P4P Still settings.

[ribjig]

answering OP;
have P4P+;
I shoot stills at f4.5 ISO 200
(haven't shot anything other than daytime so far)
Within first year under warranty I got camera-lens
replaced twice due to poor image quality, typical
edge softness began halfway between center &
all edges. IMO image quality highly variable
lens to lens, try posting link to full size RAW or
JPG here for opinions & if you have lemon lens
& still under warranty, request free replacement
+ free shipping both ways, as I got...

 

[Moonfox]

He was suggesting focusing a little closer than at infinity (you can't focus beyond infinity)

I am able to focus beyond infinity. In the past it required hallucinogens. Now I practice meditation.

 

[Calsun]

Adding an ND will result in needing a slower shutter speed or a high ISO setting, both of which are detrimental to image quality when shooting stills. A polarizing filter is a bit different as it can reduce reflections from green foliage or water surfaces and improved color saturation in some scenes.

 

[MtManDavey]

Ripper: "I'm in the habit of chronically over saturating both video and stills at this point, as this picture shows" This is very easy to fix in Photoshop or Lightroom. Those are the two apps I used for any photography, LR primarily for batch when doing real estate work from the drone. They may be what you consider over saturated, but more than that, they look dark. I would adjust the exposure in post, then adjust saturation and vibrance.

 

[MtManDavey]

I use no filters on my P4P, doing strictly still photos for real estate aerials, Nikon D-810 for interior and ground level exterior. The camera is tack sharp, and if anything has a slight amount of fringing, that is mixing red/green at the outer edges of the image, readily repaired in PS. Using the drone, I set the ISO to 200 or 400, depending on light and shadows of my subjects, trees, structures, etc. The higher ISO gives a bit more latitude, slightly less contrast, and does not seem to approach the noise level of higher ISO's. So far, I have been shooting Program mode in RAW, and exposures are excellent right out of the camera. I don't have time for .jpg until sending clients, after archiving from camera, then provide real estate listing ready formatted images. Unless there is significant wind of more than about 12 kt., I've had no problem shooting from as high as 250 to 300 feet AGL over large property, with steady crisp shots.

Regarding filters, I do need to pick up a 1A or UV just to protect the lens but so far, no use for ND filters. I teach digital photography. I share with my students is the polarizing filter has very specific uses for glare and to darken skies at 90 degrees from the sun, great filter for clouds but it will definitely offer -2 f-stops of light loss, otherwise, something to use judicially. It would be fun to experiment with on days with big puffy clouds and control the drone yaw to capture the best contrast with the sky, just to add another tool to the tool box.

For those who shared photos, great stuff, every one of them, including Ripper's dark image. Sharp, great POV and really interesting. I'd be proud to have taken any of them. Good job, friends! Below is one of my own to show and tell, Mt. Shasta from Lake Siskiyou, Northern California.

 

[dennis6112]

Files take a bit of work, but there is a lot of head room in the raws and end results can be very pleasing.

Can you expand a bit more on the above statement? I got my P4pro + v2 a couple of days ago and set the camera to f4.5 A priority, auto exposure, raw, with the sun at my back and took a few snaps. Repeated the process again today and found I needed to do an inordinate amount of post processing in CS6 to get the results I wanted. The highlights were hot for the most part yet there were more than sufficient shadows.Maybe I need to make custom settings? Your thoughts. Anyone's thoughts.

 

[ChrisLX200]

Bracketing is your friend - use it.

 

[dennis6112]

Bracketing is your friend - use it.

Bracketing will not solve my percieved problem. The bracket will change highlights and shadows is the same proportions as you bracket. I think my problem may be a perception of too much dynamic range.........or too much distance between shadows and highlights. I know some may see this as a contrast problem and I may have to experiment with this. My problem may be relying on the default image control settings.

thanks,

 

[MtManDavey]

Dennis, Paul will need to respond for himself, but here is my response to RAW vs. .jpg...

.jpg files are "pre-processed" by the computer in the camera. After downloading, you edit them in your favorite editing software, which for me is Photoshop CC. If you shoot RAW (or as DJI records the equivalent DNG, Adobe's "Digital Negative"), every pixel has been recorded. .jpg files throw out 2/3 of the pixels and interpolates the rest into a decent image, very useable for many or most applications. .jpg files can be blown up to pretty large prints and have good depth, but keep in mind that 2/3 of the original pixels are not recorded and the system has to make up the rest based on the algorithms built into the camera by its manufacturer. Nikon, Sony, Canon and DJI all process a bit differently from each other, no matter how you record your images, but .jpg files become a common "platform" to work from, RAW is processed and save differently from each camera maker.

