P4P camera quality compared to E90?

I cant find any real negative feedback on the P4P Lens to date ?
I've seen no verified complaints about the P4P camera, it's excellent, a real breakthrough that blew away the GoPro crowd almost a year ago when the P4P was released. The size and performance is unmatched. Yuneec has inherently had less control options in the camera settings in their app, and still don't offer a histogram. The control of the gimbal is also more refined in the P4P versus any other drone in this price range.
 
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I was anxiously awaiting the potential of adding an H520/E90 combo to my fleet for commercial use once it hit the market and was thoroughly tested by non-fanboys. Yuneec was really on to something with the Typhoon H and a hex platform with interchangable payloads. They dropped the ball. We had hoped with the arrival of the H520 they would have learned from their previous trials and errors, while also capitalizing on the potential strengths of their system. Long story short, they haven't. Yuneec guys will argue all day long that the H520 is superior to the P4P. It's not. I have been lucky enough to receive candid feedback from a fellow pro photographer that took the leap with the H520/E90 investment who is quite frustrated with his experience so far. I'll highlight his concerns as briefly as possible...
  • Having owned and flown both Typhoons and Phantoms, he personally prefers the P4P's in image quality having done plenty of post processing on both camera outputs. From what i have seen, so do I. This is quite a subjective topic so I won't spend much time here. Now, on to the serious issues...
  • PX4 FC Software - This bird boasted this code which made it even more appealing to those of us that have learned the benefits that potentially come with it. The reality of what they released regardless of what code it is based on is a real marketing gimmick at this point. Like me, he has highly enjoyed the Phantom's ability to adjust Expo and Rate settings to tune the aircraft to his style. This completely disappeared with the H520 - there is no option to make any tuning or flight parameter changes.
  • The battery life, control, and system monitoring are dismal to say the least. It is widely known that the battery displays are highly misleading. My acquaintance quoted having his H520 auto-land at 33% remaining battery, and in their system, the A/C will land wherever it may be once it thinks it has reached critical battery level. There is NO option to take manual control! There is also no way to adjust this major issue in the software. He also reports that he has been having numerous inconsistencies across 4 batteries through usage cycles. If there's one thing you do not want to have problems with in aerial camera platforms, it's definitely underperforming batteries with minds of their own.
And these are just the major gripes, but critical issues for those looking to make a significant investment on this level. The funny thing is I was wishing that Yuneec knocked the 520 out of the park as it would have grabbed a huge portion of the market share DJI has come to control. This would only push DJI to step-up their game and bring us even better technology in the Prosumer-level segment.

The bang for the buck makes the P4P the current king - there simply is no competition. The Typhoon H does not compare (the CGO3+ camera is garbage) and the H520 was supposed to be a step-up in platform in every way. Currently, that is far from the case...
 
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Your "20MP" image is really an upscaled 13MP...better lens beats a better camera.
First I've read this.
Your 13mp statement sounds authoritative.
Where does it say that in manual or elsewhere?
If true, how can DJI advertise it as true 20mp?
As to lens vs. camera, having gone through (4)
P4P+ camera-lens replacements (covered by warranty),
it seems off-centeredness or similar causes vast variations
in quality of P4P+ image IQ. I've had (2) in which
diffraction issues caused blurriness starting just outside
center of image, whereas (2) others were sharp nearly
to all edges.

Summarizing: a lemon** better lens does not beat
a good worse lens!

And my small sample of (4) lenses implies a lot of
P4P owners don't know they have lemon lenses...
 
First I've read this.
Your 13mp statement sounds authoritative.
Where does it say that in manual or elsewhere?
If true, how can DJI advertise it as true 20mp?
As to lens vs. camera, having gone through (4)
P4P+ camera-lens replacements (covered by warranty),
it seems off-centeredness or similar causes vast variations
in quality of P4P+ image IQ. I've had (2) in which
diffraction issues caused blurriness starting just outside
center of image, whereas (2) others were sharp nearly
to all edges.

