P3P Focus Defect!

Andrew Allsbury · Dec 1, 2015

As soon as Best Buy receives their latest shipment of Phantoms, we will be on our 5th P3P in 20 or so days. We actually are in the process of canceling a shoot tomorrow due to not being able to use the images out of this camera. We have tested every setting and every scenario, I simply do not have time to post all of the examples we have generated. I see plenty of fantastic images being created by people using the P3P, however the last 4 we have tested have not been capable of creating these images. Portions of the left side of the sensor are tack sharp, however everything from the center to the right is completely out of focus. I highly doubt that this issue is only isolated to Idaho or Best Buy as 3 of the 4 birds have had unusable focus. Just a heads up!

Examples:

(May not be live yet)

Issues for each P3P:

1st P3P - Sharp edge to edge and flew well, however suffered from random corrupted encoding which caused artifacts on several different SD cards. Knowing what I know now, we should have kept this bird. (RETURNED)

2nd P3P - Horribly Soft, the worst on the right side. (RETURNED)

3rd P3P - Horribly Soft, the worst on the right side. (RETURNED)

4th P3P - Horribly Soft, the worst on the right side. Also, GPS does not seem to function correctly, loses sat lock often and puts off a nasty servo whine that the others did not. (SOON TO BE RETURNED)

Jacob · Dec 1, 2015

Hmmm.... interesting. I figured they were set to "infinity" focus which just means everything is in focus. I'm assuming you already checked to make sure there were no fingerprints inside the lens or outside? Also - no fog?

bobmyers · Dec 1, 2015

Andrew Allsbury said:
As soon as Best Buy receives their latest shipment of Phantoms, we will be on our 5th P3P in 20 or so days. We actually are in the process of canceling a shoot tomorrow due to not being able to use the images out of this camera. We have tested every setting and every scenario, I simply do not have time to post all of the examples we have generated. I see plenty of fantastic images being created by people using the P3P, however the last 4 we have tested have not been capable of creating these images. Portions of the left side of the sensor are tack sharp, however everything from the center to the right is completely out of focus. I highly doubt that this issue is only isolated to Idaho or Best Buy as 3 of the 4 birds have had unusable focus. Just a heads up!

Examples:

(May not be live yet)

Issues for each P3P:

1st P3P - Sharp edge to edge and flew well, however suffered from random corrupted encoding which caused artifacts on several different SD cards. Knowing what I know now, we should have kept this bird. (RETURNED)

2nd P3P - Horribly Soft, the worst on the right side. (RETURNED)

3rd P3P - Horribly Soft, the worst on the right side. (RETURNED)

4th P3P - Horribly Soft, the worst on the right side. Also, GPS does not seem to function correctly, loses sat lock often and puts off a nasty servo whine that the others did not. (SOON TO BE RETURNED)

Can you get a refund and buy from a different distributor?-- maybe you can get a different manufacturing run.

Jacob · Dec 1, 2015

BTW: Defective Camera replacement (Soft Focus issue) | DJI Phantom Forum

Nasscar][ · Dec 1, 2015

Did you notice if the focus issue where any of the newer phantoms 3 pros with the newer motors?

Andrew Allsbury · Dec 1, 2015

Jacob -
We cleaned every filter and nd to perfection, then took a full blown lens cleaning kit and illuminated loop to the lens itself. No specks or smudges. Perfectly clean. Then we tested with every nd and filter we have, as well as with no filtration at all. Which is how the above samples were shot.

Nascar -
The first 3 birds were the newer version, the last one was the older style motors.

Bobmyers -
We have no other local shops that carry the P3P and I would not want to be going through this process over the internet. It would take months (lol)

For the record I do love DJI as a company and short of one small RMA issue we had with them when our Ronin was brand new, we have had a stellar experience. I am sure We will find a P3P that meets expectations eventually. I just hope DJI can figure out what went wrong. My guess is some kind of sensor misalignment or defective optic.

Andrew Allsbury · Dec 2, 2015

Could some people that are happy with the image from their P3P post some comparison videos/frame grabs that show edge to edge sharpness? I would really like to see how widespread this issue is.

Static8 · Dec 2, 2015

I have the exact same issue..most of my images in the center are blurry and edges super sharp, it can be seen both video and stills, but more notieceable in the images. I can get away with it in Video. I know of maybe 3 other people in the last week have the same issue.

Andrew Allsbury · Dec 2, 2015

Static8 said:
I have the exact same issue..most of my images in the center are blurry and edges super sharp, it can be seen both video and stills, but more notieceable in the images. I can get away with it in Video. I know of maybe 3 other people in the last week have the same issue.

