I struggle with this new drone as it's slightly different from the Phantom 4.  The issue is sharpness. I'm used to shooting in Dlog but I had a realty shoot this weekend and I was very dissapointed in the sharpness. i know it's me and not the drone. I read that I should shoot in Cinelog so that I can actually achieve iso 100 instead of it being locked at 500 Dlog? Now I don't know when/if I should use Dlog and should I shoot photos in cinelog? I know they are just trees and land but I expected something about 20-30% sharper. Any tips ont his would be appreciated

Image
1/500 sec
F5.6
500 iso.

Now I don't know when/if I should use Dlog and should I shoot photos in cinelog?
Video settings don't apply to stills.

Your image would look much better if you looked at the actual real image from the SD card, rather than some downsized to 2048x1151 cached image you found somewhere else.

Labroides Posted at 3-21 20:54
Now I don't know when/if I should use Dlog and should I shoot photos in cinelog?
Video settings don't apply to stills.

That is the image from the card. Just reprocessed. Through Lightroom.....

James R Posted at 3-22 00:53
That is the image from the card. Just reprocessed. Through Lightroom.....

Reprocessed? As in shrunk to a fraction of it's actual size?

The original image from your camera would have been 5472 x 3648  = 20 MP
What you showed was 2048 x 1151 = 2.4 MP
That's only 12% of the size of the original image, so of course it's image quality will be junk.

James R Posted at 3-22 00:53
That is the image from the card. Just reprocessed. Through Lightroom.....

Its shrunk from lightroom to be able to insert the photo here, but this photo still looks like this even viewing the full image in Lightroom on my Ipad from the SD card.

James R Posted at 3-22 03:03
Its shrunk from lightroom to be able to insert the photo here, but this photo still looks like this even viewing the full image in Lightroom on my Ipad from the SD card.

Sorry ... I'm not able to comment on your original image quality if I can't see the original image.
A tiny shrunken version just won't cut it.
If you want to present the actual image, you could always upload to a site like dropbox and post a link.

Dlog shot

James R Posted at 3-22 13:43
Dlog shot

Looking at the actual image, it doesn't look too bad.
The scene is a tough one for detail because it's full of masses of distant fine detail and the light is very soft.
There's only so much detail a single pixel can record.

I suspect a Nikon full-frame with good lenses would make a similar shot look a bit soft too.
A better test of image sharpness would be a well-lit house wall or something similar with hard detail 20-30 feet away from the camera.

But here's a 100% crop of just 4% of the original image.
I've only tweaked the colour and it doesn't look too bad given the subject, distance and conditions.

Thanks for help on this. I know that when shooting land I’m not going to get super sharp results due to the trees and lack of a subject I was a bit taken aback by how blurry it was and never face this issue with the phantom 4. I think that reason was due to the iso 500. Thanks again for the help

James R Posted at 3-23 07:13
Thanks for help on this. I know that when shooting land I’m not going to get super sharp results due to the trees and lack of a subject I was a bit taken aback by how blurry it was and never face this issue with the phantom 4. I think that reason was due to the iso 500. Thanks again for the help

This turns up all the time. Someone goes out and shoots aerial footage of a bunch of tress, then some time later (usually in Winter) they go back and shoot the same area and cannot understand why it looks soft.

The answer is that there is a limited stream bandwidth available of 100 megabits per second, and the whispy bare tree branches add so much detail that the encoder cannot encode the image properly within the 100 Mb/s range.

Geebax Posted at 3-24 15:27
This turns up all the time. Someone goes out and shoots aerial footage of a bunch of tress, then some time later (usually in Winter) they go back and shoot the same area and cannot understand why it looks soft.

The answer is that there is a limited stream bandwidth available of 100 megabits per second, and the whispy bare tree branches add so much detail that the encoder cannot encode the image properly within the 100 Mb/s range.

This answer actually makes more sense to me......would have have a suggestion or a best practice in this situation?

James R Posted at 3-24 18:09
This answer actually makes more sense to me......would have have a suggestion or a best practice in this situation?

Since the only cure is to increase the bitrate, and DJI are not offering that as an option, the only remaining option is to not shoot fine material or live with it.

Geebax Posted at 3-24 18:39
Since the only cure is to increase the bitrate, and DJI are not offering that as an option, the only remaining option is to not shoot fine material or live with it.

Gah..... would I be better off pulling photos from 4K video in this instance? Or same result?

James R Posted at 3-25 04:19
Gah..... would I be better off pulling photos from 4K video in this instance? Or same result?

Taking frame grabs from video is always going to be a very poor alternative.
Stills = 5472 × 3648 = 20 MP
4K video frame = 3840×2160 = 8.3 MP
And you'd probably use a very different shutter speed if you were shooting stills.

Labroides Posted at 3-25 04:51
Taking frame grabs from video is always going to be a very poor alternative.
Stills = 5472 × 3648 = 20 MP
4K video frame = 3840×2160 = 8.3 MP

Welp.... sounds like I’ve gone as far as I can lol thanks for the support everyone!