Summarizing: a lemon** better lens does not beat
a good worse lens!

And my small sample of (4) lenses implies a lot of
P4P owners don't know they have lemon lenses...

It doesn't state it in the manual or in any DJI material, for obvious reasons. They can advertise it is as a 20MP "sensor" because it is a 20MP sensor. However, the image you get is a ~13.5mp image upscaled back to 20MP.

Shoot a RAW photo. Open it in Raw Therapee, Affinity Photo, or pretty much any non-Adobe product. Then you'll see what a true P4P RAW file looks like and how much of the photo needs to actually be cropped out to not just remove vignette, but straight up black corners with zero light coverage from the lens. You then lose more of the image as you correct for the lens's significant barrel distortion.
 
so your basically saying this is a 13.5mp camera - which means all their advertising and marketing and everyones comments on the 20mp camera wholly incorrect - can you point me to any official documentation on this - as a lot of people will have issues (including me as ive just bought on) - and are you also therefore saying the X4s (as its the same lens) is also 13.5mp?
 
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so your basically saying this is a 13.5mp camera - which means all their advertising and marketing and everyones comments on the 20mp camera wholly incorrect - can you point me to any official documentation on this - as a lot of people will have issues (including me as ive just bought on) - and are you also therefore saying the X4s (as its the same lens) is also 13.5mp?

There's no official documentation because DJI isn't going to official and publicly document that they're misleading people about the quality of the camera. It IS a 20MP sensor - which is exactly how DJI advertises it. But as a package with an inadequate lens clearly designed for a smaller sensor, it does not provide true 20MP images. You don't need any official documentation to verify this when you can simply open the RAW file of any image in a program that does not apply the embedded corrections and see exactly what kind of picture you're actually getting in-camera.
 
There's no official documentation because DJI isn't going to official and publicly document that they're misleading people about the quality of the camera. It IS a 20MP sensor - which is exactly how DJI advertises it. But as a package with an inadequate lens clearly designed for a smaller sensor, it does not provide true 20MP images. You don't need any official documentation to verify this when you can simply open the RAW file of any image in a program that does not apply the embedded corrections and see exactly what kind of picture you're actually getting in-camera.
I would be helpful if you posted a graphic representation of what you described when opening up a RAW P4P image, showing what gets cropped off the full sensor data. I think it would be easier for the folks to understand. It would also be helpful to know how you determined it to be 13mp. Is this a guess, or did you measure it to calculate this estimate?
 
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so your basically saying this is a 13.5mp camera - which means all their advertising and marketing and everyones comments on the 20mp camera wholly incorrect - can you point me to any official documentation on this - as a lot of people will have issues (including me as ive just bought on) - and are you also therefore saying the X4s (as its the same lens) is also 13.5mp?
It doesn't matter what's happening inside the camera, the results are still far and away better than what you get with any other ready-to-fly camera drone under $3000.
The P4 pro camera is a huge improvement in photographic quality beyond previous models.
 
I would be helpful if you posted a graphic representation of what you described when opening up a RAW P4P image, showing what gets cropped off the full sensor data. I think it would be easier for the folks to understand. It would also be helpful to know how you determined it to be 13mp. Is this a guess, or did you measure it to calculate this estimate?


I already told you how and examples were already provided in the thread I linked previously.

Take a RAW photo, open it in any non-Adobe product - Raw Therapee is free. See for yourself. Judge for yourself. Measure MP loss for yourself. Don't take my word for it.
 
I already told you how and examples were already provided in the thread I linked previously.

Take a RAW photo, open it in any non-Adobe product - Raw Therapee is free. See for yourself. Judge for yourself. Measure MP loss for yourself. Don't take my word for it.
I don't have the graphic tools you mentioned handy, and most others don't also, I'm sure. You sound like you have those tools, so what's your hesitance from putting up the sample graphic to explain your calculation and illustrate your point? If it's too much work, or you can't support your claim for other reasons, then forget it, no problem. It's really doesn't matter like Meta said, it's still better than anything else on the market in this price and size range.

