Disappointed With Still Image Quality

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Hi

I took my Phantom 3 out to a very scenic area today. The weather was perfect. Took a number of shots using the AEB setting (3 shots in total,) ISO 100, and manually adjusted the exposure. The image format was RAW.

Sent one of my photos to my brother, and he didn't respond. Which is his subtle way of telling me that he thinks my photos are garbage. After looking at them, I'm beginning to come to the same conclusion. They look totally washed out. I mean they look like cellphone quality to me - maybe about 3 megapixels!? I'm struggling to edit them in Lightroom, and come up with a decent result.

On a positive note, the video quality is good.

Am I doing some wrong, or is this just what I should expect?
 

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Your brother might be right! ;)

I posted some site earlier in the Photos forum that grades your photo. Post was here: Website grades quality of your photos.) , and yours scored even lower than another one of mine that got me a lousy 1.7%. Yours came in at double Goose eggs! So that site agrees with your brother!

Drag and drop it here and see: Everypixel Aesthetics Test - Ask Neural Network if Your Photo is Good or Not

I tried to do some work on the image and all I could get was 10% at best off that website. The original has a strong magenta cast with little contrast, but I guess it doesn't like the image overall. :(

Untitled-1.jpg Untitled-10-percent.jpg
 
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@GMack I think the photo is garbage too, but am not really sure of what the solution is yet. Should I just get used to taking photos with my Phantom that look like they were taken with a cellphone from 10 years ago? :-(
 
I tried HDR once , and then realized you had to process in post , so now i'm using AEB - 5 shot , full auto , jpeg and this is what I get

Forgive me in advance if I am incorrect. I know very little about this stuff, but I thought AEB required post, and that HDR was the automatic alternative to AEB.
 
@GMack I think the photo is garbage too, but am not really sure of what the solution is yet. Should I just get used to taking photos with my Phantom that look like they were taken with a cellphone from 10 years ago? :-(

I don't know what the answer is. Maybe some landscape class somewhere? I know I never can shoot a decent landscape though, Phantom or DSLR. :(

Personally, I do better with fashion and models for some reason. Least the one below scored 99.8% on that website which I guess is good for me. I see that website picked out a lot of the correct green responses on it too other than Witch and Halloween. Guess it can analyze pretty well what an image is of overall.

Jackie-10.jpg
 
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For the most part, "quality" in any photograph is determined by the eye of the beholder. Photography is attempting to present on a two-dimensional plane that which you see on a three-dimensional plane - and you can never get the two into absolute agreement. There are dozens of photo editing programs out on the internet (Photoshop, Lightroom, Picassa, etc.) that can be used to adjust your photos to your own liking. Don't be so harsh on yourself if someone else doesn't like what you come up with.
 
Forgive me in advance if I am incorrect. I know very little about this stuff, but I thought AEB required post, and that HDR was the automatic alternative to AEB.
HDR needs to be processed to get full advantage , and I think set to raw too , I tried HDR and jpeg and it was terrible, AEB and jpeg gives you a finished useable photo , don't know about AEB and raw .
 
Took a number of shots using the AEB setting (3 shots in total,) ISO 100, and manually adjusted the exposure. The image format was RAW.
Am I doing some wrong, or is this just what I should expect?
It's unclear exactly what you did.
You mention shooting AEB but the filename on your image says HDR.
Did you combine the three images in an HDR program to get the one you posted or is that just one of the images you captured?

The image appears to be reasonably sharp (in the small version posted anyway) and apart from the magenta cast that is easily corrected, the biggest problem is in the composition.
A photo needs a subject to draw the eye but yours is just empty water, empty sky and a bit of empty distant background land.
Try shooting something that's more than distant blah.
And if you aren't familiar with digital image processing, shooting jpg is probably going to get better results for you.
 
@Meta4. Yes, it was AEB, and then the 3 exposures combined for an HDR image.

