I wish DJI would come forward, acknowledge a HW problem and give a timeframe for a fix.  Without doing this, it really leaves no choice for those of us with no other action cameras to wait and see.  I was really hoping they would quickly get off the PR talk and just talk to us straight about this issue.  I'm going to have to just get a hero 9 or 10 and maybe upgrade to the action 4 whenever it comes out.  I'm not willing to just wait around for months and see what happens.

I am leaning towards Hero 11 tbh, but as much as I don't want to buy it out of principle DJI might force me to....or I'll just go back to Insta360 and forget about DJI altogether, I really liked the camera overall.

Fr4nk_C45tl3 Posted at 10-25 04:42
I am leaning towards Hero 11 tbh, but as much as I don't want to buy it out of principle DJI might force me to....or I'll just go back to Insta360 and forget about DJI altogether, I really liked the camera overall.

Same situation here...

They won’t be admitting to a hardware problem, that would mean instant recall and if you believe this then why are you waiting. One thing I can tell you is there were many complaints about focus on A1 pocket 1 and 2, they were sorted over time with updates and similar if not worse problems with go pro.

Hi, Diceman. Thank you for reaching out and we do apologize for the trouble. We appreciate your feedback. After testing and analysis, our engineers found that the Focus Blurry in Close Range is caused by a larger internal parameter that some cameras have. This issue can be optimized through firmware updates. We don't have the information yet on when will the next firmware update will come out but for any updates, please stay tuned to the latest news on our DJI official website at www.dji.com.

In the meantime, you may set the parameters below to isolate the issue:

1) ISO: 100-200;
2) EV: 0; Make sure that the ambient brightness is bright enough;
3) FOV: Wide
4) Resolution/Frame Rate: 16:9 & Steady Disabled & 4K25 or 4K30;
5) Fixed Capturing: Make sure that the camera and outer box remain fixed during capturing.

Thank you for your understanding and support.

DJI Gamora Posted at 10-25 08:15
Hi, Diceman. Thank you for reaching out and we do apologize for the trouble. We appreciate your feedback. After testing and analysis, our engineers found that the Focus Blurry in Close Range is caused by a larger internal parameter that some cameras have. This issue can be optimized through firmware updates. We don't have the information yet on when will the next firmware update will come out but for any updates, please stay tuned to the latest news on our DJI official website at www.dji.com.

In the meantime, you may set the parameters below to isolate the issue:

[q].. remain fixed during capturing.[/q]
I thought, it's an Action Cam?!

DJI Gamora Posted at 10-25 08:15
Hi, Diceman. Thank you for reaching out and we do apologize for the trouble. We appreciate your feedback. After testing and analysis, our engineers found that the Focus Blurry in Close Range is caused by a larger internal parameter that some cameras have. This issue can be optimized through firmware updates. We don't have the information yet on when will the next firmware update will come out but for any updates, please stay tuned to the latest news on our DJI official website at www.dji.com.

In the meantime, you may set the parameters below to isolate the issue:

Even with those setting, with proper light and with stable camera, the image is still blurry and digitally oversharpened... looks horrible

djiuser_zEKgdWRops1S Posted at 10-25 08:22
[q].. remain fixed during capturing.[/q]
I thought, it's an Action Cam?!

Fixing the camera avoids motion blur. If you are trying to test for a miscalibrated/misaligned lens you want settings that avoid other sorces of blur like cropping, warping, stabilization, motion.

djiuser_Pkm8GQfiQXaO Posted at 10-26 11:31
Even with those setting, with proper light and with stable camera, the image is still blurry and digitally oversharpened... looks horrible

Can you demonstrate what you mean with an image? Your statement contradicts itself: blurry is the opposite of sharp.

djiuser_zEKgdWRops1S Posted at 10-25 08:22
[q].. remain fixed during capturing.[/q]
I thought, it's an Action Cam?!

No rocksteady and don't move it for acceptable results

DJI Gamora Posted at 10-25 08:15
Hi, Diceman. Thank you for reaching out and we do apologize for the trouble. We appreciate your feedback. After testing and analysis, our engineers found that the Focus Blurry in Close Range is caused by a larger internal parameter that some cameras have. This issue can be optimized through firmware updates. We don't have the information yet on when will the next firmware update will come out but for any updates, please stay tuned to the latest news on our DJI official website at www.dji.com.

