Still Photo Quality with Phantom 4 Pro

[KevMo Photog]

On another note too, I wish I could have experienced the good old film days honestly. I got the photography bug back in highschool shooting on old Pentax SLR cameras shooting black and white film.. I loved the smells in the darkroom haha!! After that I hadn't touched a real camera until the first digital Rebel came out.

LOL! I def had my fill of darkroom days in all 4 years of high school! I have been in the dark for way too long. As my camera room is where I have lived for the last 31 years. Yikes. So I'm ready for the light! LOL Im so glad I grew up shooting film though. It made you learn more about the why's in the industry. Why does that make that do that kinda thing! But I sure don't miss them now!

 

[dhaymil]

Nice shots!

I am a professional photographer flying a P4P for the occasional landscape shot and I've made quite nice prints that size from both single exposures and HDR multiple exposures. The P4P sensor, while large enough in theory, is not very sophisticated and has problems with noise, contrast and dynamic range. You can't get what you want straight out of the camera. However, you can get a good result if you do these things: (1) Shoot in RAW -- DJI uses the DNG format -- and avoid ISO larger than 400. Convert to 16-bit TIFF for editing and printing. USE JPEGs only for web sharing. (2) Be a good editor in Lightroom or Photoshop or another suite and be able to adjust levels, colors, sharpening, dynamic range and use layers with confidence. (3) Use a sophisticated noise control program such as Topaz Denoise. LR is okay but there is better stuff out there. (4) The aircraft is stable enough to do HDR, but the built-in AE bracketing is not very good as the intervals are just .7 EV and not adjustable. I recommend changing exposures manually, on the fly, using 2.0 EV intervals. Takes longer but it works.

A few samples at lower resolution are attached.
View attachment 84077 View attachment 84078
View attachment 84076

 

[Capo]

View attachment 84042
Here is a 24x36 at full resolution. So it's a 24x36 @ 124dpi. I have sharpened it a little bit btw. In fact I may have over sharpened a tad. But I just printed this at studio an hour ago and it looks pretty darn good imo.This image has a lot of very fine details in it so it will really show what is actually there as the fine lines are what suffer when resolution is lower. More solid areas do not show much degredation in lower res or softer images.
And yes, around 5.6 or so is the sharpest area for this lens. F4 to 5.6 1/2 or so is fine.

Nice shot. Thing about posters, is people generally stand back to look at them. You don't need so much detail that you would look at it from a few inches away. 20 MP should be plenty.

 

[KevMo Photog]

Nice shot. Thing about posters, is people generally stand back to look at them. You don't need so much detail that you would look at it from a few inches away. 20 MP should be plenty.

Yeah I agree again Capo! But an image is never ever too sharp ever. Unless your talking over sharpened digital sharpening. And a 36in wide print should be viewed at 4-6ft away. From that distance I guarantee you I could tell the diff in lets say a Phantom 3 Pro image vs. a P4P image. Easy in fact. I am talking about getting the best image possible out of this sensor. Im a pro photog that cares utmost about IQ! So I'm not sure really what your point was about posters or big your talking about?

 

[GadgetGuy]

LOL! I def had my fill of darkroom days in all 4 years of high school! I have been in the dark for way too long. As my camera room is where I have lived for the last 31 years. Yikes. So I'm ready for the light! LOL Im so glad I grew up shooting film though. It made you learn more about the why's in the industry. Why does that make that do that kinda thing! But I sure don't miss them now!

When the Adobe came out with their version of the digital darkroom, they decided to call it LightRoom to emphasize that we were seeing the light and no longer in the dark (despite the fact that Lightroom editing is still best done in the dark!).

 

[Capo]

Yeah I agree again Capo! But an image is never ever too sharp ever. Unless your talking over sharpened digital sharpening. And a 36in wide print should be viewed at 4-6ft away. From that distance I guarantee you I could tell the diff in lets say a Phantom 3 Pro image vs. a P4P image. Easy in fact. I am talking about getting the best image possible out of this sensor. Im a pro photog that cares utmost about IQ! So I'm not sure really what your point was about posters or big your talking about?

My point was when someone was asking if a P4P is good enough for poster size, I was actually agreeing with you. Just making a point for the asker. FYI, I worked in the printing industry doing prepress and imaging work for high quality 40" offset printing and such for 11 years. We are kin My experience was back in the film days. I don't find digital really that much different.

 

[GadgetGuy]

Guys, I have seen Jpegs degrade over time on websites for sure. Now it's prob because they have upgraded site and possibly reloaded them which meant they got compressed again maybe. But we are talking a rare case I guess.

