the mavic mini 3 camera sucks?

[alexjo55]

I just got my mini 3, and im extremley disapointed.
I have seen video and photos from it before i orderd it and thought it looked really good, but now when i have tried it, it looks really bad.

The pictures looks like something from an old iphone 4 or something.
The video is a bit better, but still really bad.
I had a phantom 3 before, and it had way better quality than the mini 3.
Is this really normal?

I expected a brand new 600 usd drone to be a lot better than a 8 year old,130 usd drone from ebay.

Been into photography for like 15 years now and own DSLR camera and have had a few others, so i know what good quality looks like.
Will buy a UV filter tomorrow and see if it makes any difference, but i doubt it.
The quality and the ability to crop an image will not be affected by a UV filter.

Or maybee there are some settings im not aware of?
I checked the 12 mp photo and it was only 6.5 mp, wich for me sounds very low for a 12mp camera.
My DSLR camera has about 10MB / picture.

And the zoom, haha, cant even belive they chose to have a 4x zoom on that.
As soon as i zoomed in, i could see the pixles live on my phone, thats how bad it is.


Before i sell it, i just wanted to see if this is normal for the mini 3 or if this problem can be fixed some how?











May

 

[waynorth]

You should post an example photo or two to dropbox or somewhere so others can download and see if something is wrong. You should get 12Mp from the camera. Did you download the images from the sd-card?
An UV-filter makes no difference, actually it can introduce flares and reflections and maybe even a slight reduced sharpness.
The Mini 3 has no zoom. What they call zoom is simply a cropping of the sensor, with 4x zoom it uses only a quarter of the already very small sensor. No wonder you see the pixels.

 

[Rilot]

How are you getting the pictures off the craft? If youa re viewing them on your phone straight after the flight then they are low resolution cached pictures.
You need to take the SD card out of the Mini 3 and put it in a machine to get the proper files off. Or you can turn the drone on and connect to a PC with a USB cable. Or you can do a live transfer of the files.

 

[Mynah]

Having come from a Mavic Mini and Mini 2 I was also disappointed with the Mini 3 stills image quality, 'bigger Cmos sensor' and all.
I have come to the conclusion that their jpeg algorithm is optimized for social media application 'as is' rather than print output or serious post production.
My solution is to shoot in raw and post process in Photoshop, only then do the larger image sensor come to its full right. The extra f-stop light sensitivity and portrait capability of the Mini 3 is a bonus.

 

[alexjo55]

You should post an example photo or two to dropbox or somewhere so others can download and see if something is wrong. You should get 12Mp from the camera. Did you download the images from the sd-card?
An UV-filter makes no difference, actually it can introduce flares and reflections and maybe even a slight reduced sharpness.
The Mini 3 has no zoom. What they call zoom is simply a cropping of the sensor, with 4x zoom it uses only a quarter of the already very small sensor. No wonder you see the pixels.

I put the sd card in my computer and did not just download the pictures from the phone/drone.

1. Unedited RAW picture taken with mini 3

dng

Visit this link to download: rawfile.DNG

files.fm

If someone wants to edit this raw pic, you are free to do so.
Would love to see if the raw pic is better than the jpg.


2.Unedited jpg taken with mini 3:

jpg: unedited jpg.JPG

Visit this link to download: unedited jpg.JPG

files.fm

3.Edited jpg taken with mini 3:

jpg: edited jpg.JPG

Visit this link to download: edited jpg.JPG

files.fm

4.Unedited picture taken with phantom 3 standard:

jpg: phantom 3 standard.JPG

Visit this link to download: phantom 3 standard.JPG

files.fm

Its not 100% the same when comparing the pic from the phantom 3 and the mini 3,but very close.
The phantom 3 is actually taken further way and a bit higher from the ground, and the sun is a bit more straight from behind.

I think the mini 3 picture, the unedited one, looks very grey, but the edited one looks a litle better.
But still looks blurry and noisy.

 

[Mynah]

A quick post process from the RAW/DNG file, looks fine to me. Also remember when you select 16:9 format like this pic then you are cropping into the original 4:3 sensor size format which results in less than 12MP or 48MP.

 

[alexjo55]

View attachment 163873
A quick post process from the RAW/DNG file, looks fine to me. Also remember when you select 16:9 format like this pic then you are cropping into the original 4:3 sensor size format which results in less than 12MP or 48MP.

