What am I doing wrong?

[MS Coast]

It says the exposure is manual, I thought it was on Auto, I must check that tomorrow.

Scene Type - Directly photographed
Exposure Mode - Manual
White Balance - Auto

Exposure mode was manual, not focus.

 

[MARK (LI)]

Did you view the photo in full size? The boy is the main subject and he is way out of focus.
The mini 3 pro has an impressive camera given its limitations, and it can do far better than this.

It's not a mirrorless or DSLR camera....just not made for portrait type photography...I wouldn't expect much better from it

 

[Meta4]

It's not a mirrorless or DSLR camera....just not made for portrait type photography...I wouldn't expect much better from it

It's got nothing to do with the camera and it can do better.
The issue has been explained multiple times in the thread already.

 

[Meta4]

Thank you for that. I will try again tomorrow. That is excellent advice. Many thanks, I will get my head round this with help.

Try shooting a proper drone photo rather than using the drone for portraits at a distance of only a metre.
In drone photography it's extremely rare that you would have a subject that close.

 

[mrfish]

It's a focus error. The grass behind the person is sharp.
The cameras AF has automatically chosen a focus point on the grass. You should have tapped on the screen on the boys head to let the AF focus on it. There is no indication that there is anything wrong with the camera.
The minimum focus distance for the camera is 1 meter.

Hi, what drew me to doing this was I was tesing the camera out with my kids playing football and the photos were terrible. They were not portraits, just them playing.
I have taken test photos at 1.5m which was the closest I could get to the subject and went all the way back to 7m. I have uploaded 1.5m, 2m, 3m, 4m, and 5m to flickr. I made sure to tap the screen each time on the print being held. It clearly isn't focusing. Even by cheap phone quality these are terrible.

DJI Mini 3 Pro Test Shots

Explore this photo album by fish2064 on Flickr!

flickr.com

I am not expecting apsc quality from a sensor that is less than a fith of that size, but I am expecting the camera to have the capacity to focus on a subject. I don't think that is being unreasonable.
Either there is a fault with the camera, or it is incapable of being used for anything other than landscape photography. I will contact dji to see what they have to say.

 

[BobaFut]

Hi, what drew me to doing this was I was tesing the camera out with my kids playing football and the photos were terrible. They were not portraits, just them playing.
I have taken test photos at 1.5m which was the closest I could get to the subject and went all the way back to 7m. I have uploaded 1.5m, 2m, 3m, 4m, and 5m to flickr. I made sure to tap the screen each time on the print being held. It clearly isn't focusing. Even by cheap phone quality these are terrible.

DJI Mini 3 Pro Test Shots

Explore this photo album by fish2064 on Flickr!

flickr.com

I am not expecting apsc quality from a sensor that is less than a fith of that size, but I am expecting the camera to have the capacity to focus on a subject. I don't think that is being unreasonable.
Either there is a fault with the camera, or it is incapable of being used for anything other than landscape photography. I will contact dji to see what they have to say.

The 1m shot looks a little soft, I suppose, but the other ones look fine from a focus perspective (they are severely underexposed though, which does not help). I don't think you've said, but are you either tapping on the subject to focus or manually focusing, or are you just letting the camera focus itself? IME DJI's AF is extremely reluctant to focus on near objects (which makes sense), and you have to tell it what to do in such situations.

 

[sportsphotos]

Thank you for that. I will try again tomorrow. That is excellent advice. Many thanks, I will get my head round this with help.

Also a FStop of 1.6 didn’t help you depth of field any.

 

[Meta4]

Even by cheap phone quality these are terrible.

I am not expecting apsc quality from a sensor that is less than a fith of that size, but I am expecting the camera to have the capacity to focus on a subject. I don't think that is being unreasonable.
Either there is a fault with the camera, or it is incapable of being used for anything other than landscape photography. I will contact dji to see what they have to say.

I can't see what you are complaining about.
Those test pix seem quite OK.
Perhaps you need to get your eyesight checked.

 

[BobaFut]

Also a FStop of 1.6 didn’t help you depth of field any.

Mini 3 doesn't have a variable aperture and the tiny sensor gives an enormous DOF. Not sure what exactly the Mini 3 Pro's hyperfocal distance is, but I would imagine it's about 15 feet out to infinity.