Sorry to hear Static8, this seems like a pretty common problem. Today I went into Best Buy and they let me unpack all 3 of their P3Ps that came in last night. I setup and tested each one there in store. 1 (newer motors) was DOA, wouldn't update firmware or connect to RC, 1 (older motors) was worst than my current drone, and the third one (newer motors) was definitely uniform sharp on both the right and left side, but may be just as a tad soft in the center. This is the one we chose to take home and will be testing tomorrow. I will report back once we have done some real tests outside of a Best Buy showroom (lol)

But just to note, huge kudos to the Best Buy staff. They were super helpful and accommodating with an extremely messed up situation.

To DJI...2 out of 8 drones that don't exhibit extremely NASTY focus defects is not a good ratio...please check your QC...

Static8 · Dec 2, 2015

Andrew Allsbury said:
Sorry to hear Static8, this seems like a pretty common problem. Today I went into Best Buy and they let me unpack all 3 of their P3Ps that came in last night. I setup and tested each one there in store. 1 (newer motors) was DOA, wouldn't update firmware or connect to RC, 1 (older motors) was worst than my current drone, and the third one (newer motors) was definitely uniform sharp on both the right and left side, but may be just as a tad soft in the center. This is the one we chose to take home and will be testing tomorrow. I will report back once we have done some real tests outside of a Best Buy showroom (lol)

But just to note, huge kudos to the Best Buy staff. They were super helpful and accommodating with an extremely messed up situation.

To DJI...2 out of 8 drones that don't exhibit extremely NASTY focus defects is not a good ratio...please check your QC...

WOW, so I best just keep the one I have...DJI recommended RMA for diagnosis and repair but not sure I want to do this..I am happy enough with video and probably wont be taking too many pics but it would be nice to have great pics...not sure if I want to risk one more problem for something worse..

Andrew Allsbury · Dec 2, 2015

Yeah...honestly I wish I had kept my first P3P.

Static8 · Dec 2, 2015

Andrew Allsbury said:
Yeah...honestly I wish I had kept my first P3P.

Yup, I figure mine is not so bad and video reproduction is almost perfect, no noticeable vibrations, etc..very smooth. , just on occasion I could notice slight blur or softness in center. Photos are similar and like I said, probably won't be doing a lot of photo shoots, mostly video. I owned the SOLO and was riddled with bad video vibrations, so I am super happy what I have now.., Of course I look at other peoples videos and wish mine was as tight...oh well...

FCPhantom · Dec 3, 2015

You can try to re-focus your camera....

Static8 · Dec 3, 2015

FCPhantom said:
You can try to re-focus your camera....

Unfortunately I don't think mine is so much a focus situation otherwise entire pictures and videos would be blurry or very soft, mine is just small section in upper center..everywhere else is sharp

Andrew Allsbury · Dec 4, 2015

Yeah I think this issue is more likely caused by bad sensor calibration or sub par optics QC.

Flew the new bird today, at first glance everything looked pretty good. Still not super jazzed with the sharpness of dead center, but I will know more tomorrow after I have had some time to do some grading and sharpening.

mirrorimage · Dec 4, 2015

So my gen 1 p3p had better optics. The gen 2 they sent me has noticeable distortion in the lens as well. Very frustrating. I think they had a bad batch of lens glass. Not sure what I'm going to do.

Static8 · Dec 4, 2015

Andrew Allsbury said:
Yeah I think this issue is more likely caused by bad sensor calibration or sub par optics QC.

Flew the new bird today, at first glance everything looked pretty good. Still not super jazzed with the sharpness of dead center, but I will know more tomorrow after I have had some time to do some grading and sharpening.

I agree this make much more sense. I seem to get better results in 1080P at 60 FPS then in 4K 24 ..maybe 4K and slower frame rate shows the blurred images stand out..I'm OK with it since 90 percent of the images are good., well 75% anyways..lol. Post editing fixes it but not all images unfortunately..

B- Scene Films · Dec 4, 2015

The trick is to get PAST infinity.

I88^cimgpsh_orig

B- Scene Films
Dec 4, 2015

Andrew Allsbury · Dec 4, 2015

Another thing that I noticed in many of the P3Ps I tested was absolutely atrocious purple/pink chromatic aberration, sometimes even in the center of the lens. DJI really needs to address these issues. I understand the theory of it being an inexpensive tool and camera, but when the perceived resolution of cheap android phones shooting in 1080P are beating out a $1200 4k tool with a "Pro" moniker we have a big problem.

Static8 · Dec 4, 2015

Andrew Allsbury said:
Another thing that I noticed in many of the P3Ps I tested was absolutely atrocious purple/pink chromatic aberration, sometimes even in the center of the lens. DJI really needs to address these issues. I understand the theory of it being an inexpensive tool and camera, but when the perceived resolution of cheap android phones shooting in 1080P are beating out a $1200 4k tool with a "Pro" moniker we have a big problem.

I agree , I try to shoot with lowest amount of colour and add it post