Photo Settings

[zwt100]

I’m having issues with my photos looking out of focus and often times under exposed. So I was wondering what settings everyone uses for taking photos? As of now I only change the white balance to account for the weather conditions and that’s it. I also use “single” shot which someone on another forum mentioned could cause the image to look blurry. Not sure if that’s accurate. I have been reading up and checking videos but the posts on this forum have been more helpful to me. Any suggestions?

 

[SlavicSoul]

There is no universal settings how to take a picture in manual mode. If your pictures are underexposed you should lower shutter speed. With that said, everything depends on conditions and effect that you are trying to achieve.

Best advice that I could give you is to research and understand how shutter speed, aperture, and ISO affect amount of light that ends up on camera sensor and what should be changed in order to achieve desired look. It is important to note that you can't change aperture (F stop) in Mavic Air settings so you should concentrate on shutter speed and ISO (in most situations you want ISO to be at lowest possible setting, so that really leaves you to play with shutter speed only)

Also MA has fixed focus so everything should be in focus at all times. Try cleaning the lens with soft cloth and make sure that inside of the camera lens is not fogged up. If your lens is fogged up on the inside than you have to send it in for service.

 

[zwt100]

Thanks for the suggestions! I'm considering sending it in just so they can check it out because I honestly don't know if my unit is out of focus or if I just need more practice. Probably the latter however another poster mentioned how they returned their Air and received another with a noticeably sharper image. I've attached a sample so you can hopefully see what I'm talking about. I did not make any alterations - I simply uploaded this into Lightroom and saved it as a jpeg. I understand the raw images require post processing but even the jpegs on my Mavic Air look worse than my old Spark. It also seems like when I try to sharpen my photos in Lightroom they end up looking over processed and unnatural. Thanks again, I'm sure it gets old answering the same questions over and over but it's definitely appreciated.

 

[SlavicSoul]

Well, to me it looks like you have noise in the picture. Technically everything is in focus but it looks like crap. Especially because clouds are blown out and foreground is underexposed. Wait for partially cloudy day (more sun and blue skies) and try taking a pictures in Auto and than in manual. See if you are still getting grainy picture. If so you might have dud.

Otherwise here is what you can try when shooting manual:

• Make sure that your ISO is set to 100 (higher the ISO/more noise in the picture)
• Learn how to use EV (exposure value) you should always be at 0 (or as close to 0 as possible +/- 0.3 is usually close enough) You can manipulate EV value by adjusting shutter speed
• Set shutter speed to 60 (do not go below 60 when taking pictures with any camera unless it is on tripod) and than work your way up until your EV scale is at 0 (on the sunny day your shutter speed can easily be 2500 or more)
• Also turn on over exposure setting. It will show you what parts of your photo are blown out before you take a picture.
• Go to Style and under custom setting set following parameters: "triangle" +0; "circle" -3; square -2. This will give you overall flatter (less saturated) image, but you will preserve more detail overall. You can always adjust saturation in post anyway.

For the record I mainly shoot video, so my last recommendation may or may not make any difference for photos. What I know is that it helps me when I'm "recovering" details in post.

Finally try to avoid using sharpening tool for MA photos. That tool is made to manipulate images with far more clarity and detail. Adding sharpening tool in MA pictures will just destroy details even further.

 

[zwt100]

Thanks again, I'll give this a try. That is a huge help. I haven't played with the camera settings too much and really hope I just need to make a few adjustments. I don't want to have a dud and have to send it back, I'm having too much fun to wait for a repair. Should I be using HDR?

 

[SlavicSoul]

I would recommend to learn how to use manual mode without any enhancements, simply because for the most part they are not really accurate.

 

[zwt100]

Thanks, Slavic! I'm going to give this a try over the weekend. I won't add HDR. DJI is supposedly looking into my photos as well. I know getting quality photos take skill and practice but it just feels like I should be getting a better image from my automatic settings. I didn't expect to buy a Mavic Air and suddenly become a pro but I'd at least expect it to look as good as the Spark.