RAW has all pixels recorded. You can make adjustments not available in .jpg, in white balance, various brightness and shadows, clarity, vibrance, etc., on a number of discrete levels. If you use Photoshop with Adobe Camera Raw, whether in the pre-adjustment of a RAW file before going into full editing mode, or in the later versions of PS from the pull down menu. You can always make adjustments but you are working at the disadvantage of not having full data to work with if you shot them as .jpg, and however it looks good in .jpg, it will edit better, more initial control in RAW. Most print labs can not work from RAW files, as every camera is different, so you have to convert to a common platform, such as .jpg or .tif, which also keeps all original pixels but becomes a huge file.

Having shot both .jpg and RAW files from my 20 mp P4P, my RAW shots edit and look overall better, which meets my needs to provide my clients the very highest quality image I can. I personally won't go back to shooting drone .jpg's again. My commercial work depends on what I do and how I do it, start to finish.

Your older version of PS CS6 may not edit the same as newer versions, although a very good program, and many stick to it rather than upgrade to make Adobe more money. That may be a question to ask in a Digital Photography blog and see what comes back. In the meantime do some homework and try them both on similar subjects, in similar light. See which one works better for you and your entire photo editing process. The person you need to ultimately please is Dennis. Good luck. Keep flying and shooting!

 

[dennis6112]

..........................

Having shot both .jpg and RAW files from my 20 mp P4P, my RAW shots edit and look overall better, which meets my needs to provide my clients the very highest quality image I can. I personally won't go back to shooting drone .jpg's again. My commercial work depends on what I do and how I do it, start to finish.

Your older version of PS CS6 may not edit the same as newer versions, although a very good program, and many stick to it rather than upgrade to make Adobe more money. That may be a question to ask in a Digital Photography blog and see what comes back. In the meantime do some homework and try them both on similar subjects, in similar light. See which one works better for you and your entire photo editing process. The person you need to ultimately please is Dennis. Good luck. Keep flying and shooting!

.....thanks for the response. It would appear that I will have to go back to the drawing board and do my homework (similar to all of my DSLRs before the drone). I seem to recall that I had a very decent raw image that came right out of the camera on the P4 and now the P4 pro + will make me do my homework.

Can anyone tell me off had it I set up a custom sharpness, contrast, & saturation setting will it be applied to jpegs only or to raw images also? Curious as I may want to shoot jpg + raw in certain situations.

 

[Meta4]

Regarding filters, I do need to pick up a 1A or UV just to protect the lens but so far, no use for ND filters.

The camera already has a UV filter on the front so that's taken care of already.

 

[Meta4]

I needed to do an inordinate amount of post processing in CS6 to get the results I wanted. The highlights were hot for the most part yet there were more than sufficient shadows.Maybe I need to make custom settings? Your thoughts. Anyone's thoughts.

I usually set the exposure override to EV-0.3 to keep the highlights under control.
If the subject is very light and the sun very bright, I bump that to EV-0.7

 

[ChrisLX200]

Bracketing will not solve my reprieved problem. The bracket will change highlights and shadows is the same proportions as you bracket. I think my problem may be a perception of too much dynamic range.........or too much distance between shadows and highlights. I know some may see this as a contrast problem and I may have to experiment with this. My problem may be relying on the default image control settings.

thanks,

With your bracketed shots you can combine them using HDR techniques then compress the dynamic range to suit. You might need to crop a little off the edges if the frames don't line up perfectly. This assumes you really are burning highlights - using RAW the detail may already be there and merely requires adjustments to bring it out, with jpgs the highlight data is likely lost during internal processing and not recoverable.

 

[Paul2660]

Can you expand a bit more on the above statement? I got my P4pro + v2 a couple of days ago and set the camera to f4.5 A priority, auto exposure, raw, with the sun at my back and took a few snaps. Repeated the process again today and found I needed to do an inordinate amount of post processing in CS6 to get the results I wanted. The highlights were hot for the most part yet there were more than sufficient shadows.Maybe I need to make custom settings? Your thoughts. Anyone's thoughts.

Hi,

Just saw your question.

