The following is a comparison showing the extraordinary leap in quality you can achieve using the 70mm lens in Freepano mode to simulate a single wide angle shot.
Firstly thanks to triggus and his post here for supplying raw images for this comparison  https://forum.dji.com/forum.php? ... D938%26typeid%3D938

The actual screen dumps and stitched full res image plus 12mm image can be found here https://drive.google.com/drive/f ... Tpns?usp=drive_link


THE METHOD
So to achieve a unique level of quality of of a view more or less equal to whatt he wide angle lens can provide you can switch to FreePano mode and cover the same view as the wide with a stitch of 9-12 images.  While in this case it's not a 100% exact replication of view or position of drone it's pretty close. The light may have also changed a little but not enough to spoil this comparison.

So first up is a screen dump showing the wide angle single shot on the right and the FreePano 70mm stitch on the left (note this is not full resolution it's just to show the framing is similiar)




THE RESULTS

So here are two matching crops taken of both images with the Freepano 70mm stitch on the left and the single shot wide angle on the right...

   



Is pretty obvious the quality here of the image on the left is far superior and now gives you the ability to capture true high resolution (effective) stills using the 70mm lens in FreePano mode to match the wide angle view.  

This result for me confirms the value in buy the Air3s and I will be shortly placing my order!

Thank you Triggus.

Cheers

Bussty  

Good job thanks for posting, I think you’ll be happy with the air3s, its a great drone.

Hallmark007 Posted at 12-3 13:51
Good job thanks for posting, I think you’ll be happy with the air3s, its a great drone.

Cheers Hallmark I've never used anything in the Air that can get quality like that so a game changer really.

I feel like I'll have to go back over all my drone shots and recapture with FreePano mode and the 70mm lens :-)

Cheers

Bussty

Hi Bussty, Thanks for sharing this information! It will definitely be helpful for others on the forum. Have a great day! Thank You!

Were these images taken with the 50mp setting?

R3SKT Posted at 12-4 03:42
Were these images taken with the 50mp setting?

They were all 12MP

Bussty Posted at 12-4 03:44
They were all 12MP

Thanks Bussty, that's good to understand. I am going to change my settings from the 50mp to 12mp and trial some more 70mm Free Panos to see what I can achieve.

Hi Bussty,  this is my conclusion as well and the reason why I think Air3s is a keeper despite some disappointments in regards of the 1" inch QB sensor in comparison what can be achieved with much older Air2s.
This possibly need more testing but the 50MP mode seems no go for any serious photography, noticed unacceptable level of color noise in well  lit scenes. its much better in the 12MP mode but this can produce some artifacts at times that I havent seen on Air2s. Not to mention slightly  less detail and smaller pixel count in 12MP compared to Air2s.
However the 70MP and Freepano indeed looks like game changer.  The pictures yoy analysed and compared in your post, I had very limited time for tests when I took them and this was my first ever attempt to use freepano.
I believe with some practise the framing could be done much better to reflect 24mm (hower I would prolly go for slightly larger frame as this gives  more room for cropping or refining composition in post).
to get perfect reflection of 24mm you need to frame the scene at 24mm remember details of top left corner and bottom right corner. change the lens to 70 and in Free pano aim the the start and end frames at these two mentioned before. Freepano is so flexible.
Anyway I found the results stunning, there is no other  flying camera atm that can provide such a detail with such an easy and quick process.
In theory you can achieve same with air3 or mavic3 pro manually shooting 70mm frames and stiching them in post, its  lots of time consuming painfull work probably deffering 90% of photographes from even trying.
  However freepano makes this process so quick and painless  that  makes it actually workable for almost any shot. The way drone is processing the pano jpg looks very decent off the shelf for the example above it was 30MP - very decent resoluton, a bit of love in post, 5 minutes edits and quality is comercially viable.  For better results/or specifc needs  and details you can play with the dngs (for the example aboce stiched produced 130MP with incredible detials)  nicely stored in dedicated folder.
I just hope if the 50MP issues or some wierd artifacts sometimes produced by 12 mp are result of the processing in drone software/ pipline rather than the sensor itself  - Dji will look into and try to fix it in further updates.

