MP2 VS AIR Photo Quality Night Scene Comparison

[Talley]

I love my air and really love this MP2. For those of you on the fence about "is the IQ worth it" I present to you the following:

White Balanced Matched
Shot in RAW on both birds, Import to LR, cropped and exported
ISO 1600
2.8
1/8

Mavic Air

Mavic Pro 2

Mavic 2 Pro

Mavic Air

 

[CanadaDrone]

Interesting test, the Pro 2 is clearly better but not as much as one might think. Also at 1/8 sec it's impossible to tell if there is a small bit of motion blur involved but they look pretty close.

 

[Talley]

No motion blur. and it does show you that the pro 2 is not near SLR quality and that the mavivc air is not that bad... but it does show you the Pro 2 is still vastly better than the air.

Mostly I look at other than sharpness is color artifacts and iso noise handling. This is the two most improved areas the pro 2 has to offer. I find the ISO 1600 very usable on the pro 2 and I could clean that up a bunch but the mavic air is borderline not usable.

Optics are playing some factors in this, I feel the optics on the mavic air are holding it's capability back.

 

[Talley]

OH... you can also see that the mavic pro 2 has better dynamics too. Easy to spot with the light graduation on the house lights and street lighting hitting the road. The mavic air just blows out quicker.

 

[CanadaDrone]

No motion blur. and it does show you that the pro 2 is not near SLR quality and that the mavivc air is not that bad... but it does show you the Pro 2 is still vastly better than the air.

Mostly I look at other than sharpness is color artifacts and iso noise handling. This is the two most improved areas the pro 2 has to offer. I find the ISO 1600 very usable on the pro 2 and I could clean that up a bunch but the mavic air is borderline not usable.

Optics are playing some factors in this, I feel the optics on the mavic air are holding it's capability back.

The Pro 2 will never be anywhere near DSLR quality because even a 1" sensor is a 2.7x crop factor relative to a full frame sensor. They are not even in the same universe. The 1" sensor in the Mavic Pro 2 though is 4 times the size of the one in the Air and it shows when conditions deteriorate. The extra dynamic range is noticeable, as you point out. The Air will never be very good because a 1/2.3" sensor (roughly 5.6x crop factor) is just too tiny to be useful (if you're picky about quality) for anything other than base ISO. It always bothers me when smartphone manufacturers and the like say things like "DSLR quality" - it's never anywhere even remotely close, but since so many of them do synthetic bokeh/DOF now, they try to market it that way and forget about image quality. Not saying you're doing this at all - just in general. Sorry for the mini-rant

And yes, I believe the Mavic Air uses fairly basic plastic optics, I suspect the Pro2 is a significant improvement in that regard.

Sony uses very similar if not the same sensors in the Mavic Pro 2 as they do in the RX100 series compact cameras (as do other brands), so it's easy to find (rough) comparisons to other cameras if needed.

Thanks for the test! I'm going to be picking up a Pro 2 in a few months when I am more confident the bugs have been worked out.

 

[Talley]

I still plan on keeping the mavic air around and will continue to use it. We really are splitting hairs

The Pro 2 will never be anywhere near DSLR quality because even a 1" sensor is a 2.7x crop factor relative to a full frame sensor. They are not even in the same universe. The 1" sensor in the Mavic Pro 2 though is 4 times the size of the one in the Air and it shows when conditions deteriorate. The extra dynamic range is noticeable, as you point out. The Air will never be very good because a 1/2.3" sensor (roughly 5.6x crop factor) is just too tiny to be useful (if you're picky about quality) for anything other than base ISO. It always bothers me when smartphone manufacturers and the like say things like "DSLR quality" - it's never anywhere even remotely close, but since so many of them do synthetic bokeh/DOF now, they try to market it that way and forget about image quality. Not saying you're doing this at all - just in general. Sorry for the mini-rant

And yes, I believe the Mavic Air uses fairly basic plastic optics, I suspect the Pro2 is a significant improvement in that regard.

Sony uses very similar if not the same sensors in the Mavic Pro 2 as they do in the RX100 series compact cameras (as do other brands), so it's easy to find (rough) comparisons to other cameras if needed.

Thanks for the test! I'm going to be picking up a Pro 2 in a few months when I am more confident the bugs have been worked out.

While I do agree with you the difference is a good jump up from the air/mpp type sensors it's a marginal at best improvement when compared to an SLR.

Kind of like this chart

 

[CanadaDrone]

I still plan on keeping the mavic air around and will continue to use it. We really are splitting hairs


While I do agree with you the difference is a good jump up from the air/mpp type sensors it's a marginal at best improvement when compared to an SLR.

Kind of like this chart
View attachment 45264

Sorry I don't understand - are you saying a 1/2.3" sensor or even a 1" sensor is even close to a modern full frame DSLR sensor like the sensor in the Nikon D850? There is a lot of very measurable, objective evidence to the contrary. Even your own chart shows it miles away if I am interpreting that correctly. Apologies if I misunderstood, I am not trying to be argumentative.

The Air is also quite a bit better than the original Pro when it comes to IQ (100Mbps + better sensor and image processor), so I would respectfully disagree that they would be on the same 'rating', though I have no way of knowing what kind of scale that actually is.