is to it is open to question but the quiet word is that the last minute put back of the release date of the M2P was down to this issue and the resulting process was considered to be the best approach as DJI certainly didn't want to do a total re design when the unit had already gone into production.

In the end however, currently the M2P is almost certainly the best compact prosumer R.P.A. available so if you own one I wouldn't be suffering buyers remorse over it or rushing back to the shop for a refund.

Regards
Ari

 

[paulatkin73]

. I understand that the P4P is able to do all this so It actually puzzles me why the M2P does not

you need bigger CPU emitting more W and consuming more A of current - small M2P drone is not set to do it. could it do it? perhaps. but, it does not do it now.
P4P does generally same, almost, what M2P does, but uses better algorithm, also, does a correction of lens distortion, also - ....
M2P in full sensor mode is doing same generic line skipping algorithm, and most people state it is of inferior quality compared to the P4P - i say that 99% of your customers would never see that difference as you need to do pixel peeping at 100% magnification on the frozen frame comparing 2 streams to one another on the same scene to see it.

so i would frankly ignore all this BS about pixels clarity. the most pressing issue on the M2P FOV mode if you want to get data from a whole sensor - it is the issue of non-corrected lens distortion, which does not have a simple solution. it is a very resource intensive operation for post-processing, and i for now do not know how to resolve it, other than to use HQ mode exclusively - which ALSO produces a distorted feed, but, at about of 1% level of distortion it may be ignored. unfortunately.

 

[SteveCA]

I understand that the HQ mode is cropped though even if not down sampled? (I only own the Zoom in the M2 series so only skimmed the specs)



I'm sure DJI know it. I understand that the P4P is able to do all this so It actually puzzles me why the M2P does not (I won't say cannot as I think it is being throttled by design) after all it has the next generation processor chip to the P4P so you would think it has greater capacity / bandwidth. Lends more weight towards the overheating angle in my eyes.

How much truth there is to it is open to question but the quiet word is that the last minute put back of the release date of the M2P was down to this issue and the resulting process was considered to be the best approach as DJI certainly didn't want to do a total re design when the unit had already gone into production.

In the end however, currently the M2P is almost certainly the best compact prosumer R.P.A. available so if you own one I wouldn't be suffering buyers remorse over it or rushing back to the shop for a refund.

Regards
Ari

The bottom line is the MP 2 Pro, while not perfect, is more than capable of getting the job done. The rest is up to the operator/videographer/photographer. Do I look forward to a better camera in the next iteration? Of course! But the current model works great in the right hands.

 

[CanadaDrone]

I understand that the HQ mode is cropped though even if not down sampled? (I only own the Zoom in the M2 series so only skimmed the specs)

HQ mode uses only a 4K portion of the sensor, and 4K resolution is only 8MP (the entire sensor on the M2P is 20MP). This is the same as cropping the image, reducing your field of view down from 77 degrees to 55 degrees. It is exactly the same as taking a 20MP still image from the same sensor and cropping a 8MP image out of the center - you get a FOV change along with it. Exact same principle as moving from a full frame DSLR to an APS-C DSLR if that analogy helps.

If you use the full sensor readout, your 28mm lens on the M2P (full frame equivalent) remains 28mm, but the M2P cannot do this and maintain a high quality image due to processing power (according to DJI - and they also did not buy the right sensors from Sony to do it, but I'm sure they know that). So, DJI is sort of 'cheating' for lack of a better term, to give you their highest quality version of 4K that they can while reducing the amount of data they need to process as much as possible, hence the crop (compared to sampling the entire sensor and reducing to 4K without line skipping or pixel binning).

If you look at how small a Sony RX100 V is, for example, it has full sensor readout 4K with much, much, better video quality than the M2P - hard to believe DJI couldn't get it done if they wanted to. Maybe they are saving that for the "Platinum" version of the M2P.

Still image quality is not an issue, they only play games with the video side of things.

This image of the sensor should help you visualize it, and you can see the crop:

 

[Remote Pilots Australia]

The rest is up to the operator/videographer/photographer. Do I look forward to a better camera in the next iteration? Of course! But the current model works great in the right hands.

I'm not going to argue that, skill overcomes many limitations.

As I said before I would never call myself a photographer but the first of my 4 trades was as a technician so I am always interested in the technical aspects of how and why and although not young I still still like to learn so many thanks to @CanadaDrone and @paulatkin73 for the extra information.