triggus Posted at 12-4 06:20
Hi Bussty,  this is my conclusion as well and the reason why I think Air3s is a keeper despite some disappointments in regards of the 1" inch QB sensor in comparison what can be achieved with much older Air2s.
This possibly need more testing but the 50MP mode seems no go for any serious photography, noticed unacceptable level of color noise in well  lit scenes. its much better in the 12MP mode but this can produce some artifacts at times that I havent seen on Air2s. Not to mention slightly  less detail and smaller pixel count in 12MP compared to Air2s.
However the 70MP and Freepano indeed looks like game changer.  The pictures yoy analysed and compared in your post, I had very limited time for tests when I took them and this was my first ever attempt to use freepano.

Hey Triggus 100% agree there is nothing bar maybe the original zoom Mavic that can do this. So you have a drone that for high quality effective stills done simply beats even the Mavic 3 Pro.

The process of stitching in PTGUI was effortless and when DXO get their profile done for the Air3s there should be a nice quality increase of the 12MP 70mm DNG's

Happy days :-)

triggus Posted at 12-4 06:20
Hi Bussty,  this is my conclusion as well and the reason why I think Air3s is a keeper despite some disappointments in regards of the 1" inch QB sensor in comparison what can be achieved with much older Air2s.
This possibly need more testing but the 50MP mode seems no go for any serious photography, noticed unacceptable level of color noise in well  lit scenes. its much better in the 12MP mode but this can produce some artifacts at times that I havent seen on Air2s. Not to mention slightly  less detail and smaller pixel count in 12MP compared to Air2s.
However the 70MP and Freepano indeed looks like game changer.  The pictures yoy analysed and compared in your post, I had very limited time for tests when I took them and this was my first ever attempt to use freepano.

What good is the Air3S for still photos if you have to do a pano on every photo you take to get ok shots.I call this Drone not acceptable for still photos.I could care less about shooting video.I will stay far away from this thing.

Bussty Posted at 12-4 15:27
Hey Triggus 100% agree there is nothing bar maybe the original zoom Mavic that can do this. So you have a drone that for high quality effective stills done simply beats even the Mavic 3 Pro.

The process of stitching in PTGUI was effortless and when DXO get their profile done for the Air3s there should be a nice quality increase of the 12MP 70mm DNG's

So you have a drone that for high quality effective stills done simply beats even the Mavic 3 Pro.
You're way behind the times.

If you are obsessed with multimegapixel resolution, why not shoot with a better drone/camera and simply upscale with modern software rather than your silly scheme.

Labroides Posted at 12-4 23:13
So you have a drone that for high quality effective stills done simply beats even the Mavic 3 Pro.
You're way behind the times.

Have you got an example?

Wreckfinder Posted at 12-4 19:49
What good is the Air3S for still photos if you have to do a pano on every photo you take to get ok shots.I call this Drone not acceptable for still photos.I could care less about shooting video.I will stay far away from this thing.

I'd much rather take a bit more time and do a little post processing (honestly PTGUI will stitch the 12 TIFFS in about 15 seconds) and get a really detailed image than use what I have had in the past.

I never really been happy with the stills quality out of the drone but this has changed. I also moved from M4/3 on my Digital Camera to Fullframe and though the files are big and my computer has had to be upgraded and overall it's a little more cumbersome the quality increase is outstanding and I could blow any of those images up on big canvases and be quite comfortable with the result plus the tonal range is just better.

I too only do stills and for the shots that I take (usually not a lot of movement) a 20sec pano in the sky and 15 sec stitch is nothing for the extra quality I'm seeing.

But that's just me :-)

Cheers           

Wreckfinder Posted at 12-4 19:49
What good is the Air3S for still photos if you have to do a pano on every photo you take to get ok shots.I call this Drone not acceptable for still photos.I could care less about shooting video.I will stay far away from this thing.

How’s the quality of the air3 seen as you bought that for stills..

Hallmark007 Posted at 12-5 07:50
How’s the quality of the air3 seen as you bought that for stills..

I passed on the Air3,never got it.

Yeah, this is exactly what I would use it for!
Can you do AEB-5 with the 70mm?

