Reduced photo quality on image edges

[Archaeoman]

Dear all,

I am an archaeologist that uses drones mainly for photogrammetry. Therefore I need sharp and detailed photos.

However, my newly purchased Mavic 2 Pro has extremely soft and blurry edges, in particular the left side.

The photo you can see below is taken from 25m height, 1m/s, autofocus and saved in 5s intervals in jpeg and raw formats. However, the left edge is blurred on the left with the right also being blurry as well.

Is the quality on that photo the best the Mavic 2 Pro camera can do or this is a faulty camera sensor?

I have tried gimbal, IMU and compass calibration... the problem persists.

Can you please have a look and advise?

Thank you for letting me be part of this community

Archaeoman

Dumper Track Blurry.jpg

drive.google.com

 

[Bryce steiner]

I have to agree. I think your lens may have a decentering problem. I would send it back in to DJI. I would take several more pictures specifically to see if this is consistent. Your F stop does not look too fast.

 

[Thoraldus]

The M2P lens is not a flat field lens. This means there is curvature to the field of focus. Typically you stop the lens down to increase the depth of field to compensate. In this case you have detail on the edge of the frame and F/5.6 is not performing as well as you would like. There are a couple things you can do to improve the image. Stop down to F/8.0 or F/11.0 You could use the center of the field for better resolution. You could take multiple images while translating your M2P horizontally, then post process to build an image with higher resolution using just the central portions of the image series. Typically only specially designed lenses like some macro or copy lenses are truly flat field.

If the de-focus on the edge of the frame is not equal on all sides then the lens is probably de-centered and should be returned for repair.

 

[AKflyer]

While it's true that increasing the F number as mentioned above will improve the depth of field, it's definitely not normal to have consistent softness in one spot or edge. A de-centered lens was actually a not-uncommon defect with the original Mavic Pro - the first one I had was replaced by DJI under warranty for exactly that. Kind of frustrating, but I guess there's always a few products that fall outside the "bell curve".

I'd recommend taking some very specific test photos to help verify the problem. For example, hover over a flat area, preferably with lots of texture, and take some photos directly down, so the distance from the Mavic to the scene is the same on all edges. Ensure that you focus on exactly the center of the frame. The resultant picture *should* have edges and corners that match in sharpness.

If it doesn't, send DJI support an email describing the sharpness issue, how you tested it, and include a copy of the photo. That's what I did with my first Mavic Pro, and I immediately got back a very polite email that said it wasn't normal, and contained instructions for returning it for a warranty replacement.

Good luck.

 

[Archaeoman]

Thank you so much for the kind support and helpful tips. After doing what you said it seems that it is a faulty unit that will be replaced under warranty.

Fingers crossed it will all be resolved soonish.

Thanks again
Archaeoman