I'm a little frustrated getting good image quality with my Mavic Pro. I'm not super patient with trying to figure out complicated (for me) camera settings, although I've fiddled with them a bit.

It just seems odd that the apparent image quality on my iPhone is just so much better than that of the Mavic Pro. I'm hoping someone can tell me what is going on and a relatively easy way to fix it.

For the attached photos I tried to have all the settings on auto/normal/default for the Mavic Pro. I'm including iPhone pic from the same spot and time for comparison.

Iphone:

iPhone

Mavic Pro, no filter, I did rotate the dial to darken the exposure one notch:

Mavic

MavicPro with PolarPro ND4:

Mavic

MavicPro with PolarPro ND8:

Mavic

The MP is not your phone and it's not a DSLR either. Out of the box, the default/auto settings will give you pretty bland pictures. There are a lot of YouTube videos that show different settings that you can try to get the pictures that suit you best. There is nothing wrong with the MP, but like everything else, you'll get what you put into it. If you just want to put everything on auto, you'll need to be happy with the results. If you want better images, you'll have to play with the various settings and shoot everything on manual.

So to start with, you probably should be shooting at 100 ISO and 1/50th or 1/60th shutter speed. Then you need to set your white balance depending on what/where you're shooting (Sunny or Cloudy are good starting points). Style seems to be the biggest setting that people play with. A lot of pilots use +1, -1, -1 and that is where I would start. Again, there are tons of videos with different settings for different situations and you'll have to work through a few of them to determine what works best for you.

Hope this helps get you started.

The pictures are sharp though so no fault there.

Always shoot RAW with the settings Paul_IA suggested. Then use your software of choice to grade it accordingly. There's a ton of free software out there to start with. When shooting in difficult light conditions it might be even better to do exposure bracketing.

It also heavily depends on the scenery. Just from glancing at the pictures provided I'd say the saturation is a notch too low compared to the one taken with the iphone.

You were shooting at direct sunlight mid-day so you may have better opted for the nd16. Think of the filters like sunshades for your camera. If the light is too strong then the colors get washed out.

One more thing to note: if you want to enhance the image quality even further, use combined nd-polarization filters when capturing plant life. This gives you a bonus level in terms of clarity.

Thanks very much, Paul_IA and FntX, for your responses! There is a lot to learn, and you have given a good starting point.

If anyone has a good suggestion for software that can grade RAW images on a Mac, that would be very helpful. My assumption is that even if the photos seem low-saturation, as long as I had them in RAW I could fix that in post-processing.

In regards to the polarizing filters, I'm now wondering why I didn't go ahead and get the "PL" filters??? I thought I researched it and my subject matter is all about color saturation...

Do polarizing filters have to be placed in a certain orientation on the gimbal?

Thanks again...much gratitude for your patience and thoughtfulness.

After double-checking my filters, I had gotten the polarizing ND filters. So I'm both smarter and dumber than I thought.

I've been messing around with my Photos app (working on a Mac) and downloaded RAWPower, which works as an extension to Photos.

In doing so, I discovered how to "Use JPEG as Original" and "Use RAW as Original".  Just switching to "Use RAW as Original" makes the photo look much better. This tells me that the problem or weakness lies in the Mavic's choices in encoding the JPEG. My Photos app is just better at encoding a JPEG from a RAW file.

To illustrate this effect, I duplicated a photo and used the JPEG as original for one instance and RAW as original for the other, then batch exported them as JPEGs. The difference was tangible between the two:

From the JPEG (as supplied by the Mavic):



From the RAW original:



Well, now that I look at them on here the JPEG form doesn't look so bad, but I think the lesson I've learned is that any time a JPEG is created choices must be made by the software that is making it. Those choices affect the nature of the image. Shooting with RAW allows one to tweak those choices after the fact. With a little research and practice I should be able to create the vibrant, realistic color that I'm looking for.


Thanks again to the above posters for your reponses.

joe_helio Posted at 2018-9-3 10:10
Thanks very much, Paul_IA and FntX, for your responses! There is a lot to learn, and you have given a good starting point.

If anyone has a good suggestion for software that can grade RAW images on a Mac, that would be very helpful. My assumption is that even if the photos seem low-saturation, as long as I had them in RAW I could fix that in post-processing.

You're welcome

PL filters are nothing more than tiny little slots that filter out light waves with a certain orientation. So in order to use them correctly you must take the filter you need and turn it in front of your eye until you see that the filter kicks in and blocks off light. You can see this effect best when looking at the sky. It turns dark-blue-ish if you got the angle correct. It also lets you see through water surface and windows! As soon as you turn around, the filter has to be calibrated again because the direction of the sunlight determines how the filter has to be turned. But even if the filter has been turned in the wrong direction, it does provide a certain blocking effect that you will notice immediately.

joe_helio Posted at 2018-9-4 08:27
After double-checking my filters, I had gotten the polarizing ND filters. So I'm both smarter and dumber than I thought.

I've been messing around with my Photos app (working on a Mac) and downloaded RAWPower, which works as an extension to Photos.

Looks good now!

This is the reason why you always shoot in RAW on ANY device, if you can. The RAW preview and immediate JPEG is just what the camera has seen the moment you shot the picture but the details are preserved in the RAW file itself and your task is it to get this whole information sorted out into the picture you've intended to take.
A computer can't replace the eyes and soul of a photographer ;)

First of all: you are right. A recent iPhone takes very good pictures compared to the Mavic Pro.
And the best (for most users): you don't have to do anything. Just press the shutter button.
The engineers at Apple did a great job removing all the settings and creating an 'automatic mode' that suits a lot of situations.

DJI engineers are great at making drones, but so far have some way to go on the camera part.
But maybe we are spoiled by Apple

Next, the camera system of the Mavic Pro is not as good as that of your (recent) iPhone. Especially since there is no way to get around the DJI Go4 app and DJI's way of dealing with the sensor output.
(with Apple app developers can tweak this a little bit)
So again, DJI is not as 'good' as Apple has become.

So what can you do to get the best out of the Mavic Pro camera?
General:
- Use good lighting conditions. (enough light, sun coming from behind)- If there is a lot of contrast in the picture, try the AEB function and merge the 5 exposures in post.

If you shoot auto:
- Set your EV compensation to -1, this prevents over exposed area's. Or shoot manual.

If you shoot manual:
- Shoot at low ISO values ONLY (there are exceptions, but in general that is the only way to get the most out of your MP)
- Watch your histogram if you shoot manual (make sure the picture is not too dark (on the left) or too bright (on the right)
- You can try and shoot RAW, although that does require more post processing and if you follow the 'general' rules does not give better pictures per sé.

I usually shoot on 'auto', unless there is a need for manual.
With the -1 EV compensation I usually get decent results.

Editing:
- I use Affinity Photo for editing. Almost as good as Photoshop, but by far not that expensive (around € 50,- one time)

PS, good composition is far more important than the technical image quality.
Some of the best pictures show a lot of noise and have very bad 'image quality'.
So if you are new to all of this, focus on flying and taking beautiful pictures of the world around you.
Forget about the camera settings (except the -1 exposure compensation, I would recommend that for 'auto')

You probably want some kind of editor anyway, so I would suggest you try Affinity Photo, if you want to learn that part. (there is a lot of info online about Affinity Photo)
But there might be more simple editors that get you there. Maybe even on your Mac already (PC user here)