I always take 5 shots in AEB mode. I would prefer to only shoot 3 but the max bracketed exposure is .7 and that is not enough, so to get a range of -1.34 to +1.34 you need 5. You will be throwing out 1 or 2 shots. However I would rather do that than try to push up a shot where the shadows have gone too dark. The Phantom 4 Pro like Mavic has a surprising amount of highlight recovery available. But since you are only given around 15-20 minutes (this accounts for getting to where I want to shoot and landing) of time to shoot, I prefer to just pull in the extra images. Cards are very inexpensive and a 32 GB to 64 GB card gets it done for me.

The raw dng files from the P4, I feel need the standard amount of work I do with most raw.

They will need a color profile assigned, currently I mainly use the new Adobe "color" one, but have also tried the Modern 7.
Lightroom/ACR (I only use Lightroom) have a great set of tools to help work an image, and you can always combine a couple in a HDR shot, however the Adobe approach to HDR/exposure blending is not my favorite method.

If you are working a pano manually, in Lightroom, combine the shots before you do any work as Lightroom drops most of the image adjustments when combining.

After I have the exposure/color where I like it will work on the shaprening, and the files will need a moderate amount, but they do sharpen up well.

Even though the files appear to have a lot of highlight headroom, I still see quite a bit of noise at times in the sky, so I will export to Adobe CC photoshop, and use a plugin on the sky (neat image).

The other thing to remember is use the histogram and try to find an exposure setting in the middle to right of the graph.

One other thing I have noticed is that the P4 Pro Vr 2.0 shows highlights being blown visually more often than my previous P4 Pro. Especially clouds, but when you view the actual raw file, you realize that you still have plenty of DR.

I try to stay in the F 4.0 to max F 5.6 aperture, always use the mechanical shutter and ISO never past 200. The noise past this range becomes just hard to work with. (I would love to shoot d-log at 100 on the P4 Pro like you can on Mavic but the P4 kicks you up to 500 and that pulls way to much noise IMO). Shutter speeds I prefer the faster the better. Even though the Phantom has a great gimbal, there all kinds of vibration, motion etc going on during flight, so 1/500, 1/250 etc. for shutter speed. If you take the aperture much past F 5.6 you will start to see diffraction set in. Some of it can be removed with sharpening but only so much.

I realize others prefer jpg, however I never use jpg for anything I shoot. I look at it this way, I would much rather control the process than have a DOS based or similar OS working on my file. Once you write to jpg the data is pretty much fixed. DJI has a noise algorithm for their jpgs and once it's applied you will never pull that detail back as well as from a raw file. This just a true with any DSLR. It's all a matter of what you are looking for in the final image. The other huge advantage to a raw file is that as software is updated, improved etc. you can rework older images with the new software and often get a much better result.

Paul Caldwell

 

[dennis6112]

Hi,

Just saw your question......................................................

Paul Caldwell

Thanks for the comprehensive answer Paul. It's really appreciated. I use Nikon and Sony for my handheld cameras and working the RAW files from both cameras require a great deal less post processing than the 4pro + v2. For the past two days I have been running a fair number of tests under the direct Florida sun and have concluded when (time of day) I am shooting and the time of year may be part of my problem. I have set up some custom color etc. correction settings in CS6 camera raw and this seems to help. Regardless, for me to get the final results I am looking for I need to bring the image into CS6 from camera raw and further work the image. I think I just need to gain more experience shooting with the drone. It will be interesting going into the winter here in Florida to see how the angle of the sun affects things like contrast, shadows, highlights, etc. Shooting in different parts of the States certainly gives differing results at different times of the year. FWIW this is my first year living in Florida from Michigan. Thanks again.

Dennis MacDonald

 

[Calsun]

The greater the ISO setting the less the dynamic range that can be captured with a digital camera. Even with my D850 the fall-off starts at ISO 400 and at that point I switch to 12-bit capture as there is not enough DR to benefit from 14-bit RAW.

On a cloudy day or early or late in the day the DR of the scene will be much less and so more forgiving of the exposures made. Big difference at a spot like an ocean shore between an hour after sunrise or an hour before sunset and the rest of the day. In such situations I like to start shooting a couple hours before sunset and go until the digital capture can no longer record the scene. It can be surprising how little light is actually needed to capture a scene.

 

[jephoto]

Hi,

Just saw your question.

