Hi !

A major feature that was used in the Mavic 2 Pro was the "HQ" mode that cropped a 4K image into the full resolution of the sensor, so it produced a little zoom with an equivalent of 33mm focal length and gave a very cinematic results, and gave better sharpness results in far away objects.

There is no more this mode on the Mavic 3... except in 4K120, which also record 4K resolution by cropping into the 5.1k full frame, and give an equivalent to 33mm.

my drone is on my desk, not flying, shooting at a building far away. First in 4k25, then 5,1k 25, and then in 4k120. The logic would be that the building will be composed of more pixels in the 5.1k footage, but... its not.





Here on the 4k25, the building is composed of 393px.





on the 5.1k footage with an equivalent focal length of 24mm, the building is composed of 523px. better !

Here is the footage of the 4k120 with an equivalent of 33mm :




the building is now composed of 587px, 64 pixels more than the 5.1k, 12% more.

This is caused by the fact that, with this crop, it use exactly 3840x2160 from the sensor so it have a ratio of 1:1. When recording at 4k25, it takes the full resolution and then merge pixels together to reduce it to 4K, so it loose details on the process...
You can also notice that some of the little branches in 4k25 are very thin, almost disappear, but more visible on the 4k120 as they are composed of more pixels.


Please DJI, add a 4k25/30/60 fps option with the same logic as the HQ mode on Mavic 2 Pro, a 4k crop in the 5.1k full frame that give an equivalent of 33mm focal length !

Did I not read that it will come with update in January, Not sure but I’ve heard something about it.

Really ? i haven't seen this, do you remember where ?

New tests :

from the 4K25 shoot, the metalic object is 4PX when zoomed.



from the 4k120 shoot, it is 7px approximately.



it demonstrate that, 4K24 / 25 / 30 etc will have lower details, but larger field of view. it is the equivalent of "Full fov" of the Mavic 2 Pro. it use the full frame of the sensor (5.1k) and downscale it to 4K. So it merge pixels and it loose some details in the processing.

4K120 is 3840x2160 cropped from the 5.1K full frame, so it only keep the center of the image and no pixels is merged, so we have the entire quality when looking at distant objects. but it has a thinner field of view, but that is not a problem as it give more cinematic footage with an equivalent of 33mm focal. this is the equivalent of "HQ" mode of the Mavic 2 Pro.

Please DJI, allow us to have "Full FOV" and "HQ" again to choose from when shooting 4K 25 / 30 etc

Really nice feedback here.
I was thinking about the good results on the X2 zoom looking like 40mm almost like the 4kHQ of the Pro2 and I thinking about use the 4k120 for have the Dlog options.

i don't think the X2 zoom is a good choice, i only tried the X7 sensor for now but i think the x2 is not only cropping but also merge pixels to make 4K resolution

Interesting, I never dove into this mode, but it seems very handy to have a 33mm field of view (better than 24 in many cases when you need to be further away)

Yes and it almost double the number of pixels Oo that's crazy, it makes the 4k 24/25/30 really useless compared to 5.1k that give more details but still not as much as 4k120, that's a really surprising result as, often, slow mo modes give less details etc in term of sharpness, but here it is the only mode that only crop and doesn't "merge" pixels from the full resolution, so it have the best pixels per inch resolution.

Really need to have 4k25 etc in that logic

Yes, I would really love to see HQ Mode returning.

Not that much because of the "high quality", but because of the zoom level which looks way more cinematic.

Right now I was thinking about filming in 5.1k and zooming in post, but on the other hand, it really changes the way you compose your image when the live image is already zoomed.

So please, DJI, just do it (:

It is possible as it is not related to a "physical" constraint, so hoping it will be added in a future update !

Another thing is that, surprisingly, 5.1k video seems not to be the full resolution of the sensor, as the results shows, when shooting at 5.1k the building is 523px, and in 4k120, it is 587. In theory, if 4k120 is cropped from the full sensor resolution, the building should be the same number of pixels on both, but the fact that there is less pixels on the 5.1k footage could mean that pixels are merged, maybe it could achieve 5.4k like the Air2 S ?

Apart the return of HQ mode, another thing i would like to have is when recording in 4K120, having the choice that the recorded file can stay in 120fps on the sd card so i have the choice on how to manage its speed on Premiere Pro. Currently, it is recorded at 120fps and saved at 30 already slowed 4 times in the sd card.