In the meantime, you may set the parameters below to isolate the issue:

Is this for any Stabelization issues, seems not a FF issue.

djiuser_Pkm8GQfiQXaO Posted at 10-26 11:31
Even with those setting, with proper light and with stable camera, the image is still blurry and digitally oversharpened... looks horrible

Hi, djiuser_Pkm8GQfiQXaO. We apologize for the inconvenience. We recommend that you send your product back to DJI for testing. Our engineers will perform a detailed analysis upon receiving your product. You can contact our support team to start up a ticket at https://www.dji.com/support. Thank you for your understanding and support.

Someone will probably just release an aftermarket lens at some point.That would be a cheap easy fix if a tiny bit involved.

fish sticks Posted at 10-26 11:59
Can you demonstrate what you mean with an image? Your statement contradicts itself: blurry is the opposite of sharp.

Blurry normally refers to an image being out of focus generally, all over, with no detail, but digital sharpening latches on to the edges of things and just increases the contrast between the edges and what’s on the other side of the edges. The rest of the picture after digital sharpening remains mushy.

In fact, digital sharpening doesn’t really increase the image detail. It gives an overall impression of sharpness by increasing edge contrast but in reality, not a lot has changed really.

A lot of cheaper cameras enhance ‘digital sharpening’ with no option to switch it off because at first glance, it looks impressive. It can leave digital artifacts though when overdone so there is a limit to how much sharpening should be applied. For instance, a GoPro set to high digital sharpening looks dreadful.
Another action camera trick (along with over sharpening digitally) is to increase contrast which makes us believe the image is sharper when it's actually not. A lot of YouTubers over sharpen and hype the contrast too much which is what many have now accepted as a 'normal' look.

Ideally, a sharp lens is way better than having more digital sharpness.

Iancraig10 Posted at 10-27 09:52
Blurry normally refers to an image being out of focus generally, all over, with no detail, but digital sharpening latches on to the edges of things and just increases the contrast between the edges and what’s on the other side of the edges. The rest of the picture after digital sharpening remains mushy.

In fact, digital sharpening doesn’t really increase the image detail. It gives an overall impression of sharpness by increasing edge contrast but in reality, not a lot has changed really.

This is spot on.

When overdone:
“ is still blurry and digitally oversharpened... looks horrible.”

Yep.

10-Bit Posted at 10-27 12:33
This is spot on.

When overdone:

No, the explanation is not "spot on". However, it does help more than it hurts if someone wants to understand what to look for when judging sharpness or detail, and the discussion wasn't exactly on topic, so let us leave it at that.

fish sticks Posted at 10-27 13:15
No, the explanation is not "spot on". However, it does help more than it hurts if someone wants to understand what to look for when judging sharpness or detail, and the discussion wasn't exactly on topic, so let us leave it at that.

How is the explanation not spot on?

10-Bit Posted at 10-27 13:47
How is the explanation not spot on?

You wouldn’t know the answer to that. You don’t own one you are judging everything from the negative posts on this forum. Look at the positive videos yes completed and edited videos which you seem to conveniently ignore.

hallmark007 Posted at 10-27 14:23
You wouldn’t know the answer to that. You don’t own one you are judging everything from the negative posts on this forum. Look at the positive videos yes completed and edited videos which you seem to conveniently ignore.

Ahh.  Troll.  Hahahaha!  

10-Bit Posted at 10-27 14:39
Ahh.  Troll.  Hahahaha!

+1 hallmark007 Troll. Who climbs into every topic and gives his stupid advice and does not understand the subject at all, finished.

DJI Gamora Posted at 10-26 12:53
Hi, djiuser_Pkm8GQfiQXaO. We apologize for the inconvenience. We recommend that you send your product back to DJI for testing. Our engineers will perform a detailed analysis upon receiving your product. You can contact our support team to start up a ticket at https://www.dji.com/support. Thank you for your understanding and support.

