Hello everybody,

I recently purchased a Mavic Air, after the initial bad luck (I did not know about DJI care refresh 48h limit, and on the very first flight the drone stopped responding to my commands and just flew straight through some trees), I am finally a bit more confident with the drone and I kept on testing it.

The problem is that every video or picture looks terrible, not even close to what I have seen online, grainy and noisy no matter the settings (I always try to keep the ISO as low as possible) especially if I compare them to my D3400 or even to my phone.

I am attaching some pics taken straight from the microSD, settings are manual, single shot, RAW, custom -1 -1 -1, ISO 100, f/2.8.

Try changing to custom +1 -1 -1

It's a cellphone camera, it's not going to compare favorably to your Nikon. That said, you might try turning on your Histogram, using its readout to get better exposed photos. A little work in post will punch these up nicely, but it won't approach your Nikon unless the light is exceptional.

@Ex Machina
Do you think it's normal to have this amount of noise/grain? I am just concerned that I may have gotten a faulty camera. I know the sensor is way smaller and won't ever be even close to the Nikon, but I though it was way too much, even when compared to my cellphone camera (which I guess can be considered as similar to the Air's).

Gabryxx7 Posted at 2018-3-14 11:02
@Ex Machina
Do you think it's normal to have this amount of noise/grain? I am just concerned that I may have gotten a faulty camera. I know the sensor is way smaller and won't ever be even close to the Nikon, but I though it was way too much, even when compared to my cellphone camera (which I guess can be considered as similar to the Air's).

Want to post the RAW versions somewhere we can look at?

Thank you, I uploaded them here: https://drive.google.com/open?id ... olwK6xCKzUuZ1C_oNTr

Gabryxx7 Posted at 2018-3-14 11:28
Thank you, I uploaded them here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1gOv2_FaVm_V-oolwK6xCKzUuZ1C_oNTr

Meh, it's kind of hard to tell. I'm only looking at the second shot, DJI_0020.DNG, which is the one shot of the set that is reasonably evenly exposed. There does appear to be more noise in the sky than I typically see in my Mavic Pro, but I wouldn't call it excessive and is anyway easily addressed in Lightroom by adding some sharpening mask so that the sharpening algorithm ignores the sky.

Fwiw, I would, for the moment, ignore everyone's advice to the contrary and shoot with default sharpness/saturation/contrast settings until you are comfortable with nailing exposure, and then experiment/fine tune from a position of experience. Settings that work well on a Spark or Mavic Pro are likely to lead you astray since this is a totally different camera from any other DJI product.

Hope this helps.

Thank you, I'll test it out as soon as the sun will shine again
Another thing that was worrying me is how I set sharpening to -1 and even then the noise was quite high, while I thought it should have been way lower, leaving the image soft.

I was having similar issues in the beginning, it won't compare to my DSLR in some areasWhen it's getting dark it gets noisier in auto mode, in manual mode I get better results.
I also shoot raw and videos in manual, my first flight I wasn't pleased but after it's gotten better.

I've seen a lot of noise in mine, as well.  Assuming it's pretty normal based on the feedback I've heard from others here.

Gabryxx7 Posted at 2018-3-15 01:41
Thank you, I'll test it out as soon as the sun will shine again
Another thing that was worrying me is how I set sharpening to -1 and even then the noise was quite high, while I thought it should have been way lower, leaving the image soft.

Looking forward to your feedback, and I had forwarded the files you provided above to our engineers to confirm. Will come back to you once I hear from them.

any update on this?

I had the time to use the drone a bit more, pictures are still not that satisying to me, but again I may be comparing it to my DSLR, and I know the picture quality can never be even close.
I set sharpness to +2, but I don't remember the other settings, will update as soon as I check again. The quality is much better and I always shoot both videos and pics in manual mode

Sorry to get into your title, but I have the same problem, maybe even worse. Knowledgeable people, please tell me this is a normal picture for these video settings (2k, 0, -3, -2, D-Cinelike, 100 iso, 50 fps, 1/100 ss, 8 nd-pl.)?
https://yadi.sk/i/s45InnGr3WWpBU

KeplerStar Posted at 2018-5-27 22:49
Sorry to get into your title, but I have the same problem, maybe even worse. Knowledgeable people, please tell me this is a normal picture for these video settings (2k, 0, -3, -2, D-Cinelike, 100 iso, 50 fps, 1/100 ss, 8 nd-pl.)?
https://yadi.sk/i/s45InnGr3WWpBU

Nothing found in the link

Its like comparing apples and pears. The Mavic Air tend to have lots of sharpening effects in the image. Contrast makes that worse from what i experience. I set my contrast to -2, rest is default. Also, too bright sunny conditions will definitely give you a freeze, too sharp effect with a very high shutter speed.  Contrast in the shadows give me lots of noise as well. Test it, and see what you think.
Your images above, have a soft, blurriness. Not super sharp, although you set your sharpness to +2. I will even push my sharpness to -1, contrast to -3 and leave the saturation.
Hope it helps. Test it, and let us know.

Same problem here with my Manic Air.  Nothing is clear and beautiful as my Phantom 3 Pro was, or my P4, which is likely out of service permanently now.  Other than the quality of images, I LOVE the Manic Air.  But isn't that the purpose, is to get quality images and vids?   I feel like I'm saying I LOVE my new vehicle even though it only has a one cylinder engine.

First photoes looks to be well under-exposed.
Don't compare quality to DSLR.
Expose image properly and you should be ok more or less(but still don't forget chip size And check Mavic 2 pro for DSLR image quality.

https://forum.dji.com/forum.php? ... p;page=1#pid1924096

I assume you are using the DNG files. I found the same problem with my old Phantom, but the Mavic seems better! Actually, the Jpegs seem to work better that the DNG files [!] Minimal sharpening in PS & gentle levels adjustment seems best for me. Are you editing in Photoshop? Because of the small sensor & 12 mp files, it is easy to introduce noise / grain / artifacts by over-editing.

I had the same issue.   Knocking the contrast down cleared it up a bit more, then colour correct in post.  Foliage and shadows always were the worst.  In the end I upgraded to M2P after I just wanted the quality to be better.