 

[mrfish]

@BobaFut Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! I am a total moron. Thank you for tipping me off to the reason. The camera WAS on manual focus.
The bit that still is baffling me is the EXIF data keeps saying manual exposure mode despite the control saying shutter and ISO are on auto. Also, thanks for pointing out the under exposure. I hadn't noticed as my son had been messing with the screen brightness as he was playing Robox. Normally it is set to 10 so it works with my printer. I took a photo in the living room and the exposure and focus are fine.
in focus by William Heron, on Flickr

 

[MS Coast]

The bit that still is baffling me is the EXIF data keeps saying manual exposure mode despite the control saying shutter and ISO are on auto.

Exposure and focus are entirely different things. Exposure has to do with the amount of light reaching the sensor; it has nothing to do with focus.

 

[mrfish]

Exposure and focus are entirely different things. Exposure has to do with the amount of light reaching the sensor; it has nothing to do with focus.

I know. @BobaFut has also pointed out the shots were very underexposed, but the iso and shutter speed are on Auto. Strange the photo shot in the living room has good, exposure.

 

[BobaFut]

I know. @BobaFut has also pointed out the shots were very underexposed, but the iso and shutter speed are on Auto. Strange the photo shot in the living room has good, exposure.

The outdoor shots are a recipe for AE to underexpose. At the risk of oversimplifying, the camera wants big areas of white to be gray and prioritizes that over pretty much everything. So the sensor will see white clouds and say "those should be gray so I will compensate for that by lowering the exposure," which is a problem in a high contrast scene like an overcast day when the sun is high. This is where a histogram comes in handy, because it gives you an "objective" view of the scene that isn't biased by your screen brightness settings.

 

[Prop Wash]

If you want a close-up of your son, maybe back the drone away from him and use the zoom feature to get "close" providing the other settings are looked @ as suggested by other posters.

 

[mrfish]

If you want a close-up of your son, maybe back the drone away from him and use the zoom feature to get "close" providing the other settings are looked @ as suggested by other posters.

The reason for the portrait was to try and see what I was doing wrong and why I couldn't get a sharp image. With some help that problem has been solved, thanks.

 

[mrfish]

The outdoor shots are a recipe for AE to underexpose. At the risk of oversimplifying, the camera wants big areas of white to be gray and prioritizes that over pretty much everything. So the sensor will see white clouds and say "those should be gray so I will compensate for that by lowering the exposure," which is a problem in a high contrast scene like an overcast day when the sun is high. This is where a histogram comes in handy, because it gives you an "objective" view of the scene that isn't biased by your screen brightness settings.

Is there a way to set the screen brightness on the RC control so it gives an accurate rendition of what it will show on my computer, when my son hasn't messed with the brightness level on my computer.

 

[BobaFut]

Is there a way to set the screen brightness on the RC control so it gives an accurate rendition of what it will show on my computer, when my son hasn't messed with the brightness level on my computer.

You can certainly adjust the screen brightness of the controller, but it's just a cheap LCD so it's not exactly a good rendering of the scene compared to a good monitor. I just keep my controller set to max brightness so I can see it in sunlight and then gauge exposure based on the histogram. And to some degree, exposure is always a compromise, particularly when you're working outside with natural light. With your test photos, for example, you probably could've pushed the exposure up a bit while shooting, but it looks like you have enough left in the shadows to give you flexibility to fix things in post.

 

[kilhan]

One more thing, Why do you take RAW files, if you use Photoshop only to convert them to JPG. This has no sense. Each camera give you the choice of making JPG files, which are post processed by the camera itself and they are much better than RAW files without any post processing. Taking RAW files have sense only if you know or believe that your manual post processing in Photoshop will give better results than auto optimizing JPG by the camera

 

[mrfish]

One more thing, Why do you take RAW files, if you use Photoshop only to convert them to JPG. This has no sense. Each camera give you the choice of making JPG files, which are post processed by the camera itself and they are much better than RAW files without any post processing. Taking RAW files have sense only if you know or believe that your manual post processing in Photoshop will give better results than auto optimizing JPG by the camera

Force of habit. I used to do a lot more post processing with files, but not so much these days.

 

[Dale D]

I took this photo to see what the quality is like. I am shocked how bad it is. Any input would be greatly appreciated.
DJI_0013 by William Heron, on Flickr

The boy's face is soft and slightly out of focus. The grass is sharp. Thus, I think you have a problem with the depth of field. Try the same shot again but take one or two steps back. You seem to be too close for even a wide angle lens depth of field capability.

In three words
Depth of Field

Dale
Miami