Mavic noise reduction even with +1 sharpness

[LivinLarge]

I did some tests with Jpeg and RAW images from the Mavic. It is obvious that the Mavic is applying over aggressive noise reduction even when you have sharpness set to +1.
Here is a comparison of Jpeg VS RAW. These are 100% crops from the full size images. Click on the thumbnail to expand the image and then click the arrow in the upper right corner to open in a new window.

 

[sar104]

I did some tests with Jpeg and RAW images from the Mavic. It is obvious that the Mavic is applying over aggressive noise reduction even when you have sharpness set to +1.
Here is a comparison of Jpeg VS RAW. These are 100% crops from the full size images.
View attachment 27113

That's about what I would expect. I almost never use jpeg images from the Mavic unless they are high contrast shots with not a lot of fine detail. The results from manually processing the RAW images are far better.

 

[LivinLarge]

That's about what I would expect. I almost never use jpeg images from the Mavic unless they are high contrast shots with not a lot of fine detail. The results from manually processing the RAW images are far better.

I had assumed that noise reduction was turned off with +1 setting. I was surprised to see such mush. I think my cell phone does a better job.

 

[sar104]

I had assumed that noise reduction was turned off with +1 setting. I was surprised to see such mush. I think my cell phone does a better job.

Yes - my iPhone certainly does better. But the RAW Mavic images are very usable.

 

[LivinLarge]

Yes - my iPhone certainly does better. But the RAW Mavic images are very usable.

Indeed they are fine. It is a shame we can't turn off the noise reduction for Jpeg files. Instead we have to save a huge RAW file and post process it to get a usable jpeg.

 

[ibuyufo]

What are your settings?

 

[LivinLarge]

What are your settings?

For the photo above, it was Auto exposure, center weighted metering, ISO 100, auto white balance, style, custom (1,0,0), color none. Shutter speed was 1/180, exposure compensation 0. No filters were used.

 

[ibuyufo]

For the photo above, it was Auto exposure, center weighted metering, ISO 100, auto white balance, style, custom (1,0,0), color none. Shutter speed was 1/180, exposure compensation 0. No filters were used.

Thanks for the info! Did you do manually set the iso and shutter speed?

 

[LivinLarge]

Thanks for the info! Did you do manually set the iso and shutter speed?

I only set the ISO manually.

 

[LivinLarge]

More samples in good light. 100% crops, first from DNG and then jpeg files. Click to see full size.

 

[LivinLarge]

More crops from the above images side by side.

 

[Mr. Salty]

What are your settings?

This. We have no idea what settings you’re using, which limits the advice we can give you.

 

[LivinLarge]

This. We have no idea what settings you’re using, which limits the advice we can give you.

See post #7. Same settings for the last shot except shutter speed was faster (1/1400 I think.)
These jepg shots would be fine if there was a way to turn off the stupid noise reduction.

 

[Roamer105]

See post #7. Same settings for the last shot except shutter speed was faster (1/1400 I think.)
These jepg shots would be fine if there was a way to turn off the stupid noise reduction.

Not sure if it is noise reduction looking at the results. The RAW image obviously represents exactly what the sensor produces without any alterations (sharpness, contrast, saturation or noise reduction). JPEG is a significantly compressed image and frankly DJI does not have a very good mpeg and jpeg compression codec running on the drones (any of them including the P4Pro). So the problems you are looking at are the result of low image information threshold information destruction prior to and part of the compression. Low light/low contrast makes the problem worse. Try shooting at +1,+1,0 (landscape) and them compare. You will find that the jpeg representation improves a little. Another approach is to try 0,+1,0 for jpeg since the +1 sharpening for stills is a big heavy handed.

 

[LivinLarge]

Not sure if it is noise reduction looking at the results. The RAW image obviously represents exactly what the sensor produces without any alterations (sharpness, contrast, saturation or noise reduction). JPEG is a significantly compressed image and frankly DJI does not have a very good mpeg and jpeg compression codec running on the drones (any of them including the P4Pro). So the problems you are looking at are the result of low image information threshold information destruction prior to and part of the compression. Low light/low contrast makes the problem worse. Try shooting at +1,+1,0 (landscape) and them compare. You will find that the jpeg representation improves a little. Another approach is to try 0,+1,0 for jpeg since the +1 sharpening for stills is a big heavy handed.

