Mavic 3 Pro contrast issues, please advise

[takean]

I have been working for weeks on this issue and I have just given up. No one seems to have my issues so I guess I'm just not smart. I have flown many drones over the past 8+ years and this one seems to frustrate me just like the Mavic Air 2 does. It is in the pictures. Most of the time I don't have issue with taking pictures but with these 2 drones the contrast seems extreme. I understand different times of the day produce better results when there are harsh shadows and sunlight involved but these 2 drones seem to be the most difficult to adjust for. Video is no problem with D-Log but picture wise it is difficult to tell on the screen what will come out good with editing or if the shadows are just too dark. Any tips?

 

[Phantomrain.org]

If you could post a picture with the issue at hand , that might help.

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain. Land on the Water.

 

[Filmarik]

I have been working for weeks on this issue and I have just given up. No one seems to have my issues so I guess I'm just not smart. I have flown many drones over the past 8+ years and this one seems to frustrate me just like the Mavic Air 2 does. It is in the pictures. Most of the time I don't have issue with taking pictures but with these 2 drones the contrast seems extreme. I understand different times of the day produce better results when there are harsh shadows and sunlight involved but these 2 drones seem to be the most difficult to adjust for. Video is no problem with D-Log but picture wise it is difficult to tell on the screen what will come out good with editing or if the shadows are just too dark. Any tips?

You do not specify if you shoot JPEG or DNG. DNG obviously give you the most latitude in post. Histogram is a reasonably good guide when setting the exposure correctly. With a bit of testing you should be able to go by histogram pretty well when setting the exposure for best result.
Some people rave about the JPEGs and how amazing they are and how well DJI fine tuned the processing engine. I personally prefer shooting DNG and have full control over developing. I use LR for that. With JPEG all parameters are set by DJI in the factory and there is nothing you can do to change the in camera JPEG settings such as contrast, saturation, sharpening etc. If you find JPEG to be too contrasty try DNG (or shoot both) and see what gives you best final result.

 

[takean]

I'm sorry. I shoot DNG. I'll get some samples out asap. I do manual as well and while in post I can fix some of the issues...it just doesn't seem as friendly as the autel evo 2 pro nor my old phantom 4 pro when it comes to taking pictures with a lot of shadows.

 

[Filmarik]

I'm sorry. I shoot DNG. I'll get some samples out asap. I do manual as well and while in post I can fix some of the issues...it just doesn't seem as friendly as the autel evo 2 pro nor my old phantom 4 pro when it comes to taking pictures with a lot of shadows.

I do not have any of those drones. Not sure which software you use for DNG processing but LR, as an example, has sliders to adjust shadows and highlights and the latest Denoising Enhancement helps dealing with noise. I am not sure what the problem really is you are experiencing. Post a few samples and I'd be happy to give them a go..

 

[Ralph thompson]

Make sure you display the histogram on your controller screen. You'll quickly learn what histogram appearance gives the best photographs. The histogram should touch both ends of the X axis. Also remember that with DNG and Log you are not seeing the best photograph on the screen. You have to take it into your S/W in post and make the appropriate corrections (pulling down highlights and pushing up the dark areas to expose whats in the shadows, adding vibrance and clarity.). This is the brilliance of modern digital photography, programs like Lightroom and DaVinci Resolve can work wonders on the most drab images.

 

[takean]

I use LR as well as photoshop. I think the problem is the app itself. The screen is not showing a good representation of the image. When I used the older phantom 4 pro app and the autel app you could adjust settings in the app for the photos such as saturation, sharpness and contrast. I still always edited the photos in LR afterwards but you could preset the shadows to not be so harsh. On the autel app you could almost add a d-log appearance to the raw files as well which made shooting via the smart controller a lot easier to adjust for shadows. These options are not there for the mavic 3 pro. If you have a harsh sunlight day then it will look terrible. The details are still there in RAW files but with work to bring them out. I feel as though the DJI fly app is missing professional options which used to be present in their older apps.

