QBK
lvl.2
United States
Offline
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Oops, my bad. Didn't even bother to check that, which was stupid (I think I got confused by an earlier post's reference to 4K->1080p downconversion).
Anyway, now that I look at them in 4K:
* The first video (lake at sunset) looks terrible. Subject matter is nice, but the video quality is absolutely awful, with lots of mush and really prominent color noise patches in the shadows.
* The second video (post #8) is fantastic, from an image quality standpoint. Sharp, contrasty, good color -- basically, if your camera can do this is good conditions, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it.
* The third video (#13) is pretty good, but gets a bit mushy at times.
My conclusion is that the problems with videos 1 and 3 stem from low light. The P3P camera has a 1/2.3" sensor, which means it's small. At 4K, the pixels are tiny. They don't deal well at all with low light. And the P3P's data rate at 4K is 60 Mbps, which is somewhat low. Video is getting fairly heavily compressed. In good light, with lots of photons, this isn't a problem. But in low light, the raw video has a lot of shot noise, and that wreaks havoc with compression. In effect (this is a very simplified story), the compressor ends up devoting a lot of bandwidth to that random noise, and has fewer bits left over for *real* detail (like tree branches.
I'd recommend shooting in good light for a while, so you get good quality and can focus on building your composition skills (which, for drone video, includes not just "what to shoot at" but "how to move the drone"). That's where I'm at. I figure another 10 years and I ought to have a clue.
And, on the ND filter... just to be clear, you're specifically talking about a graduated ND filter here, right? A standard ND filter won't do a thing for image quality. A graduated ND filter will (if used carefully and correctly) darken the sky, allowing you to get the landscape brighter while keeping the sky the same. Keep in mind that it'll limit the range of vertical angles at which you can shoot effectively (if you look straight down at the ground with a graduated ND on, you'll get very weird images). |
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