I have written to support, exchanged few emails but now they are acting as dead bug and not responding

fish sticks Posted at 10-27 13:15
No, the explanation is not "spot on". However, it does help more than it hurts if someone wants to understand what to look for when judging sharpness or detail, and the discussion wasn't exactly on topic, so let us leave it at that.

Just answering someone’s question and the topic is about lens sharpness. You could be more helpful and correct it.

This forum seems to be full of uptight people.

Iancraig10 Posted at 10-28 04:13
Just answering someone’s question and the topic is about lens sharpness. You could be more helpful and correct it.

This forum seems to be full of uptight people.

Yes, sorry about that. I didn't want to nit-pick, but I shouldn't have answered the post characterizing the post as "spot on". Your intuition is correct, and it sounds like you have the right idea about how an (over)sharpened looks like.

There are some inaccuracies: blurry is how an image or a region in the image looks like. "Out of focus" is one cause for an image to be blurry and appear without edges/detail, but there are many others. For example, with the OA3 you can digitally zoom, use slow shutter speed, rotate frames to "electronically stabilize", and so on.

The following explanation of oversharpening is alright, imo, if everyone understands what is meant with "edges" and "detail". Strictly speaking, "lack of detail" is "missing edges" or "edges being too soft", so some sort of edge enhancement can in theory correct for that. The problem is that simple sharpening methods only increase contrast at edges that are somewhat well defined, while leaving less pronounced ones as is.

For example, if you take a picture of a tree, and don't capture the edges defining individual leaves, increasing the sharpness (most of the time) will increase contrast between the silhouette of the tree, without emphasizing the edges around individual leaves, leading to what people will describe as oversharpenned image.

In the post you were replying to, I argued that blurry and overly sharp is the opposite thing: take a small enough region of an image and it will either be blurry (without edges, i.e. big differences in pixel values) or it will contain an edge (i.e. there will be difference or contrast between neighboring pixels). So, yes, an image can contain both blurry and "overly sharp" regions, but I would describe it as oversharpenned, not as "both blurry and oversharpenned".

Anyway, as I already (impolitely) said earlier, I can see that you were trying to help, and I think your post is already very helpful for people trying to understand possible issues with digital images.

I went ahead and order a GoPro hero11 and received it yesterday.  And the difference in focus is night and day.  The GoPro is so much more crisp and detailed.

Unfortunately everything else is better about the action 3 imo.  The GoPro overheats after like 15 minutes doing 120fps (action 3 was 47 for me), it overheated after 57 minutes at 4k60 (action 3 will go forever).  In order to get the GoPro to record 4k60fps indefinitely is to remove the battery and power it by power bank.   The UI is better on the action, it's easier to open the door to remove batteries, plug USB in, etc.
Basically every single thing is better on the action 3 except it's out of focus.  I may just return both of them and hope DJI fixes the focus issue.  Which is why it would have been good for them to come out and acknowledge the issue, and have a program to replace units when the problem is fixed.  They keep talking about firmware updates, without explaining how that would possibly fix a focus issue.

I keep my A3! this is my first action cam and i really like the quality of the video as it is right now though i'm sure this can only improve with updates hopefully!

djiuser_Pkm8GQfiQXaO Posted at 10-27 22:33
I have written to support, exchanged few emails but now they are acting as dead bug and not responding

Hello, there. Sorry for your inconvenience. We saw that you are getting in touch with our teams. May we know if there is anything we can help?

Diceman Posted at 10-29 11:07
I went ahead and order a GoPro hero11 and received it yesterday.  And the difference in focus is night and day.  The GoPro is so much more crisp and detailed.

Unfortunately everything else is better about the action 3 imo.  The GoPro overheats after like 15 minutes doing 120fps (action 3 was 47 for me), it overheated after 57 minutes at 4k60 (action 3 will go forever).  In order to get the GoPro to record 4k60fps indefinitely is to remove the battery and power it by power bank.   The UI is better on the action, it's easier to open the door to remove batteries, plug USB in, etc.

You nailed it there. Saved me a whole bunch of typing - exactly how I feel about the OA3 being better in every other area, save for the out of focus problem (which I have now noticed if I am vlogging, less so if I'm shooting videos of items at infinity focus,. And the lack of 10-bit color.

Once DJI sorts this out, I think we have a winner on our hands.