Regards
Ari

 

[Lon Denard]

This is simply not true - many cameras only use a 4K portion of the sensor and there is no down sampling involved (Like HQ mode on the M2P, for example). Further, many cameras use the entire sensor readout without line skipping or throwing away any data, but the M2P is not one of them. Sony makes versions of the 1" sensor with a stacked design, front side LSI, and integrated DRAM that can move massive amounts of video data allowing for full sensor readout at 60fps, giving you a 4K image without pixel binning or line skipping, and no crop factor. I'm sure DJI knows how all this works, but apparently the processing task was too much for the M2P.

I hear what you're calling but my point is that 4k is by definition 8MB. Anything over 8MB is no longer 4k...at least how he was explained to me. If you have a sensor that's larger than 8MB, that extra data would have to be lost.

I'm honestly interested in your point of view.

Mine. You have a 4k bucket that only holds 8MB. If you try to fill it with 12MP, 4MP are lost/cropped/etc. Is that incorrect? The Mavic 2 Pro HQ Mode is a perfect example as it crops in to an 8MP sized frame, throwing away the rest of the data outside of that frame.

If any 20MP sensor were to create video using the entire sensor, it would not be 4k. Imho.

 

[JAW]

Back to the OP's thread.....if you can't return it, how much would you sell it for?
Or to put it in a buyer's parlance, how much of a beating would you be willing to take?

 

[Lon Denard]

you need bigger CPU emitting more W and consuming more A of current - small M2P drone is not set to do it. could it do it? perhaps. but, it does not do it now.
P4P does generally same, almost, what M2P does, but uses better algorithm, also, does a correction of lens distortion, also - ....
M2P in full sensor mode is doing same generic line skipping algorithm, and most people state it is of inferior quality compared to the P4P - i say that 99% of your customers would never see that difference as you need to do pixel peeping at 100% magnification on the frozen frame comparing 2 streams to one another on the same scene to see it.

so i would frankly ignore all this BS about pixels clarity. the most pressing issue on the M2P FOV mode if you want to get data from a whole sensor - it is the issue of non-corrected lens distortion, which does not have a simple solution. it is a very resource intensive operation for post-processing, and i for now do not know how to resolve it, other than to use HQ mode exclusively - which ALSO produces a distorted feed, but, at about of 1% level of distortion it may be ignored. unfortunately.

Mavic 2 Pro Distortion Correction - Film Poets

Works.

 

[Lon Denard]

HQ mode uses only a 4K portion of the sensor, and 4K resolution is only 8MP (the entire sensor on the M2P is 20MP). This is the same as cropping the image, reducing your field of view down from 77 degrees to 55 degrees. It is exactly the same as taking a 20MP still image from the same sensor and cropping a 8MP image out of the center - you get a FOV change along with it. Exact same principle as moving from a full frame DSLR to an APS-C DSLR if that analogy helps.

If you use the full sensor readout, your 28mm lens on the M2P (full frame equivalent) remains 28mm, but the M2P cannot do this and maintain a high quality image due to processing power (according to DJI - and they also did not buy the right sensors from Sony to do it, but I'm sure they know that). So, DJI is sort of 'cheating' for lack of a better term, to give you their highest quality version of 4K that they can while reducing the amount of data they need to process as much as possible, hence the crop (compared to sampling the entire sensor and reducing to 4K without line skipping or pixel binning).

If you look at how small a Sony RX100 V is, for example, it has full sensor readout 4K with much, much, better video quality than the M2P - hard to believe DJI couldn't get it done if they wanted to. Maybe they are saving that for the "Platinum" version of the M2P.

Still image quality is not an issue, they only play games with the video side of things.

This image of the sensor should help you visualize it, and you can see the crop:

Nice post. I think that sampling is a given with any sensor over 8MP. Some have taken umbrage with which type of DS DJI potentially used. BTW the Sony can only record for a few minutes before it overheats.

 

[Remote Pilots Australia]

Back to the OP's thread.....if you can't return it, how much would you sell it for?
Or to put it in a buyer's parlance, how much of a beating would you be willing to take?

That's a harder question than it should be.

First answer, I wouldn't sell it. I keep both and enjoy the unique benefits of each.

Second answer. Conventional wisdom for any new item is it loses a third of it's value the minute you walk out the door of the retailer with it. I'm not sure that holds true in this case however. I haven't looked at the second hand market on that side of the pond but over here have not seen a Zoom being sold second hand yet and they very (VERY) few Pro models I've seen were only 2 to 300 below the new price (which is $Au 2400). If it's still new and boxed if I couldn't get within $250 of what I paid for it I'd once again keep it.

Regards
Ari