Hey all!

I recently got myself a Mavic Air for traveling after flying a Xiaomi Mi Drone 4K for about 1,5 years.
I was curious how the ISO performance of the Air was in photography so I did a little test to capture noise levels. I thought I'd share the pictures here with you.
Conclusion:
ISO 100 is obviously the cleanest with relatively little noise. But anything other then ISO 100 will get significantly more noise. I'd say for social media anything including ISO 400 is very usable, especially if you apply some noise reduction. ISO 800 and up it gets very noisy, not perse unsuable but the noise will be very visible.

So if possible stay at ISO 100 for the cleanest images.
Hope this test helps others as well to create better images!

What are your opinions on this? What settings do you usually use to shoot? Let me know, I'm eager to learn!

Kind regards,
Teejo

Download zip (40MB) with all files (+ graded versions): https://files.teejo.media/Mavic-Air-ISO-test.zip

Great comparison man!

That's an interesting test Teejo, thanks for taking the time do do these. Did you shoot in raw or jpeg? Does that make a big difference to the results? I generally try and shoot in JPEG if I'm scouting a location out for a sunrise / sunset shot, or raw for the capture.

Great comparison.

To me, even shots taken at base ISO are kind of noisy, mainly in shadow areas (especially in not so great lightning conditions), its mobile sensor after all.

Therefore, I prefer shooting using AEB in pretty much every situation to reduce noise as much as possible on top of the additional DR gained by it.

Nice one, great comparison

Nice information, great comparison

Excellent comparison

Hello and good day Teejo. Thank you for sharing these information and comparison as well. Great work and thank you for your support.

ChrisJG Posted at 4-29 03:56
That's an interesting test Teejo, thanks for taking the time do do these. Did you shoot in raw or jpeg? Does that make a big difference to the results? I generally try and shoot in JPEG if I'm scouting a location out for a sunrise / sunset shot, or raw for the capture.

Good question! Did these in raw (and jpeg). Haven't actually checked the jpeg files, I just use them for quick previewing of images because for some reason macOS quickpreview just gives me black images on the Mavic Air raws.

I'll have a look at the JPEGs tomorrow and let you know if it makes any difference!

BoXiS Posted at 4-29 04:09
Great comparison.

To me, even shots taken at base ISO are kind of noisy, mainly in shadow areas (especially in not so great lightning conditions), its mobile sensor after all.

Very true about the noise at ISO 100. Haven't done any AEB pictures yet but will give that a go when the weather clears up again. Thanks for the idea!
Still learning all the pitfalls of the Mavic Air to get the best possible quality out of it.

Teejo Posted at 4-29 08:45
Good question! Did these in raw (and jpeg). Haven't actually checked the jpeg files, I just use them for quick previewing of images because for some reason macOS quickpreview just gives me black images on the Mavic Air raws.

I'll have a look at the JPEGs tomorrow and let you know if it makes any difference!

Thank you. I think that with the non panaramic shots I shoot in raw HDR and just photomerge in Lightroom.  Then degrade in Photoshop to fit the 2mb limit here.
Cheers,
Chris

This rule is basic in photography: the ISO level to be the lowest possible. I have a question: why do you use a ND filter if it is not polarized, if you are not recording videos or you are not taking long exposure photos? in your case present here, I do not see any usefulness to the ND filter.

For landscape photography, you need a high shutter speed, so you do not get a blurry image. With the ND filter you reduce the shutter speed and increase the possibility of obtaining motion blur in your photo, especially with a drone, which is not 100% stable in the air, and if there is a bit of wind you will have more movement.

Aurelian Irimia Posted at 4-30 01:13
This rule is basic in photography: the ISO level to be the lowest possible. I have a question: why do you use a ND filter if it is not polarized, if you are not recording videos or you are not taking long exposure photos? in your case present here, I do not see any usefulness to the ND filter.

Hey Aurelian,

Thanks for your reply.
First of all, loweest ISO is not always the best ISO. It depends on the native ISO of the sensor and how you describe best. My Blackmagic Pocket for exmaple has less noise on ISO 200 compared to ISO 800, but 800 gives me way more dynamic range since it is the sensors native ISO.

I mainly use the drone for video, hence the ND. I don't use a polarizer since I don't really have control over it while the drone is in the air. Having a 180˚ shutter is more important to me.

But more importantly, I could not have done this test without ND16.
The ND16 reduces the light received by the sensor to 1/16. or 4 stops.
So by removing the ND I would have to compensate for 4 stops of light with the shutterspeed. Now on the lower ISO settings that's no problem, but once I get to ISO 1600 and 3200 I would have to set my shutterspeed to 1/16000 and 1/32000 if I'm not mistaken. But since the Mavic Air only goes to 1/8000 it's not possible.
Ergo, I need the ND for this test.

A comment on your second post about that you need a high shutter speed for landscape photography;
Yes higher does mean less chance of motion blur, but there is no realy difference between 1/500 or 1/4000 when the drone is not moving/have moving subjects in the shot (then again, all depends on what you're going for).
But in this case this way all a test about ISO noise and not sharpness, but I must say that even this ISO 100 images at 1/60s don't show motion blur as far as I can see. So a "high" shutterspeed is relative, all depending on if there is movement or not and they final image you're after.

Nice information, great comparison