The Effect of Distance on Image Quality

[js47]

I've had this screenshot sitting on my desktop for a while now, figured this is as good a time as any to share it. All images were taken within a few minutes.

The top left image was taken with my Fujifilm X-T3 with 55-200mm lens @ 150mm from 1500m distance.
The top right image was taken with my Fujifilm X-T3 with 55-200mm lens @ 300mm from 3500m distance.
Obviously, the image taken at 1500m is much better than the image taken at 3500m.

The bottom left image was taken with the Mavic 3 tele lens @ 162mm from 1300m. The Fuji is the clear winner here, which makes sense because the lens alone weighs almost as much as the drone!
Finally, the bottom right image was taken with the Mavic 3 wide lens @ 24mm from only 300m distance. The clear overall winner imo. Not that surprising but it was interesting to see how much effect distance has.

 

[wco81]

Not just optics between the wide and tele lenses on the Mavic 3 right?

Bigger sensor than the tele?

 

[js47]

Not just optics between the wide and tele lenses on the Mavic 3 right?

Bigger sensor than the tele?

Correct, different lenses but also very different sensors. Technically 2 different cameras entirely which just happen to share a gimbal.

The wide camera uses a 4/3” sensor and the tele camera uses a 1/2” sensor. Doesn’t sound like a huge difference but by area the wide camera’s sensor is more than 7x larger than the tele camera’s sensor! Plus it doesn’t help that the tele lens is not great.

 

[PanoVolo]

this is mainly caused by atmospheric turbulence rather than optics quality

 

[MavicAir2Marc]

I would like to know how you got a 200mm lens to shoot at 300M?

 

[Kilrah]

I would like to know how you got a 200mm lens to shoot at 300M?

shoot something that's 300m away?

 

[gadroneguy]

The atmosphere distorts. There is dust, heat, etc all working against you. The subject to camera distance is VERY important to picture quality. Using a worse lense/sensor from further away is definitely going to make a difference. I often tell people to 'get close - then get closer'.

 

[js47]

I would like to know how you got a 200mm lens to shoot at 300M?

The name of the lens is "55-200mm" but it is an APS-C sensor so shooting at 200mm has an effective focal length of shooting 300mm on full frame. I am comparing 3 cameras with 3 different sensor sizes so it just makes sense to normalize all focal lengths to full frame terms. Otherwise I'd have said 70mm, 200mm, 30mm, and 12mm and that is just not a useful comparison.

 

[js47]

The atmosphere distorts. There is dust, heat, etc all working against you. The subject to camera distance is VERY important to picture quality. Using a worse lense/sensor from further away is definitely going to make a difference. I often tell people to 'get close - then get closer'.

Yes, this is precisely what I was trying to illustrate. I used a worse lens/sensor (Mavic 3 wide camera) from closer and it produced a superior image to a better lens/sensor (Fujifilm APS-C) that was used from farther away.

 

[DISC]

Interesting comparison - thx for posting.

 

[Filmarik]

Interesting comparison - thx for posting.

Nice comparison. I would say that the Mavic 3 Pro 166mm camera is a fair bit better than the original Mavic 3 162mm camera. When looking at unprocessed DNG files the images look fairly soft (quite naturally) but they do take sharpening very well. I use Adobe Lr and have 3 dedicated profiles created, one for each of the 3 cameras and the results from all 3 cameras can look nice and pretty sharp and hence very usable.
Atmospheric conditions affect sharpness when shooting with any long tele lens as the other member mentioned. On a hot summer day there is a lot of air turbulence, especially near the ground and that can make a huge difference in sharpness of the final image.

 

[js47]

Nice comparison. I would say that the Mavic 3 Pro 166mm camera is a fair bit better than the original Mavic 3 162mm camera. When looking at unprocessed DNG files the images look fairly soft (quite naturally) but they do take sharpening very well. I use Adobe Lr and have 3 dedicated profiles created, one for each of the 3 cameras and the results from all 3 cameras can be look nice and sharp and very usable. The atmospheric conditions affect the sharpness when shooting with any long tele lens as the other member mentioned. On a hot summer day there is a lot of air turbulence especially near the ground and that can make a huge difference in sharpness of the final image.

I will say that no sharpening was applied to any of these images, though other edits were.

I'd guess the Mavic 3 Pro tele camera would have looked somewhere between the Mavic 3 Original tele camera and my Fujifilm with its tele lens. Unfortunately the Mavic 3 Pro (being an EASA C2 Class drone) would have prevented me from getting many of the shots I got on that trip with my Mavic 3 Original (which is an EASA C1 Class drone).

Smart idea about the preset profiles for each camera, I may borrow that!

 

[wco81]

I will say that no sharpening was applied to any of these images, though other edits were.

I'd guess the Mavic 3 Pro tele camera would have looked somewhere between the Mavic 3 Original tele camera and my Fujifilm with its tele lens. Unfortunately the Mavic 3 Pro (being an EASA C2 Class drone) would have prevented me from getting many of the shots I got on that trip with my Mavic 3 Original (which is an EASA C1 Class drone).

Smart idea about the preset profiles for each camera, I may borrow that!

Yeah and it's looking like Mavic 4 will also be too heavy for C1 class.

 

[Filmarik]

I will say that no sharpening was applied to any of these images, though other edits were.

I'd guess the Mavic 3 Pro tele camera would have looked somewhere between the Mavic 3 Original tele camera and my Fujifilm with its tele lens. Unfortunately the Mavic 3 Pro (being an EASA C2 Class drone) would have prevented me from getting many of the shots I got on that trip with my Mavic 3 Original (which is an EASA C1 Class drone).

Smart idea about the preset profiles for each camera, I may borrow that!

And there lies the small problem with this comparison, IMHO. It is not easy to form any opinion about IQ from looking at unsharpened DNG files. DNG files are by nature soft and meant to be sharpened (and processed). Sharpening can and will make remarkable difference in appearance of any DNG image.