Photos on mavic 2 pro

pared · Jan 24, 2020

Hi, I’m very happy with the quality of video from my Mavic 2 Pro, but photos are sort of grainy and garish. I shoot at iso 100, and in RAW. I try to edit these in LR but the starting file is not good. Any suggestions gratefully accepted.

Thomas B · Jan 24, 2020

FWIW, the sweet spot for the aperture on the M2P seems to be F4 through F5.5. Agree that ISO should be 100 if possible, and never over 200. I get pretty good pics with shutter from 1/60 to 4 or 5 seconds depends on blur vs sharp needs. Shoot traffic after sundown this way.
I also shoot jpeg+RAW. Easy share and still get a better image for cropping.

Aerial-Pixel · Jan 24, 2020

pared said:
Hi, I’m very happy with the quality of video from my Mavic 2 Pro, but photos are sort of grainy and garish. I shoot at iso 100, and in RAW. I try to edit these in LR but the starting file is not good. Any suggestions gratefully accepted.

First off welcome to Mavic Pilots! Are you able to post an example? I've had very good results with the M2P shooting RAW, hopefully it's just a setting you may have wrong. I agree with @Thomas B the JPEG+RAW is a very good option, you may notice on the RAW files you also get barrel distortion that needs to be fixed in post too, not a huge deal but the JPG's will have that auto-corrected already. Also make sure your Exposure Compensation (EV) is at ZERO.

Thomas B · Jan 24, 2020

Aerial-Pixel said:
First off welcome to Mavic Pilots! Are you able to post an example? I've had very good results with the M2P shooting RAW, hopefully it's just a setting you may have wrong. I agree with @Thomas B the JPEG+RAW is a very good option, you may notice on the RAW files you also get barrel distortion that needs to be fixed in post too, not a huge deal but the JPG's will have that auto-corrected already. Also make sure your Exposure Compensation (EV) is at ZERO.

Above is correct.
I will admit that for hyperlapse sundowns I use EV of -3 which helps to enhance the reds.... ‘cuz I don’t like to do much work in post.

brett8883 · Jan 24, 2020

pared said:
Hi, I’m very happy with the quality of video from my Mavic 2 Pro, but photos are sort of grainy and garish. I shoot at iso 100, and in RAW. I try to edit these in LR but the starting file is not good. Any suggestions gratefully accepted.

What’s your import workflow? Are you importing to Lightroom directly from the SD card or transferring to your computer first? Are your importing from your mobile device by chance?

Is this “Lightroom” or Lightroom Classic?

sar104 · Jan 24, 2020

pared said:
Hi, I’m very happy with the quality of video from my Mavic 2 Pro, but photos are sort of grainy and garish. I shoot at iso 100, and in RAW. I try to edit these in LR but the starting file is not good. Any suggestions gratefully accepted.

Just in case - are you working with the full resolution files rather than the embedded JPEG thumbnails? That's often the issue with the raw files when they appear grainy.

brett8883 · Jan 24, 2020

sar104 said:
Just in case - are you working with the full resolution files rather than the embedded JPEG thumbnails? That's often the issue with the raw files when they appear grainy.

That’s where I was going too but Lightroom, since it’s an Adobe product, shouldn’t have that issue with .DNGs unless he imported them with a different program.

sar104 · Jan 24, 2020

brett8883 said:
That’s where I was going too but Lightroom, since it’s an Adobe product, shouldn’t have that issue with .DNGs unless he imported them with a different program.

Agreed - that's why I only mentioned it as a sanity check.

pared · Jan 25, 2020

Thanks for reply’s guys. My workflow is with LR classic and so I import the files from the SD card onto laptop. Even when viewing them with other programmes directly from the card they are the same. I am in another country at present and don’t have my laptop with me but I’ll attach a file to show you soon.

Dave Maine · Jan 25, 2020

What settings are you using in the image adjustments section? There are 3. When you describe garish, it sounds like high contrast or high saturation, which will emphasize sensor noise as well. An example will help.

brett8883 · Jan 25, 2020

pared said:
Thanks for reply’s guys. My workflow is with LR classic and so I import the files from the SD card onto laptop. Even when viewing them with other programmes directly from the card they are the same. I am in another country at present and don’t have my laptop with me but I’ll attach a file to show you soon.

With LR classic make sure you have the import setting to make 1:1 or standard previews. 1:1 will make the preview file better quality but standard is usually sufficient.

A raw file is just a data file. It cannot be viewed directly as an image. To see the photo before and while editing, LR classic makes a “preview” file which is a jpeg representation of the photo and updates it in near real time while you edit so you can see what you are doing. This takes up additional space on your drive and takes additional time during the import process to generate.

This isn’t a factor if you have just a few photos at a time but comes into play if you have thousands of photos you are importing and is unnecessary if you plan to batch edit files so LR Classic give you the option to make “minimal” or “embedded and sidecar” previews. This creates low quality previews that are only sufficient to quickly view which photo you have selected and not sufficient to properly edit with. Once you export the photos from LR Classic it will generate full quality images from the original RAW so your export file will still look good.

Change this option to 1:1 for now to see if that solves the issue

pared · Jan 26, 2020

Thank you for all these tips. I will mention that I shoot RAW with a Nikon DSLR and don’t have any issues.
I have been trying to attach a file to show but even if I import to Photos on my iPad first it is greyed out so cant attach. Maybe RAW is unable to be uploaded on this forum?

sar104 · Jan 26, 2020

pared said:
Thank you for all these tips. I will mention that I shoot RAW with a Nikon DSLR and don’t have any issues.
I have been trying to attach a file to show but even if I import to Photos on my iPad first it is greyed out so cant attach. Maybe RAW is unable to be uploaded on this forum?

JPEGs only as attachments. Put it on Dropbox or similar and post a link.