Are you saying the raw file was cropped?
I have not done anything to it at all, nor have i chosen any specific format in the fly app, i think.

Yes, that looks a lot better,Thanks
But im still not 100% happy with the result, i think it has a lot of noise especially when you look at the water.
Could be that it was in automatic mode and the iso was high, dont know, but it was a sunny day so i would not expect the iso to be high.


Also, how come the unedited raw file i 17.6MB but the edited one is only 7.3MB?
I thought when editing a raw file, the editing had very little impact on the file.
I have always shot in jpg even when i used my DSLR camera so dont have any knowledge about it.

 

[Felix le Chat]

With both JPG and DNG, manually set your ISO to 100 for any shot in daylight in order to minimize digital noise. The only time to bump up ISO is in low light conditions. 16:9 is a poor format because as soon as you fire the shutter, you have lost nearly 1/6th of the image and the file size for the picture will be less. Set the capture to 4:3, then if you want to alter the aspect, crop in post. Getting used to handling RAW format is worth the effort, the quality and detail blow JPG out of the water. In any lighting conditions you will get digital noise in large areas of dark colour regardless of the camera. Good quality RAW editors (try DARKTABLE) can work minor miracles with noise without sacrificing sharpness. The only Achilles heel I have spotted with the mini 3 pro camera is autofocus, manual focus is a bit of a pain, but more often than not gives a crisper image.

The edited DNG (RAW) retains its file size, but as soon as you save that edit as a JPG, the compression kicks the crap out of both quality and file size.

Any shot blown up to 100% or larger will show pixellation and digital noise - even a top-drawer DSLR shooting RAW. If you limit the output to JPG, the lossy compression and in-camera sharpening profile will exaggerate noise especially in poor or wide dynamic range lighting conditions. For their size: the sensors used in DJI cameras are really good - bear in mind this is a camera that is roughly the size of the top joint of your thumb.

 

[Dronecation]

I thought when editing a raw file, the editing had very little impact on the file.
I have always shot in jpg even when i used my DSLR camera so dont have any knowledge about it.

Learn to shoot in raw not only with your drone, but also with your camera. Read up on it because it will serve you well in the future. I second everything Felix Le Chat has advised you. Don't return your drone until you know how to get the most from it.

 

[lolo780]

I find the Mini 3 Pro excellent for what it is. Focus issues are the main problem I've seen with a few units and you just have to manually focus 1 or 2 ticks off the mountain icon.

 

[Meta4]

I checked the 12 mp photo and it was only 6.5 mp, wich for me sounds very low for a 12mp camera.
My DSLR camera has about 10MB / picture.

Are you confusing MP (megapixels) and MB (megabytes)?
And then adding confusion with the file size of compressed jpg image files?
You cannot compare those numbers the way you have.

 

[TwoSticks]

When I bought my first DSLR I was so disappointed. I was getting photos that were worse than the point and shoot it replaced. Learning about formats, technique, and post processing things got better over time. In my case, the camera was fantastic being a flagship at the time, the issue was me.

 

[Meta4]

2.Unedited jpg taken with mini 3:

There's nothing wrong with that shot, except that it's a distant blah photo with all distant background and no subject.
If you want to see the image quality the camera is capable of, you need to take better pictures.
Get in close and have a prominent subject to capture the viewer's eye.

 

[Felix le Chat]

I just got my mini 3, and im extremley disapointed.
I have seen video and photos from it before i orderd it and thought it looked really good, but now when i have tried it, it looks really bad.

The pictures looks like something from an old iphone 4 or something.
The video is a bit better, but still really bad.
I had a phantom 3 before, and it had way better quality than the mini 3.
Is this really normal?

I expected a brand new 600 usd drone to be a lot better than a 8 year old,130 usd drone from ebay.

Been into photography for like 15 years now and own DSLR camera and have had a few others, so i know what good quality looks like.
Will buy a UV filter tomorrow and see if it makes any difference, but i doubt it.
The quality and the ability to crop an image will not be affected by a UV filter.

Or maybee there are some settings im not aware of?
I checked the 12 mp photo and it was only 6.5 mp, wich for me sounds very low for a 12mp camera.
My DSLR camera has about 10MB / picture.

And the zoom, haha, cant even belive they chose to have a 4x zoom on that.
As soon as i zoomed in, i could see the pixles live on my phone, thats how bad it is.