Again me, i tried the same test with a Mavic 2 Pro and the Mavic 3, the same building at the horizon, in HQ mode on the Mavic 2 Pro, and the only mode that we can use on Mavic 3, the full frame.

the building is 522px on the Mavic 3 video at 5.1k, and it is 625px on the Mavic 2 Pro in HQ mode in 4K.

It means that the Mavic 2 Pro has an advantage of 19% in terms of details for far objects, a very big difference that we wouldn't expect, so if the Mavic 3 had the choice between "full fov" or "HQ", in HQ mode we would have insane details as it would crop into the full resolution and produce a real gap with the Mavic 2. But for now, we don't have this option and the Mavic 3 is behind the 2 Pro in term of details...

Here is a video from a well known professional drone pilot in france, asking DJI to bring back Spotlight mode as it was on Mavic 2 Pro, and also HQ Mode as many asked :

Fabrizioooo Posted at 2021-12-3 10:01
Again me, i tried the same test with a Mavic 2 Pro and the Mavic 3, the same building at the horizon, in HQ mode on the Mavic 2 Pro, and the only mode that we can use on Mavic 3, the full frame.

the building is 522px on the Mavic 3 video at 5.1k, and it is 625px on the Mavic 2 Pro in HQ mode in 4K.

I wonder if someone at DJI pointed this out to the team. The M2P is actually better in some areas than the Mavic 3.

Let me just point out that the features/specs in the Mavic 1 never beat the specs in the Mavic 2. So why is the Mavic 3 lagging in some areas...

CloudVisual Posted at 1-7 03:20
I wonder if someone at DJI pointed this out to the team. The M2P is actually better in some areas than the Mavic 3.

Let me just point out that the features/specs in the Mavic 1 never beat the specs in the Mavic 2. So why is the Mavic 3 lagging in some areas...

It did, it could shoot vertical and it had course lock.

hallmark007 Posted at 1-7 04:23
It did, it could shoot vertical and it had course lock.

Ah, the two features I never used...!

I never had the Mavic 1 but I have to say having vertical position of the sensor is a great idea for content aiming instagram, i have an account with more than 5000 followers and my pictures / videos are highly cropped to only keep 1728x2160, it would multiply quality  by more than 2 to have it vertical in some situations ;) (it’s still me, just my personal account haha)

Fabriziooo Posted at 1-7 05:09
I never had the Mavic 1 but I have to say having vertical position of the sensor is a great idea for content aiming instagram, i have an account with more than 5000 followers and my pictures / videos are highly cropped to only keep 1728x2160, it would multiply quality  by more than 2 to have it vertical in some situations ;) (it’s still me, just my personal account haha)

I'm fairly sure the Air 2s does this. IMO the best all rounder drone that DJI sells for the money.

CloudVisual Posted at 1-7 05:14
I'm fairly sure the Air 2s does this. IMO the best all rounder drone that DJI sells for the money.

Air2s does not shoot true vertical. It is great bang for buck though.

NGC Posted at 1-7 05:56
With all the missing M3 features and all its bugs right now - one could make a decent case that the Air2S combo with RC Pro rivals that of the M3.

Well it would help if dji just adapted RCA’s pro to work with my air2s. In time it should get sorted.

hallmark007 Posted at 1-7 04:23
It did, it could shoot vertical and it had course lock.

Wait, what? M2P can shoot in portrait mode? How?? Did I miss it all this time??

DarthSLR Posted at 1-9 08:19
Wait, what? M2P can shoot in portrait mode? How?? Did I miss it all this time??

MP1………

hallmark007 Posted at 1-9 08:49
MP1………

Ah... I started with Mavic Pro Platinum, which I guess was already different somewhat. And I only had it for a few weeks before upgrading to M2P, so didn't have time to learn it fully even if it had that option.

NGC Posted at 1-7 05:56
With all the missing M3 features and all its bugs right now - one could make a decent case that the Air2S combo with RC Pro rivals that of the M3.

I own both and at the moment the Air 2s is the go to.