Montfrooij Posted at 12-10 00:07
Yeah, this is exactly what I would use it for!
Can you do AEB-5 with the 70mm?

I know it can do some AEB not sure if 5.

Announcements of the Mavic 4 Pro looming now (that seems a really small time between releases of the Air3s and Mavic 4 Pro - assuming it releases soon) is making a tough choice...

• Assuming it will have FreePano hopefully also for the 70mm and the stronger telephoto. That gives you the ability to do super super high res effective wide or even 70mm shots (using the stronger telephoto) so that has me very interested.
• It has a -90 to +80 degree gimbal range so can capture true 360 pano's so wouldn't need to hold on to the Mini 3 Pro
  

Will have to wait and see what plays out, timing is impeccable as was just about to push the buy button!

Decisions decisions I bet many are now wondering the same thing...

Bussty Posted at 12-10 01:05
I know it can do some AEB not sure if 5.

Announcements of the Mavic 4 Pro looming now (that seems a really small time between releases of the Air3s and Mavic 4 Pro - assuming it releases soon) is making a tough choice...

The longer lens might give you parallax problems if you have something in between the drone and the background as the rotation center is behind the camera (quite a bit), which will be more prominent on longer lenses.

Montfrooij Posted at 12-10 01:09
The longer lens might give you parallax problems if you have something in between the drone and the background as the rotation center is behind the camera (quite a bit), which will be more prominent on longer lenses.

Is this different from DSLR cameras where longer lenses seem to to give much better stitches?  I guess with a DSLR you subconsciously spin around more of the lens pivot point but your saying the drone is spinning around a point inches away from the lens centre?  Never thought of that before as an issue but makes sense.

Bussty Posted at 12-10 01:18
Is this different from DSLR cameras where longer lenses seem to to give much better stitches?  I guess with a DSLR you subconsciously spin around more of the lens pivot point but your saying the drone is spinning around a point inches away from the lens centre?  Never thought of that before as an issue but makes sense.

Yeah, as the pivot point is quite a bit behind the lens, even more than with my DSLR I think.
So the best bet is to use the gimbal for rotation, but that has very limited reach.
I remember my nodal ninja back in the days......
Expensive but it did get the job done.
I sold it because it was too much hassle for me and I ended up not using it, but these days I'm thinking of getting one again.

Montfrooij Posted at 12-10 01:23
Yeah, as the pivot point is quite a bit behind the lens, even more than with my DSLR I think.
So the best bet is to use the gimbal for rotation, but that has very limited reach.
I remember my nodal ninja back in the days......

Lol I did the same thing :-) I now just have a small offset that spins the lens horizontally around it's centre no good for tilting though but rarely do that.  

Not that I would ever expect it to happen but when doing panos with any lens would be nice to think the drone could be factory configured to spin around the lens centre rather than the drone centre?  

Bussty Posted at 12-10 01:33
Lol I did the same thing :-) I now just have a small offset that spins the lens horizontally around it's centre no good for tilting though but rarely do that.  

Not that I would ever expect it to happen but when doing panos with any lens would be nice to think the drone could be factory configured to spin around the lens centre rather than the drone centre?

LOL, funny. What do you use now?

I think they could make it, but TBH these small corrections are close to impossible to a drone.
We're talking centimeters here.
But as long as it is close enough, a 24mm lens won't have much issues, but even then I notice stitching errors when there is a subject close by.

One of these Xiletu LPC-1  with a Xiletu NNR-140 sliding arm with the camera on a nameless L bracket

I also think the drone can move quite a bit up there creating it's own alignment issues. Much easier if a long way from subject.  PTGUI and Panorama Studio have some great tools to forgive many alignment sins.

Bussty Posted at 12-10 01:18
Is this different from DSLR cameras where longer lenses seem to to give much better stitches?  I guess with a DSLR you subconsciously spin around more of the lens pivot point but your saying the drone is spinning around a point inches away from the lens centre?  Never thought of that before as an issue but makes sense.

I guess with a DSLR you subconsciously spin around more of the lens pivot point but your saying the drone is spinning around a point inches away from the lens centre?  Never thought of that before as an issue but makes sense.
With typical drone to subject distances, you'll never notice this hypothetical issue.