Poor quality raw 48MP Mavic Air 2

[brett8883]

Which illustrates that using a drone to photograph shipwrecks, or any other subject for that matter, doesn't teach you anything about how the drone or its camera works. And your concern over whether I own a Mavic Air 2 is equally misplaced, since it is irrelevant to my understanding of optics and sensors, which comes from being a physicist. No - I don't have a Mavic Air 2, but if it makes a difference to you I do have a Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced, which has the same 48 MP sensor on the visible imaging side of the camera.

Anyway - repeating your misunderstanding of how a Quad Bayer sensor works doesn't make it correct. The base pixel count of a sensor refers to the number of photosites on the sensor. A 12 MP Bayer sensor has 12 million photosites (3 million red, 3 million blue, 6 million green). A 48 MP Quad Bayer (such as the IMX586) has 48 million photosites (12 million red, 12 million blue, 24 million green) - exactly the same as a 48 MP regular Bayer sensor but with a different arrangement of the color filters.

View attachment 133044

A Bayer sensor (quad or regular) has luminance data from every sensor, which determines its spatial resolution, but always has fewer photosites for each color than final pixels since each final pixel needs 3-color data. Those color data are interpolated from neighboring photosites via the demosaicing algorithm, which varies by photosite arrangement.

The reason for the quad design is to allow it to run in more than one mode. It can demosaic at every photosite to get a 48 MP image, it can bin each group of 4 similarly filtered photosites to reduce noise giving a 12 MP image, or it can set the gain or integration time differently within a group to get 12 MP HDR image from a single exposure.

So when run in full demosaicing mode the Quad Bayer spatially has a full 48 MP spatial resolution, and that's apparent in the fine detail, but it has to do more interpolation to resolve the colors properly across all the pixels and will generally have poorer color detail resolution than a 48 MP regular Bayer. But it is still a 48 MP sensor.

Yep exactly right. I happen to think this confusion with the 48 MP mode comes from people cropping in to 100% on both the 48 MP images and the 12 MP images and then comparing them. When you crop into 100% on a 48 MP image the resulting crop is of a much smaller part of the photo than the 100% crop in 12 MP mode. The further you crop in the more noise and lack of clarity you’ll find. You have to crop in the same amount on both photos to see that the higher resolution image has more detail.

 

[Meta4]

And all I did was ask for any ideas,and what do I get.

You suggested that there's no difference in pixel size and when challenged on that, said that you understand the camera's settings.
Either there is a difference in pixel size or you don't understand the camera settings.
Both cannot be true.

And there is no argument here.
My opinion and I am not alone here is that the 48mp setting
is not that great.

It's great that you aren't impressed with the image quality, but that's not what you were saying.
If you tell people that there's no difference in pixel size when there is, expect to get pulled up on that.

There sure are some dandies in this forum.

There are some that can't express their ideas clearly even when questioned about inconsistencies.

 

[Wreckhunter]

You are comparing a 12MP image from a quad bayer sensor to a 48 MP image from a quad bayer sensor. In both cases you are using a quad bayer sensor so it really doesn’t make logical sense to say the quad bayer isn’t any good based on that.

Sensor size plays a fundamentally important role in image quality for multiple reasons and with the MA2 we are talking cell phone camera sized sensor here. In fact some camera sensors are much larger. That should be the standard of expectation for the MA2 and which it should be compared with. Cell phones… By that metric, from what I have seen, it far exceeds that benchmark and I challenge anyone to argue otherwise.

Thank you for the reply,I will keep playing around with photo comparisons ,maybe the lighting also has a lot to do
with it.

 

[Wreckhunter]

Thank you for the reply,I will keep playing around with photo comparisons ,maybe the lighting also has a lot to do
with it.

I went to the Lake today and took still photos of 2 shipwrecks in both 12mp and 48mp settings
After my wife processed some of the photos in photoshop,we both looked at the difference.
And could see better detail with the 48mp setting.I have an air 2.
This is the first time I could actually see the difference which I am glad to see as the air 2 is a great drone.
Have A Good Day.

 

[sar104]

I went to the Lake today and took still photos of 2 shipwrecks in both 12mp and 48mp settings
After my wife processed some of the photos in photoshop,we both looked at the difference.
And could see better detail with the 48mp setting.I have an air 2.
This is the first time I could actually see the difference which I am glad to see as the air 2 is a great drone.
Have A Good Day.

The 48 MP mode needs good light to prevent sensor noise from overwhelming the increased detail that it provides, which may account for why you haven't been impressed with your previous 48 MP images.

 

[Wreckhunter]

The 48 MP mode needs good light to prevent sensor noise from overwhelming the increased detail that it provides, which may account for why you haven't been impressed with your previous 48 MP images.

Thank You for the reply,i am glad its working out finally,we are having a string of bright sunny days here with no clouds in the sky
which i am sure helps a lot.
My wife and I both looked at the cropped photos of the shipwrecks and could tell the difference on the 48mp setting.
The edges of the wrecks seamed a little smoother.
I am glad I can finally say the 48mp works,this mavic air 2 is a super drone.
Once in a while I get a little flustered, and fly off the the handle a little,so I apologize for that.
Have A good Day

 

[sar104]

Thank You for the reply,i am glad its working out finally,we are having a string of bright sunny days here with no clouds in the sky
which i am sure helps a lot.
My wife and I both looked at the cropped photos of the shipwrecks and could tell the difference on the 48mp setting.
The edges of the wrecks seamed a little smoother.
I am glad I can finally say the 48mp works,this mavic air 2 is a super drone.
Once in a while I get a little flustered, and fly off the the handle a little,so I apologize for that.
Have A good Day

No problem - I'm glad that you got it working better.