P4P Stills
- Thread starter sammackay23
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Switch all settings to "manual", that means: aperture, shutter speed, ISO and color temperature are all up to you. If you plan to shoot RAW stills, set the picture style to "NONE - 0/0/0" in order to have a preview image that reflects the image you will be starting with in photoshop, lightroom or whatever photo editor you have access to. If you plan to shoot only jpegs, use whatever picture style suits your taste because that look will be "baked" into the final image file. Finally, start experimenting using the various camera settings and learn the fundamentals of photography!
Tip: setting your aperture somewhere between "wide-open" and f/5.6, and the ISO as close to 100 as possible are ideal for the P4P's camera. It's no DSLR so you will run into image issues with a closed-down aperture and/or high ISO.
Tip: setting your aperture somewhere between "wide-open" and f/5.6, and the ISO as close to 100 as possible are ideal for the P4P's camera. It's no DSLR so you will run into image issues with a closed-down aperture and/or high ISO.
Can you explain why stopping down causes image issues with the P4P? Considering most pics are landscape a deeper depth of field would be desirable as long as the shutter speed is sufficient. Also stopping down usually improves edge to edge sharpness on most any lens especially wide angle.
Google 'diffraction' to learn in depth what happens when a lens is used at a very small aperture. There is a 'sweet spot' with all lenses that utilizes the best area of the lens AND avoids the diffraction issue. I have been told by a couple of people that anything closed down more than f/5.6 will result in some overall loss of sharpness. You are correct that the DOF will be greater, but the overall sharpness will start to suffer.
There may be times when DOF is the critical issue and you need to stop way down, but that should be balanced with the knowledge that diffraction will start to raise its head.
Here is why PhantomPhreak. These are tiny sensors still at an inch big. And not sure why your wanting more depth of field than these really wide lenses provide. Everything is way out there at infinity man. But also, most lenses are the sharpest at a stop or so from wide open. This lens is best between f4 to 6.3 or so. This is true for edge to edge sharpness as well. Stopping down further would be only if you were gonna put something up pretty close to your drone and you wanted all your background in focus too. Usually in that case I would think you want a slightly shorter DOF so your subject popped out a tad. Hope that helps man. Jim above beat me to the answer! LOL
Color-fringing or "chromatic aberration" occurs past about f/5.6 using the P4P. It's essentially a lens flaw, and something that can occur using virtually any lens in a given range of aperture, sometimes compounded by conditions. What those terms refer to specifically is a lens' inability to focus all colors of visible light's wavelength onto the focal plane (i.e. sensor). The result being a subtle "rainbow" effect on details where there should be solid colors and shapes. Feel free to read more about the phenomenon for a better explanation.
As far as stopping down for a broader dof, yes you are correct, however in the P4P it barely factors in. This is for a few reasons, one being that it's a wide angle lens on a small sensor, another being it's intended use: aerial photography, typically shooting objects where the lens is focused to infinity anyway. Because it's a wide lens on a small sensor, the only time I could possibly see stopping down make much difference in terms of dof is if the lens were focused on an object just a few feet away from it. Even then, I'd be surprised if you'd notice a difference between f/2.8 and f/5.6 in terms of dof on the P4P.
I am a DSLR guy and I understand diffraction but that usually isn't an issue until about f18-20. I am guessing its a limit of the large sensor out resolving the quality of the lens. I am new to the P4 so I am still playing and testing. Thanks for the reply.
At f/11 the airy disk starts to get larger than the pixel size on a 5D MkIII. At f/22, the airy disk is about 4 pixels in size, though the center part of it is the predominant feature. That aside, f/8 - f/11 seem to almost always be the sweet spot in full frame lenses whereas f/16-f/22 were the sweet spot on most 4x5 lenses that I owned way back when.
It also has to do with the part of the lens that produces the sharpest image. Wide open, the center of the frame is created from almost ALL of the glass and this means ALL of the glass has to be perfect to be perfectly sharp. Stop down to f/16 and now you are requiring about 1/64th of the surface area of the lens to be 'perfect' in order to focus something perfectly in the center of the frame. The way it generally works out, neither wide open nor stopped way down use the optimal sections of the glass.
I have a sweet little Olympus 35mm PC lens that is sharp as a tack at f/11 on my 5Ds. F/5.6... not nearly as good. F/16... start to see a difference there too. f/11 is the sweet spot for this lens for sure.
I have been told that the P4 Pro has its sweet spot between f/4 and f/5.6 and that seems to make perfect sense to me.
Thanks all for the info. I only have about a dozen flights with the P4P slowly learning all the options, so much more than my P2s with the GoPro's.
Thanks for all the replies, some good informative reading in here now. Hoping to go out soon, so basically stay of auto to get the best results? Also, I'm sure there's threads on it but is there basic tips for post production? I use lightroom 5 and I normally fiddle with exposure, contrast, whites, blacks, highlights and shadows and maybe a bit of clarity and vibrance. Thanks
Meta4
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The lens on your P4 pro already has a truckload of Depth of Field before you stop it down.
You won't ever have a DoF concern unless you are shooting subjects 2 or 3 metres away.
Adjusting the aperture on the Phantom will change the DoF, but not as much as you might imagine.
For general aerial photography where everything in the picture is distant, it doesn't make much difference.
Here are some numbers to show what the actual effect is:
At f2.8 and focused at 50 feet - everything from 12ft - infinity is in focus
At f5.6 and focused at 50 feet - everything from 6ft - infinity is in focus
At f11 and focused at 50 feet - everything from 3ft - infinity is in focus
So basically since the Aperture is key here to sharp clear focused images. Instead of using manual. Simply use Aperture mode and lock that at 5.6. Set Iso to 100, WB to whatever type of day it is. Sunny / Cloudy, etc. The camera should handle the shutter speed. If you need to adjust EV plus or minus you can still do that to center the Histogram. However It seems to me even centered my images tend to come out slight over exposed.
THat about sum it up?
THat about sum it up?
That's certainly an option, but at that point I would just shoot manually and make the shutter adjustment myself to dial in the exposure, quick and easy to do on the fly with the P4P controller layout
Meta4
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That's a pretty good setting for most work.
It's about what I use mostly with a little adjustment to the EV to over-ride a little when there's bright detail I want to catch and/or 3AEB if I want to make sure I've got all bases co
Yeah I agree with you that will work fine for your stills. But if your switching to video real quick then you have to refigure for your shutter so that you can get real close to double your frame rate so it will be smooth and buttery. I just like to set it all myself and forget it. It's so easy to do with punch of the scroll wheel of top right and run through ISO, shutter speed and aperture.