E90? Yeah right, and you have to fly it with a Yuneec craft, less than a mile range. Boring! :rolleyes:
 
I don't have the graphic tools you mentioned handy, and most others don't also, I'm sure. You sound like you have those tools, so what's your hesitance from putting up the sample graphic to explain your calculation and illustrate your point? If it's too much work, or you can't support your claim for other reasons, then forget it, no problem. It's really doesn't matter like Meta said, it's still better than anything else on the market in this price and size range.

E90? Yeah right, and you have to fly it with a Yuneec craft, less than a mile range. Boring! :rolleyes:

Because I post from work and have access to neither my photos nor the ability to download any programs. Raw Therapee is a FREE program that can be downloaded as quickly as you can Google the name. On the contrary, if you can't be bothered enough to look at your own photos then it doesn't really matter to me whether you believe me or not. Knowing how the auto profile works I'm able to get better quality photos with larger FOV and higher real MP. If that doesn't matter to you... I certainly don't care.
 
Because I post from work and have access to neither my photos nor the ability to download any programs. Raw Therapee is a FREE program that can be downloaded as quickly as you can Google the name. On the contrary, if you can't be bothered enough to look at your own photos then it doesn't really matter to me whether you believe me or not. Knowing how the auto profile works I'm able to get better quality photos with larger FOV and higher real MP. If that doesn't matter to you... I certainly don't care.

True, it's not that important for me to do the work to support your claim. You assume I have raw photos, and I don't. I suspect since you're unwillingness to oblige with this simple and quick work (as you claim) when you're at home, is because you may have doubt that you're correct. I noticed you didn't bother to explain your 13mp estimate, how it was derived. But yes, you're right, I can't be bothered for something this trivial.
 
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from my simple point of view as a dji customer who has just bought a phantom 4 pro, and looking at the sample raw files on the dji site, and the word's reviews which all say 20mp - im sure that if as your suggesting there was a lens / sensor mis-match or mis-interpretation, then I would have been able to google and find something - after spending some time, apart from your single comment, I cannot find any reviews / articles / experiments from ANYONE in the world who you would have expected to jump into this argument - the fact your refuse to put your money where your mouth is as show us would suggest this is fake news or a slight against DJI. I am not a DJI fanatic, I just want the best solution to provide the highest res to my clients at a good price. I had an Inspire 2 with X5s which was too unreliable for mapping hence moving back to the P4P. It is better to educate people properly rather than putting peoples backs up. Anyway - that my opinion!
 
It doesn't matter what's happening inside the camera, the results are still far and away better than what you get with any other ready-to-fly camera drone under $3000.
The P4 pro camera is a huge improvement in photographic quality beyond previous models.
Thank you - thats what I wanted to know - that I hadn't bought the wrong UAV!
 
from my simple point of view as a dji customer who has just bought a phantom 4 pro, and looking at the sample raw files on the dji site, and the word's reviews which all say 20mp - im sure that if as your suggesting there was a lens / sensor mis-match or mis-interpretation, then I would have been able to google and find something - after spending some time, apart from your single comment, I cannot find any reviews / articles / experiments from ANYONE in the world who you would have expected to jump into this argument - the fact your refuse to put your money where your mouth is as show us would suggest this is fake news or a slight against DJI. I am not a DJI fanatic, I just want the best solution to provide the highest res to my clients at a good price. I had an Inspire 2 with X5s which was too unreliable for mapping hence moving back to the P4P. It is better to educate people properly rather than putting peoples backs up. Anyway - that my opinion!

So... you don't have any of your own images you want to look at and you don't want to click the link to the thread I provided. How much better do you want me to spell out the issue for you? If you can't even examine your own images and you can't even click a link, why would believe any images I post?

Also, not surprisingly, you obviously didn't look very hard:

P4P image not true 20MP

14mp not 20mp

RAW is processed, JPG is not
 
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