Forgetting the composition, I am just not happy with the image quality itself. I took quite a few today, and most of them disappointed me.

Maybe I'll just have to accept that this is the sort of image quality you get from a Phantom 3. I've probably been spoilt over the past few years due to using a Nikon DSLR, and of course it can't be compared to the Phantom.

Here is another one taken near the same location. It's ok (after a bit of editing in Lightroom.)
 

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Maybe I'll just have to accept that this is the sort of image quality you get from a Phantom 3. I've probably been spoilt over the past few years due to using a Nikon DSLR, and of course it can't be compared to the Phantom.
Depending on which Nikon you use, the sensor in your Phantom (pink) is either a small or tiny fraction of the size of your Nikon's sensor (blue or green) and this has a big influence on picture quality.
i-xBHHp2n-M.jpg

I shoot a Nikon D800 on the ground but I tend to shoot with the Phantom more often because the DSLR just doesn't go to the places my Phantom does.
In drone photography everything is a compromise and weight is the biggest problem.
Until a few months ago it was impossible to fly a better camera on a Phantom-sized machine.
With the Phantom you have to be conscious of the photographic limitations and work within them but it's still possible to come up with some quite impressive results
 
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I've been doing a few experiments with Lightroom and Photoshop in order to reduce the significant noise I find in my Phantom photos; even at ISO 100.

The method involves taking 7 shots of the same scene using the 'continuous shooting' mode on the Phantom, then editing in Lightroom, and applying the edit to all 7 photos using 'sync.' I then open the 7 synced/edited images in Photoshop as layers, auto-align them, and then convert them to a smart object.

Once the above is done, I then use the 'Mean' smart object stacking mode, and like magic much of the noise disappears from the sky and other areas of the photo.

Some might ask, why don't you just use the noise reduction tools in Lightroom? To me that feature is 'destructive editing,' as it often removes the finer details of the image.

The above might seem a lot of effort, but it takes me about 10 minutes in total. Next time I will try with more than 10 images merged to see if that gives even better results.

I got the idea from the following video, and then adapted the process to my Phantom:

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I tried the HDR setting recently with my Standard and wasn't impressed. I agree it is tricky to get good drone pics. I shoot RAW and edit in LR. I am getting decent results I think but with anything I am trying to always improve.
 
I didn't know what the AEB was. Should that be used? Or is it even possible to have it on/off?

edit: did some reading on dji forum. It is different than the HDR setting. I will give this a try.
 
I didn't know what the AEB was. Should that be used? Or is it even possible to have it on/off?

edit: did some reading on dji forum. It is different than the HDR setting. I will give this a try.

From my understanding AEB, is simply three shots. One is is at the exposure level you set initially, one a notch above, and one a notch below. You are then free to edit the three exposures as you wish in Lightroom etc.

I initially always used AEB to take still photos (in RAW format,) but as mentioned in my original post am experimenting with taking 7 or more shots and blending them to reduce noise.
 
Good to know! Yeah I did some more reading on it. I want to play with it some. Sounds like the 5 shot AEB works decent enough and then you can merge them in LR.
 
The visual composition of your photographs lacks centrality - i.e., nothing draws the viewer's attention to a so-so beautiful scenic view. Ask yourself "What in this view that I am seeing through the camera's lens "pops" into my mind as being most important?" Is it the color of the water? Maybe the hill in the background? The position of the sun? When you decide what the central point of the photo is, then try to get it NEAR the center, left-to-right, in the frame. Don't always get it EXACTLY centered - put it slightly off to one side or the other.

Try using filters on the camera when shooting from heights like your drone was at when you took the first photo you sent to us. An ultra-violet (UV) filter would have helped cut out most of the magenta cast that you see in that photo. For deepening the color of the water in that scene you would have wanted to have a polarizing filter over the camera lens - adjusted (prior to take-off) to give the best effect.

It is always best to start with a good original exposure rather than try to fix problems in post-flight processing.
 
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