Skyris Posted at 2017-12-9 21:40
Sorry i didnt realise that every sample dng someone had sent in hadnt focused properly.
All I am saying is that every sample I have seen has been soft and mushy at 100% I am only talking about sharpness here, my $400 lens suffers from poor vignetting at f 2.8-f4 but can be corrected in post the sharpness cant (well to a certain degree)...
The x5s was an expensive camera and the stills werent that great and had been fighting to get sharp stills on every shoot for my clients.

ok ...first...you're that guy? with the crazy bracket hanging off his i2? Let me just say its an honor to meet you. Any one who goes to those lengths to up his image Q deserves our respect and admiration.

But.....let's get real. There is a distinct difference between your $400 lens sitting on a full frame 42mp sensor that HAS NO OLPF....and another lens that is sitting on a 24mp sensor that has a cinema grade (read: strong) OLPF.

I get your argument that at 200% one looks sharp and the other doesn't. But 99% of the time when see this type of difference, it's not the lens...it's the OLPF (which believe it or not, has a purpose!). If you took your fancy $400 lens and married it to the x7 ( (or vice versa with the DL lens), you would see what I mean. As it too, would look blurry compared to what you see on the a7r2, (which has no filter designed to remove high frequency detail like the x7 does.)

Your screenshot on my computer is displaying at 200%, and looks blurry. A camera with an OLPF is never going to look sharp at 200%, as the detail is being purposely cancelled out so that motion related aliasing doesn't occur at 100% (this type of aliasing is a hallmark of dii's processing since the beginning and is one of the reasons its cameras have generally not been accepted by the film industry --even the x5s aliases a bit, and this  would appear to be something DJI has tried to fix with the x7. (Take a look at this screenshot at 100%, sharpened properly...and take your eyes off that overexposed car for a second, and look at the long grass at the top of the frame. (ie...stop looking for aliased hard edges as proof of resolution...they aren't... they are proof of aliasing, which isn't detail.)
Something not shown by ray's tests is the increase in color resolution and depth in the x7 over the x5s, which is substantial, which delivers an image with more apparent clarity and depth, and to me makes the camera worth every penny, but I'm getting off-message).

Personally, if I were in your situation, given your goals of maximum resolution,  I'd take every dollar I just spent on an x7 and lens and apply it to a copter that can actually carry your a7r2. You'll be happier. The x7 wasn't designed for what you want it to do. My guess is that that camera will show up sooner or later on dii's website, but it's not the camera that the x7 is now.

If you're interested in looking at the tests I referred to, they are here https://www.dropbox.com/sh/iym7r ... 03jbz_2hjWzE4a?dl=0

There are two things to look at here...one is the 9.5 rings, which are being resolved, even in the corners, on all the lenses, including the 16mm in the corners, which is impressive. Secondly, and it's the most important thing, is that it's doing it with absolutely zero moire or aliasing. This is super important in cinematography, and I would argue, that DJI got this tuned almost exactly right given that's the market this camera is targeted at. If you want to get a deeper understanding, you'll need to search up Ian's charts for the X5s (look in december/january on the I2 forum at rcgroups. You'll see how much better the x7 performs in a true "side by side" than the x5s did on both fronts (overall image resolution and aliasing/moire).

Barry Goyette Posted at 2017-12-10 08:09
ok ...first...you're that guy? with the crazy bracket hanging off his i2? Let me just say its an honor to meet you. Any one who goes to those lengths to up his image Q deserves our respect and admiration.

But.....let's get real. There is a distinct difference between your $400 lens sitting on a full frame 42mp sensor that HAS NO OLPF....and another lens that is sitting on a 24mp sensor that has a cinema grade (read: strong) OLPF.

Shot down! Thanks
no thanks for explanation on the OLPF... makes sense and understand that cine cams absolutely need this to reduce moire..

The x7 seems to handle sharpening a lot better than the x5s in adobe raw... the 35mm that you corrected looks good.  I just wish there was a way of switching off this filter but as you said its prob not the right camera for me. Unfortunately it has to be until a full frame is released and then I guess we can see how sharp these lenses can be.

Also just to get this right I cropped both images at 100% they were screen grabs.. both preset sharpening in raw and the sony was shot in apsc mode ( which has less resolution than x7)... I was trying to show the difference between the $400 and $2199 just for sharpness... I just expected a bit more from a $2199 but I get it now that the x7 has this anti aliasing filter built in which is softening edges.


I already own a large hexa to carry the a7r2 but it's becoming unusable here due to the amount of noise it creates and early morning / dusk shoots in residential are impossible...hence the bracket for the inspire... the bracket works and will be using it on a shoot later this week.. images are also printable which is great..

Skyris Posted at 2017-12-10 13:58
Shot down! Thanks
no thanks for explanation on the OLPF... makes sense and understand that cine cams absolutely need this to reduce moire..

Interesting. This is more or less what I thought: DJI is optimizing everything for video and hardly cares about still photographs as it's probably a tiny share of the market. Nevertheless that makes for disappointing results considering the cost...

ukaleq Posted at 2017-12-10 16:30
Interesting. This is more or less what I thought: DJI is optimizing everything for video and hardly cares about still photographs as it's probably a tiny share of the market. Nevertheless that makes for disappointing results considering the cost...