I always take 5 shots in AEB mode. I would prefer to only shoot 3 but the max bracketed exposure is .7 and that is not enough, so to get a range of -1.34 to +1.34 you need 5. You will be throwing out 1 or 2 shots. However I would rather do that than try to push up a shot where the shadows have gone too dark. The Phantom 4 Pro like Mavic has a surprising amount of highlight recovery available. But since you are only given around 15-20 minutes (this accounts for getting to where I want to shoot and landing) of time to shoot, I prefer to just pull in the extra images. Cards are very inexpensive and a 32 GB to 64 GB card gets it done for me.

The raw dng files from the P4, I feel need the standard amount of work I do with most raw.

They will need a color profile assigned, currently I mainly use the new Adobe "color" one, but have also tried the Modern 7.
Lightroom/ACR (I only use Lightroom) have a great set of tools to help work an image, and you can always combine a couple in a HDR shot, however the Adobe approach to HDR/exposure blending is not my favorite method.

If you are working a pano manually, in Lightroom, combine the shots before you do any work as Lightroom drops most of the image adjustments when combining.

After I have the exposure/color where I like it will work on the shaprening, and the files will need a moderate amount, but they do sharpen up well.

Even though the files appear to have a lot of highlight headroom, I still see quite a bit of noise at times in the sky, so I will export to Adobe CC photoshop, and use a plugin on the sky (neat image).

The other thing to remember is use the histogram and try to find an exposure setting in the middle to right of the graph.

One other thing I have noticed is that the P4 Pro Vr 2.0 shows highlights being blown visually more often than my previous P4 Pro. Especially clouds, but when you view the actual raw file, you realize that you still have plenty of DR.

I try to stay in the F 4.0 to max F 5.6 aperture, always use the mechanical shutter and ISO never past 200. The noise past this range becomes just hard to work with. (I would love to shoot d-log at 100 on the P4 Pro like you can on Mavic but the P4 kicks you up to 500 and that pulls way to much noise IMO). Shutter speeds I prefer the faster the better. Even though the Phantom has a great gimbal, there all kinds of vibration, motion etc going on during flight, so 1/500, 1/250 etc. for shutter speed. If you take the aperture much past F 5.6 you will start to see diffraction set in. Some of it can be removed with sharpening but only so much.

I realize others prefer jpg, however I never use jpg for anything I shoot. I look at it this way, I would much rather control the process than have a DOS based or similar OS working on my file. Once you write to jpg the data is pretty much fixed. DJI has a noise algorithm for their jpgs and once it's applied you will never pull that detail back as well as from a raw file. This just a true with any DSLR. It's all a matter of what you are looking for in the final image. The other huge advantage to a raw file is that as software is updated, improved etc. you can rework older images with the new software and often get a much better result.

Paul Caldwell

 

[jephoto]

Paul- you said this:
“I try to stay in the F 4.0 to max F 5.6 aperture, always use the mechanical shutter and ISO never past 200”

What’s the advantage or disadvantage of the mechanical shutter?
Saw a tutorial about shooting at dusk/ night and he advised - for long exposures - to turn off the mechanical shutter. I assume it’s one more thing that can introduce vibrations.

But when would you actually PREFER the mechanical shutter?

I tested it (Mechanical shutter Off) this morning and was getting pretty sharp images at 1/6 and 1/8 sec.
Of course this is processed too. Lots of love...
But it was sharp to start.

 

[Meta4]

But when would you actually PREFER the mechanical shutter?

I suspect the idea of avoiding mechanical shutter to reduce vibrations is one of those things that makes sense hypothetically but really doesn't make any difference you can see.
Serious photographers using full-frame sensor SLRs for long exposures don't have the option and their images a fine even though their shutters are much bigger.
The advantage of the mechanical shutter is that it exposes the whole sensor all at once rather than only parts of the sensor.
Search for Rolling Shutter to see lots of explanations of how that works.
The big disadvantage of rolling shutter is when either the camera or the subject is moving.

 

[jephoto]

I suspect the idea of avoiding mechanical shutter to reduce vibrations is one of those things that makes sense hypothetically but really doesn't make any difference you can see.
Serious photographers using full-frame sensor SLRs for long exposures don't have the option and their images a fine even though their shutters are much bigger.
The advantage of the mechanical shutter is that it exposes the whole sensor all at once rather than only parts of the sensor.
Search for Rolling Shutter to see lots of explanations of how that works.
The big disadvantage of rolling shutter is when either the camera or the subject is moving.

Then it really only make a difference for Video.
Stills won't have any Rolling shutter issues. Right? Or am I missing something?
After watching the video above though I will make sure the Mechanical Shutter is ON for video from now though....