 

[Ralph thompson]

Experienced photographs that want the max out of the image do all corrections on the computer in post. Some cameras can overlay a LUT in the camera monitor (eg BMPCC). I don't think DJI does this. Lightroom and a good computer are much more powerful than any processor available in the camera. If you're capturing RAW images then adjustments for contrast etc don't have any effect in the controller display anyway, those adjustments are for jpegs capture.

 

[AlanL]

I was lamenting some of the color and light balance when I first got my Mavic 3 Pro and decided to make some camera profiles using Adobe's DNG Profile Editor. I started out making a linear profile by opening an image from the Mavic 3 Pro in the profile editor and then used the linear option in the Tone Curve tab. The interesting twist was that once I installed the new profile in LR I discovered that I had the new linear profile as well and one labeled Embedded which appears to be the DJI profile embedded in the DNG file. The embedded profile has quite a few tweaks in it compared to the base that we see when we just open the DNG in LR and comes much closer to the corrections that DJI uses for the jpegs.

Note that if you try this you need to create a separate profile for each of the 3 cameras.

 

[Ralph thompson]

Interesting, I haven't tried that. But I'd argue that any processing in the DJI camera will be inferior to your computer (8 bit rather than 64 bit processing). As a long time photographer, I always shoot RAW and I'm very comfortable making adjustments in lightroom which, since they're non destructive can be tweaked endlessly until you get the results you want. But in the end, it just depends what your deliverable requirements are.

 

[Filmarik]

Make sure you display the histogram on your controller screen. You'll quickly learn what histogram appearance gives the best photographs. The histogram should touch both ends of the X axis. Also remember that with DNG and Log you are not seeing the best photograph on the screen. You have to take it into your S/W in post and make the appropriate corrections (pulling down highlights and pushing up the dark areas to expose whats in the shadows, adding vibrance and clarity.). This is the brilliance of modern digital photography, programs like Lightroom and DaVinci Resolve can work wonders on the most drab images.

This is all well and good but the histogram has one major problem. It does not represent the tonal pixel distribution of DNG file but of the in camera generated JPEG. And therein lies the problem. Histogram is still the best tool we have to judge the exposure but one needs to learn how to interpret it when shooting DNG. I personally shoot with histogram weighed more to the left since recovering shadows is easier in post. With highlights, once they are lost due to overexposure there is nothing even LR or PS can do. They lost for good. In very high contrast situations there is always wise to AEB and combine in post.

 

[takean]

Experienced photographs that want the max out of the image do all corrections on the computer in post. Some cameras can overlay a LUT in the camera monitor (eg BMPCC). I don't think DJI does this. Lightroom and a good computer are much more powerful than any processor available in the camera. If you're capturing RAW images then adjustments for contrast etc don't have any effect in the controller display anyway, those adjustments are for jpegs capture.

DJI used to do this. I'm not talking about corrections made with the drone. I'm referring to some of the settings you used to be able to adjust within the app. They were labeled Saturation, Sharpness and Landscape. They were tweaks to the camera to adjust some settings of the RAW files. I'm completely aware that "Experienced Photographers" use outside methods in post for editing. I wouldn't have gotten far with my business without it. I was referring to some of the original settings DJI used to have built into the app and the ones Autel still uses.

 

[takean]

This is all well and good but the histogram has one major problem. It does not represent the tonal pixel distribution of DNG file but of the in camera generated JPEG. And therein lies the problem. Histogram is still the best tool we have to judge the exposure but one needs to learn how to interpret it when shooting DNG. I personally shoot with histogram weighed more to the left since recovering shadows is easier in post. With highlights, once they are lost due to overexposure there is nothing even LR or PS can do. They lost for good. In very high contrast situations there is always wise to AEB and combine in post.

And I think this is why when shooting images are always darker than they should be...especially when viewing them from the RC

 

[Filmarik]

And I think this is why when shooting images are always darker than they should be...especially when viewing them from the RC

Not sure which controller you have but the latest FW for RC Pro introduced Enhanced Display which is very bright and distorts colors. When I used it first time I forgot to pay attention to histogram, was deceived by its brightness and thus underexposed full set of shots. I stopped using it. I did not like it anyway.