I had air3s for few weeks but due to weather and work was not able to test it much.
however I went out for an hour during lunch time to visit nearby spot for limited testing.
took my
air2s with me as well but had not got a chance to do extensive testing, just few shots to compare.
Basically its quite disappointing experience tbh, 50 mp is almost no go due to artifacts and color noise it introduces in the shadows (midday shot with a bit of post poressing adjustents looks like taken with thousands of iso in the dark -rainbow of dots). This is definitely (at least partially) colour noise as able to (almost - see pictures) fix with Topaz.
12 MP renders shadows ok, however these odd artifacts in fine detail in high contrast areas are even more pronounced.
detail of 12 MP as expected slightly worse then my
Air2s 20 mp and ofc lower pixel count if you care about size for printing or any other reason. Would be acceptable tho if it wasn’t for the artifacts.
Hope this is software issue that Dji can and will fix in future updates.
there are many devices out there using QB sensors with better results so hopefully this is the pipeline processing issue rather than hardware limitations (unless Dji made some hardware/processing power shortcuts there who knows)
Introducing this QB sensor seem to be half marketing gimmick (50 MP anyone?) and half caring mostly for videos as on paper in 4k/12mp as the 3.2 micron pixel size should produce less noise and then on top of that 1,7 aperture to allow more light - not a massive video guy so really can't comment on that but from what I see in various reports the results are mixed at best.
Saying all that still a keeper for me, for time being this is the only Dji drone with FreePanorama. This combined with 70mm lens still produces amazing details when you shoot pano equivalent of 24mm (or more). There might some artifacts here and there but they seems to be less present in 70 mm shots and affecting only very fine details in tricky parts.
I understand you can shoot these panos with
air3 or
Mavic3 manually and stitch in post but this is not the same, Free panorama is a game changer (its like merge to HDR or Photomerge was removed from Photoshop and some one argued not big deal you can do it manually in layers .... yeah doable… )
First of all I am impressed by the jpg straight from camera, if you take the shots composition right its quite good product right off the shelf. Maybe a gentle touch and "crop" in post. but the detail, noise, stitching, shadows/highlights, colour and size (shot more or less comparable to 24mm would around 30 mp from jpg) are really good stuff even without post. This also saving a lot of time while in the air which is important you set first and last frame location and it takes a minute or so for 9-12 frames (50% of which is processing the jpg lol)
Now if you opt for saving DNGs there they are raw material should you need more from your shots sitting nicely numbered in own folders.
A bit of work in post but then you have 130+ mp utra detailed stuff comparable with "full frame" from flying camera.
There are some challenges shooting panos tho, quickly changing light conditions or dynamic scenes, so prolly most suitable for land(air)scapes in stable weather. You need keep an eye on AE and WB as well I think.
But air3s made this for time being easiest to achieve of all available drones and its huge difference.
now back to examples, these are heavy crops
70mm vertical artifacts (like vegatation shoots through water):
same artifacts 24mm 12MP:
now slightly bigger crop from 50MP to show the combined artifact with colour noise - ugly brown water also shadows in the vegetation and grass. (lifted shadows a bit to see whats hiding in the there, seems like rainbows
):
now the 24 mm 12MP same scene shadows are more than ok, not much noise but these odd vertical artifacts on the some parts of the water:
on the other hand the freepano shot resized from 130 to 6MP:
and finally to show the details a crop/zoom into red carvan area details are simply amazing:
So.... very mixed filling about the drone and no simple answer. Did not notice any strong artefacting in these shots apart of some areas of water, so maybe these are specific conditions its not coping with ?)
Amazing Pano (yet some less pronounced but still some artefacts at the same parts of water - this must be a specific pattern/contrast and size causing it as can't see any obvious in other busy areas like vegation or further planes in the town).
Anyway almost unusable 50 mp modes, quite usable 24mm in 12MP (slightly worse than
air2s imo- with some potential artifacts), even better 70 mm in 12 mp and stunning panos .....