Before i sell it, i just wanted to see if this is normal for the mini 3 or if this problem can be fixed some how?











May

Took your original OOC (Out Of Camera DNG) shot for a trot round the block - size: 17.06 mb.

Primary editing with PhotoNinja to reduce exposure: enhance micro-contrast: NO cropping: 1st stage chroma noise reduction: NO sharpening - output to high-bit TIF.

Output: 32-bit floating point TIF. - size: 103.0 mb.

Secondary editing with Darktable to lift shadows: wavelet decompose for added micro-contrast: enhance colour & apply astrophoto de-noise - final output to JPG.

Output: 8-bit JPG. - size: 6.87 mb.

Editing time: less than 5 minutes.

Result: good detail - low noise - even at 100% crop.

Took a proper pixel-peep at this result and to be honest: I'd be satisfied - it'd pass muster for me and I'm pretty fussy. Quite a nice shot of the early spring ice as well. After clean-up, I think that what you took for a lot of noise on the water was in fact the small waves on the surface. The best place to gauge noise is by zooming in on the extreme corners.

Original OOC JPG's will not respond well to editing in post - least of all to noise reduction. The best way to get more control over the shot to reduce noise and improve detail is to convert the lossy JPG to an uncompressed high bit format (TIF: 16-bit or 32-bit floating point) and THEN start the enhancement process. But this is making the best of a bad job.

If, however, you work with OOC DNG files, they enhance far better from the start.

Best RAW editors that I've found:

PHOTONINJA (fee-ware: you'll pay the equivalent of $119... but it's a lifetime license and worth every penny)

DARKTABLE (FREE-ware and easily equal to ADOBE LIGHTROOM)

RAWTHERAPEE (FREE-ware and easily equal to LIGHTROOM... despite the silly name)

 

[Mynah]

I find the Mini 3 Pro excellent for what it is. Focus issues are the main problem I've seen with a few units and you just have to manually focus 1 or 2 ticks off the mountain icon.

Yeah I totally fail to see the logic in adding 'focusing capability' to a super wide-angle fixed focus lens on a drone, albeit a f1.8 lens. I do not plan on ever attempting macro or close-up photography with a drone camera. If you need to use manual focus 'just off the mountain' to obtain focus at infinity then you are manually correcting a production dud, rather let DJI replace their faulty camera unit.

 

[erezgur]

RAWTHERAPEE (FREE-ware and easily equal to LIGHTROOM... despite the silly name)

I'm using RawTherapee for the last few years (for my DSLR) but couldn't (yet) find a reasonable profile / definistions for the DJI (mini 3 pro) DNG files. If you already have profile / lcp files for the mini 3 pro and willing to share - I would be greatfull

 

[Felix le Chat]

I'm using RawTherapee for the last few years (for my DSLR) but couldn't (yet) find a reasonable profile / definistions for the DJI (mini 3 pro) DNG files. If you already have profile / lcp files for the mini 3 pro and willing to share - I would be greatfull

EREZGUR - Both Rawtherapee and Darktable use the Lensfun database for user generated LCP's and so far as I can find: the DJI correction profile list hasn't been added to past FC220 (Mavic pro/platinum). That's why I use Photoninja first. You can train it to recognise your lens and camera and one-click correct to a VERY high standard before 1st stage output to 32-bit floating point TIF. I bought Photoninja purely on that basis and then found that the rest of the tools under the hood were just as awesome. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a way to output this profile in a format that is recognised by Adobe or editing suites that use Lensfun.

 

[Deleted member 170519]

Looks fine in camera raw converted to jpg and lightly edited in photoshop

 

[FlushVision]

The first time I had my Mini 3 Pro out I too was disappointed with the image quality:, I thought it was crap. A coupe of months in and several flights under my belt the image quality is much improved to the point that it's the best I've seen from any drone I've owned. Stick with it and it will come.

 

[alexjo55]

now its have have been over 1 month since i bought the mini 3.
one thin i have noticed is that the autofocus is not that great.

if i record a house and im 3km away, i can see clearly that its not sharp.
Very often its like this, but not always.
Some times its very sharp even at the horrison.

Gonna do some test with the manual focus and see if it works by setting it to infinity.
If you think about it, its weird that such a small focus length can have trouble making the image sharp all the way when over large distance.

I would understand if it became like this if the camera had like 100mm in focal length, but its very small on the camera so it should not have a problem making the image sharp on long distances.