I did try all of the settings including "landscape" and "none." It seems that the noise reduction is the same for all. Many cameras only apply noise reduction when the light is low or the ISO is set high. This is when it is needed. At ISO 100 and good light, there is no need for noise reduction.
I don't think the problem is compression. Compression artifacts make the image look pixelated. The Mavic images look overly smoothed like a watercolor. I also don't think t is necessary to keep the file size down. I can save a Jpeg file from DNG at a file size that is smaller than the Mavic Jpeg file size and it still looks way better and has much more detail.
It is obvious from the DNG files that the sensor is capturing much more detail than is visible in the jpegs, so it is being crushed somehow in the processing.

 

[masic]

I did try all of the settings including "landscape" and "none." It seems that the noise reduction is the same for all. Many cameras only apply noise reduction when the light is low or the ISO is set high. This is when it is needed. At ISO 100 and good light, there is no need for noise reduction.
I don't think the problem is compression. Compression artifacts make the image look pixelated. The Mavic images look overly smoothed like a watercolor. I also don't think t is necessary to keep the file size down. I can save a Jpeg file from DNG at a file size that is smaller than the Mavic Jpeg file size and it still looks way better and has much more detail.
It is obvious from the DNG files that the sensor is capturing much more detail than is visible in the jpegs, so it is being crushed somehow in the processing.

I think what you are seeing is detail loss due to compression rather than detail loss due to noise reduction. That's why it's better to shoot raw files and use a program on your desktop or laptop, such as Lightroom, to convert raw to jpeg. Don't take this as an endorsement of Lightroom, there are lots of programs that will do the conversion. A good converter will allow you to select how much detail you want to retain versus how big you want the files to be.

 

[Roamer105]

I did try all of the settings including "landscape" and "none." It seems that the noise reduction is the same for all. Many cameras only apply noise reduction when the light is low or the ISO is set high. This is when it is needed. At ISO 100 and good light, there is no need for noise reduction.
I don't think the problem is compression. Compression artifacts make the image look pixelated. The Mavic images look overly smoothed like a watercolor. I also don't think t is necessary to keep the file size down. I can save a Jpeg file from DNG at a file size that is smaller than the Mavic Jpeg file size and it still looks way better and has much more detail.
It is obvious from the DNG files that the sensor is capturing much more detail than is visible in the jpegs, so it is being crushed somehow in the processing.

I am afraid you are expecting too much from the internal processor performance and capability. I am sure that DJI had to make significant compromises to manage power, heat and balance the processing requirements of this system. The one aspect that is VERY apparent in all of the videos is the "water color" effect when shooting low contrast (not just low light) situations. Stills processed into jpeg is not much different than a video I-Frame starting an mpeg GOP: Imagine the outline/edges of an object as a set of numerical values where the differences reflect the change in light. At low contrast and sharpness settings 0 or negative, the differences are artificially reduced and then fed into the compression codec. It is compromised by a marginal amount of processing power and speed-of-compression requirements. So, to make things easier to start, a numeric threshold is applied that simply eliminates/equalizes any numerical differences that fall below some set level. That significantly reduces the amount of data that is fed into the image compression process. This is especially affecting the color information component of the image - hence the "water color mush". When it comes to artifacts - that I am afraid is yet another story.

For RAW images, none of this happens. The system simply stores the bits into a DNG file as they are read off the sensor. No such luxury for video. We can not avoid compression and compression losses. To avoid "water color mush" produced by the DJI image processing system I found the only way to fight it is to increase sharpness and contrast before feeding it into a Dlog profile. For video, I use Dlog with +2, +1, 0 with the exposure set to be on the high side (very slightly overexposed to reduce deep shadow noise) and for stills I don't even bother with anything else but RAW. I also don't generally shoot in a situation where I have to increase the ISO setting up from 100 and definitively will not exceed 200.

 

[LivinLarge]

I completely understand compromises are made in such a system, especially for 4K video where you have to save 30 frames per second. For still images, there is plenty of time to process and store the data. The sensor is good enough, the information is already there. It seems a waste the throw it away. The jpegs look like something from a cheap cell phone in low light.

 

[LivinLarge]

I think what you are seeing is detail loss due to compression rather than detail loss due to noise reduction. That's why it's better to shoot raw files and use a program on your desktop or laptop, such as Lightroom, to convert raw to jpeg. Don't take this as an endorsement of Lightroom, there are lots of programs that will do the conversion. A good converter will allow you to select how much detail you want to retain versus how big you want the files to be.

I disagree. I believe it is noise reduction. I can produce a much smaller file size from the DNG with way more detail than the Mavic Jpeg. There is no need for them to throw away so much detail.
Yes, I have Lightroom and Photoshop. I do often use RAW files but usually only when I need more dynamic range or need to change the color balance in ways that can't be done with a Jpeg. I have been involved in digital photography for over 20 years and studied algorithms for compression and other types of digital image processing back in school.