I think its more about where this product is aimed than about "forgetting" still photography. You may forget that they own a big chunk of Hasselblad, and do actually make a kit that's designed to carry that medium format system. The fact that they made these lenses (except the 16mm) with a full frame image circle indicates that full frame is on their roadmap, somewhere. It might not be the inspire, but you'd think it should be. I would be very surprised if we don't see some sort of higher megapixel full frame "still focused" camera within a year. Still photographers need to keep their voices in the support and reps ears. DJI has a way of listening.

Barry Goyette Posted at 2017-12-10 19:14
I think its more about where this product is aimed than about "forgetting" still photography. You may forget that they own a big chunk of Hasselblad, and do actually make a kit that's designed to carry that medium format system. The fact that they made these lenses (except the 16mm) with a full frame image circle indicates that full frame is on their roadmap, somewhere. It might not be the inspire, but you'd think it should be. I would be very surprised if we don't see some sort of higher megapixel full frame "still focused" camera within a year. Still photographers need to keep their voices in the support and reps ears. DJI has a way of listening.

but do you think with this camera we would be seeing 8k video to compete with the new Red Monstro? then would we be looking at another camera with OLPF

Barry Goyette Posted at 2017-12-10 08:09
ok ...first...you're that guy? with the crazy bracket hanging off his i2? Let me just say its an honor to meet you. Any one who goes to those lengths to up his image Q deserves our respect and admiration.

But.....let's get real. There is a distinct difference between your $400 lens sitting on a full frame 42mp sensor that HAS NO OLPF....and another lens that is sitting on a 24mp sensor that has a cinema grade (read: strong) OLPF.

Hi Barry,

First, thank you for your contribution to this thread.  I appreciate it.

I am just curious...I always "expose to the right" with digital.  I place the highlights at the right extreme of the histogram.  You  seem not to do that.  Can you share your thinking on this.

Are you doing this for test purposes or do you expose your normal shots this way?

Ray

Skyris Posted at 2017-12-10 20:30
but do you think with this camera we would be seeing 8k video to compete with the new Red Monstro? then would we be looking at another camera with OLPF

I wish I knew. I can say that an olpf, even in still photography, isn’t necessarily a bad thing, unless you are making prints that stretch the limits of your sensor resolution. The nature of the beast is that olpf become less strong as sensor resolution increases, and most of the highest resolution cameras offer either no olpf, a very week one, a cancellation scheme  or an option to not have one. If dji ever puts a 40+ mp camera on the inspire, hopefully it will listen to the guidance of landscape photographers and forego inclusion of one. I believe the monstro will have options for various types of olpf, maybe even removing it.

-and Ray — not sure what I might have said that would indicate I’m against (or don’t partake in) exposing to the right.  I mostly use the i2 for video and I shoot in D-log, exposing my brightest highlights at just below maximum waveform for a particular iso. Gauging ettr in raw is a little more difficult, because the linear encoding makes it more difficult to know where the max highlight actually is, but using the histogram almost always leaves for plenty of headroom. I should be receiving my x7 today, and as soon as I get it into the studio I’ll be publishing some dr /resolution comparisons with the x5s.

Barry Goyette Posted at 2017-12-11 07:26
I wish I knew. I can say that an olpf, even in still photography, isn’t necessarily a bad thing, unless you are making prints that stretch the limits of your sensor resolution. The nature of the beast is that olpf become less strong as sensor resolution increases, and most of the highest resolution cameras offer either no olpf, a very week one, a cancellation scheme  or an option to not have one. If dji ever puts a 40+ mp camera on the inspire, hopefully it will listen to the guidance of landscape photographers and forego inclusion of one. I believe the monstro will have options for various types of olpf, maybe even removing it.

-and Ray — not sure what I might have said that would indicate I’m against (or don’t partake in) exposing to the right.  I mostly use the i2 for video and I shoot in D-log, exposing my brightest highlights at just below maximum waveform for a particular iso. Gauging ettr in raw is a little more difficult, because the linear encoding makes it more difficult to know where the max highlight actually is, but using the histogram almost always leaves for plenty of headroom. I should be receiving my x7 today, and as soon as I get it into the studio I’ll be publishing some dr /resolution comparisons with the x5s.

looking forward to seeing that...

Barry Goyette Posted at 2017-12-11 07:26
I wish I knew. I can say that an olpf, even in still photography, isn’t necessarily a bad thing, unless you are making prints that stretch the limits of your sensor resolution. The nature of the beast is that olpf become less strong as sensor resolution increases, and most of the highest resolution cameras offer either no olpf, a very week one, a cancellation scheme  or an option to not have one. If dji ever puts a 40+ mp camera on the inspire, hopefully it will listen to the guidance of landscape photographers and forego inclusion of one. I believe the monstro will have options for various types of olpf, maybe even removing it.

-and Ray — not sure what I might have said that would indicate I’m against (or don’t partake in) exposing to the right.  I mostly use the i2 for video and I shoot in D-log, exposing my brightest highlights at just below maximum waveform for a particular iso. Gauging ettr in raw is a little more difficult, because the linear encoding makes it more difficult to know where the max highlight actually is, but using the histogram almost always leaves for plenty of headroom. I should be receiving my x7 today, and as soon as I get it into the studio I’ll be publishing some dr /resolution comparisons with the x5s.

Hi Barry, did you receive your x7 and lens kit, just wondering what you thought of it?