photo distortions

[rino]

I just got the new Mavic Air 2 and it looked great, but...on the photos of buildings I noticed stange, ugly, wavy distortions, which are impossible to correct. What is wrong? Should I return the drone and require a new one, is it something that can be fixed with new firmware, does anybody know what is going on? It is not a barrel lens distortion that is normal for a wide angle lens. I am a professional photographer for more than 40 years, and I newer saw something like this

 

[VenomXts]

I just got the new Mavic Air 2 and it looked great, but...on the photos of buildings I noticed stange, ugly, wavy distortions, which are impossible to correct. What is wrong? Should I return the drone and require a new one, is it something that can be fixed with new firmware, does anybody know what is going on? It is not a barrel lens distortion that is normal for a wide angle lens. I am a professional photographer for more than 40 years, and I newer saw something like this

Weird, did you take the plastic sticker off the camera lens that it came with?

 

[THE CYBORG]

No idea what could cause it but the distortion is really prominent in THIS one

 

[SkyeHigh]

I just got the new Mavic Air 2 and it looked great, but...on the photos of buildings I noticed stange, ugly, wavy distortions, which are impossible to correct. What is wrong? Should I return the drone and require a new one, is it something that can be fixed with new firmware, does anybody know what is going on? It is not a barrel lens distortion that is normal for a wide angle lens. I am a professional photographer for more than 40 years, and I newer saw something like this

It wouldn’t be unusual in a video clip if there was slight motion as the camera has a rolling shutter but very odd in a photograph.

What shutter speed was used? If a slow shutter speed was used there is a potential for vertical image distortion due to vibration in the horizontal axis. The straight lines of the building will make it more obvious as our eyes/brain know it should be seeing straight lines but the people may also be distorted but far less obvious.

Could you try shooting straight on to a rectangular building with as little possible foreground as possible and fill the frame. It may give a better idea of what is going on.

 

[BadWolf1]

The only thing I've seen which is similar is paper not being flat under an enlarger when printing a negative. If film wasn't flat in the back of a camera I think you'd get something like it, so a distorted sensor in the camera ??
It's very unusual, and as you say not something that can be distorted back to the correct shape.

I would send the drone back ... actually DJI might want to have a look at it

 

[BadWolf1]

It wouldn’t be unusual in a video clip if there was slight motion as the camera has a rolling shutter but very odd in a photograph.

What shutter speed was used? If a slow shutter speed was used there is a potential for vertical image distortion due to vibration in the horizontal axis. The straight lines of the building will make it more obvious as our eyes/brain know it should be seeing straight lines but the people may also be distorted but far less obvious.

Could you try shooting straight on to a rectangular building with as little possible foreground as possible and fill the frame. It may give a better idea of what is going on.

The exif data says it was 1/320th ... with a mechanical shutter and a very fast shutter speed you can get a slewing effect - because the whole frame isn't exposed at the same instant - top has had it's exposure before bottom gets any, if the subject moves you get "oval wheels". I thought the way purely electronic shutters worked eliminated that, and the gimbal should stabilize it. But if rows of pixels are read individually and there is an oscillation the gimbal doesn't handle you could get this - but we'd see it more often

 

[SkyeHigh]

At 1/320th you shouldn’t have an issue.

Most CMOS sensors readout a row (or column) at a time without a physical shutter, which leads to the skewing of fast moving objects as commonly seen with aircraft propellers and the classic wobble of landscapes in GoPro cameras.

As a stills photograph I definitely wouldn’t have expected what you are seeing in your images as long as the AC is stable. Fast vibration such as an unbalanced propeller would be too fast for the gimbal to respond to and would like through an error anyway.

It’s hard to tell if this is an optical, mechanical or processing issue at present.

Are you seeing a similar effect with video, especially if the AC is hovering and stable?