Have you done some test regarding overall sharpness of the 5.1k image compared to 4K?
I just watched my shots at 100/200% and from what i see,  i dont get any more details, as if 5.1k is just oversampled 4k image.... will need to test this more, just watned to see if you have some findings

Globally it add some details but not enough to compensate HQ mode from Mavic 2 Pro for distant subjects, as you can see on the images i posted, the building is composed of 393px in 4k, and 523 in 5.1k... and on the Mavic 2 Pro, in HQ mode, it is composed of 625px... in 4K !!! imagine if the Mavic 3 have HQ mode, in 5.1K, distant objects would be rendered with very very good details

Fabrizioooo Posted at 2021-11-21 05:22
Another thing is that, surprisingly, 5.1k video seems not to be the full resolution of the sensor, as the results shows, when shooting at 5.1k the building is 523px, and in 4k120, it is 587. In theory, if 4k120 is cropped from the full sensor resolution, the building should be the same number of pixels on both, but the fact that there is less pixels on the 5.1k footage could mean that pixels are merged, maybe it could achieve 5.4k like the Air2 S ?

Regarding this, i just did some tests and i can clear this one out.
5.1K is not a resolution of a sensor, full size image is 5272 px wide and 5.1K video is 5120px.
So even with 5.1K Mavic 3 is doing some downsampling since it reads full sensor with this resolution.
It would be grate to have full size (5.3k) video out of it so we can have 1:1 pixel quality video.


Anyway, what i also did are some sharpnes test with all video modes and RAW photo to compare it with, and here are the resaults:


image hosting

As you can see, 5.1K is almost 1:1 with a RAW photo
4K Cine and 4K have some sharpness loss, since they still read full wide of sensor and downsample it to 4K
What is interesting is that full HD have some moire effect. Maybe 4K would have some but it is not heave downsamled, so dont ever shoot Full HD if you ask me. Do 5.1K and rescale to what you want.

Best part of it is that it doesnt do lineskip at 5K and reads full sensor.

Interesting results !

here is a chart from Paladrone showing input resolutions, and outputs, that i translated for some texts :



i highlighted what is wrong for me, 5.1k output is from 5.3k like you said, it is sad to apply downsampling on the highest quality settings...
Also, shooting 4K120 is for now the only way to have approximately a HQ mode like on the Mavic 2 Pro (35mm focal equivalent), and as you can see, even this have a downsampling, taking it source at 3534x1988 instead of 3840x2160... so it has quality loss in the process.

Please DJI, add a 4K 25/30/50/60fps option with HQ mode that crop an exact resolution of 3840x2160 on the sensor, and output 3840x2160

They should add HQ mode for sure and 5.3K  res as lower Air 2S model have, but until then you can just crop from 5.1K image to 4k res to do this in post...

CloudVisual Posted at 1-7 03:20
I wonder if someone at DJI pointed this out to the team. The M2P is actually better in some areas than the Mavic 3.

Let me just point out that the features/specs in the Mavic 1 never beat the specs in the Mavic 2. So why is the Mavic 3 lagging in some areas...

Well, the Mavic 1 does have a true Fixed Wing FPV mode... and dual controller support.  Maybe we'll get the latter on Mavic 3, but it seems like Fixed Wing mode is gone forever.

This is the best conversation I've found on this topic.  I recently added an 'HQ Mode' to my list of feature requests to DJI (in a previous post).

I truly miss the HQ Mode, as I use it as the default on my Mavic 2 Pro.  I thought it was about a 40mm equivalent though?I'm currently trying to figure out what ratio to digitally crop my images in post to get a 1:1 readout.

Regarding the 5.1K crop and downsample, I believe this is caused by the larger sensor and issues with the imaging circle.  RAW images without a correction profile show extreme vignetting and distortion.  So, it may simply be that the optics don't allow for a good image without a digital crop.

DJI, PLEASE add the HQ Mode with 1:1 readout like the Mavic 2 Pro!

Fabriziooo Posted at 2022-1-11 04:10
Interesting results !

here is a chart from Paladrone showing input resolutions, and outputs, that i translated for some texts :

On this charts seems to me an 1.4x digital zoom is almost equivalent in crop size and slightly better  in quality than the 4K 120fps crop ?  Then we have the 25fps solution ... or at least until DJI doesn't implement "HQ" mode.

Hi
is there some new discoveries about this?