Sorry, but reading and displaying a digital file does not degrade it in any way, unless the media upon which it is stored becomes independently corrupted. The original jpeg on the website never changes by simply reading it or transferring or copying it. You cannot save a jpeg back to the website that you read it from, which is the only thing that degrades a jpeg. Opening a jpeg, and making any change to it, and then resaving it, will degrade its quality, as jpeg is a lossy file format. However, the viewer of an image on a website cannot perform that act!

 

[KevMo Photog]

Sorry, but reading and displaying a digital file does not degrade it in any way, unless the media upon which it is stored becomes independently corrupted. The original jpeg on the website never changes by simply reading it or transferring or copying it. You cannot save a jpeg back to the website that you read it from, which is the only thing that degrades a jpeg. Opening a jpeg, and making any change to it, and then resaving it, will degrade its quality, as jpeg is a lossy file format. However, the viewer of an image on a website cannot perform that act!

Then the site must be doing something weird to these few cases I have seen a few years back Gadget! But I've been wrong before one time back in 1983! LOL.

 

[MBrewington]

As an old film shooter, I have to say P4P camera is insanely capable of big prints (if you shoot ISO 100 and achieve proper exposure!). Here is a happy customer holding a 24" X 36" metal print.

 

[GadgetGuy]

Then the site must be doing something weird to these few cases I have seen a few years back Gadget! But I've been wrong before one time back in 1983! LOL.

If you can find any verifiable proof that viewing a website jpeg degrades the file over time, I'd love to see it. It is no different than downloading any other file from a website. Reading a "read only" file cannot change it, by definition. This urban myth was perpetuated by a few well meaning, but very misinformed photographers, and still continues to this day.

Anecdotal evidence with intervening events (website upgrading by a 3rd party) does not prove causation, but is interesting. You can certainly test your theory by opening a photo from your website as many times as you wish. You will grow old waiting for any image degradation to become visible, and your computer will fail before the jpeg will degrade!

 

[Russ43Phantom]

Thx Russ43Phantom! I was never over people at all. And also not in any airspace either. As a recreationist it is also totally legal to fly at night. As long as you are not over 400ft.

I strongly believe the labels "commercial" and "recreational" flying will change to "licensed" and "unlicensed". After licensing, a fence imposed by the manufacturer, such as DJI, will be removed. It will also be easy to determine the time of sunset or sunrise based on GPS position. Avoiding today's restrictions on "commercial" pilots will hasted the day when that level of control is initiated ... especially when more and more capable drones at lower prices significantly increases the number of pilots.

 

[Meta4]

I strongly believe the labels "commercial" and "recreational" flying will change to "licensed" and "unlicensed". After licensing, a fence imposed by the manufacturer, such as DJI, will be removed. It will also be easy to determine the time of sunset or sunrise based on GPS position.

DJI hasn't shown any interest in that level of interference, just like your car manufacturer lets you decide what speed you drive.
And there are too many different rules applying for different countries for any imposed one-size-fits-all "solution" to be workable.

 

[Russ43Phantom]

DJI hasn't shown any interest in that level of interference, just like your car manufacturer lets you decide what speed you drive.
And there are too many different rules applying for different countries for any imposed one-size-fits-all "solution" to be workable.

When governments threaten to close down all drone flying or seriously limit or regulate it, DJI, to perserve their business, and the entire industry to preserve the industry, will all work with government to make controls (easily done) to assure a future for manufacturers and drone enthusiasts. That's so obvious, you don't even need a crytal ball.

 

[Meta4]

When governments threaten to close down all drone flying or seriously limit or regulate it, DJI, to perserve their business, and the entire industry to preserve the industry, will all work with government to make controls (easily done) to assure a future for manufacturers and drone enthusiasts. That's so obvious, you don't even need a crytal ball.

I believe the widespread fear of governments closing down all drone flying or seriously limiting or regulating it is grossly exaggerated and I very much doubt it would happen that way.
Every week since I joined Phantom Pilots, I read predictions that it's all going to end sometime soon but I don't see circumstances pointing that way at all.
On the contrary, I see more and more mainstream uses for drone technology.

 

[alansloman]

Most lenses are sharpest around two stops from wide open. Sweet spot on the P4P is between f4 and F5.6

And for Christ sakes, you bought a pro model...Don't just leave it in Auto, your videos exposure and color balance will be all over the place.

 

[GadgetGuy]

I believe the widespread fear of governments closing down all drone flying or seriously limiting or regulating it is grossly exaggerated and I very much doubt it would happen that way.
Every week since I joined Phantom Pilots, I read predictions that it's all going to end sometime soon but I don't see circumstances pointing that way at all.
On the contrary, I see more and more mainstream uses for drone technology.

At the same time, DJI is doing everything they can to lock down all their drones in the wild, not just those being sold new today! I'm far more concerned about what DJI is doing to my existing aircraft, with all their forced updates and previously embedded Trojan Horses than any government!