Best Photo With Vision Challenge - Curious Buyer Inquires

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Quick Background:
I do some hobby golf course photography for a golf website I own. I am intrigued by the phantom vision but the photo quality I have seen seems grainy. As an aside, I wonder if it is because the camera is about the same as the first generation iPhone or if the shutter speed is not fast enough to take a clear shot while this thing wobbles in the air. (if it is the latter is true then fear the RAW format will not help...a blurred shot with more data is still a blurred shot)

So I propose the following challenge.- Post your best photo take with the Phantom Vision

1) best photo take untouched - no crop, no straighten, no nothing...I want to see the best it can do right from the camera.

2) best photo photoshopped - ok..straighten it, boost some contrast..but I want to see the image at its highest file size to see clarity/sharpness. Tree leaves need to look like tree leaves..not pixelated green blobs.

If beggars can be choosers...shoot from 100-200 feet. I want to see some earthly features and details..not the view from the moon.

I do resize my photos for the site to 975x350...I have take some shots people have posted on their phantom Vision and reduced sized, increase sharpness, and photoshopped and the quality is still really amateurish...like 2006 smartphone bad.

Can someone change my opinion please...I want to pull the trigger on buying one but so far have not been impressed with photo quality.

As a really big aside:
I am really torn between the vision and the phantom2 and using a gopro. The simplicity and image capturing qualities of the vision is awesome. I think the phantom 2 is the route for better picture quality but I dread sending up a gopro taking photos every 5 seconds and have to sift through 1000 photos to get 5 good ones...or exporting shots from a video feed. (unless they are super clear)

Maybe someone can shed some light on that too.

((I am not looking for Time Life book quality shoots...I think a golf hole take from 100-200 feet is a cool perspective...I want photos that look clear/crisp and have some quality to them.

Thanks in advanced to anyone who has chimed in.
 
Re: Best Photo With Vision Challenge - Curious Buyer Inquire

Just adding a few things..I am not trying to be critical of the vision. It is first generation...the whole art of taking photos in the air with a camera that needs to weigh next to nothing is a newer industry. I just wonder if I need to wait a year or two for technology to catch up with my expectations...or lower the bar for my expectations. The photo quality of let say the iPhone has come a long way since 2005. I shoot a lot of website shots now with my iPhone and some cannot tell the difference between photos from my $5000 camera vs my $300 phone.

Here is a shot take of a golf course I do the website for
https://www.facebook.com/FairwaysofWoodside (click on the header graphic to expand)

It was taken (I think) this summer with a phantom 1 and a gopro (not sure what model)...the photo is like a 6 or 7 in terms of clarity/sharpness. The lower left side looks more like a paintbrush painting of grass than a picture. I get it..that the quality will never be so good you can see each individual blade of grass...but it shouldn't look like how I see grass after 6 beers.
 
Re: Best Photo With Vision Challenge - Curious Buyer Inquire

I am an avid SLR/DSLR photographer, and have been the user of multiple DSLR and point and shoot digital cameras since their entry into the market. The P2V camera is up to par with any point and shoot camera I've used, and as we know does stuff most don't, it can be controlled from the ground while flying. Love it. Here are a couple of samples from my P2V. The first image is a five photo composite, lens corrected (straitened), minor levels and color adjustments, and stitched together in Photoshop. Five minutes work. The second has some minor exposure/color adjustments.

http://www.pbase.com/image/153942640/original.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/image/153942653/original.jpg
 
Re: Best Photo With Vision Challenge - Curious Buyer Inquire

Thanks your two photos are the best I have seen. Why did you stitch photos together? Narrow the field of scope and reduce the photo bend?
 
Re: Best Photo With Vision Challenge - Curious Buyer Inquire

Here are a couple of shots I took from my first flight day. It was overcast, but I found the quality very good, considering I was using the default settings.
Original straight from camera: http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7428/11616292474_2774354f2b_o.jpg
11616292474_ba371f0d89_b.jpg


Photoshopped, saturation, crop, brightness, contrast, unsharpen mask.
11616164063_d07dd03fa1_o.jpg
 
Re: Best Photo With Vision Challenge - Curious Buyer Inquire



Here's a shot I took of our Gun Club (Trap, Skeet, Sporting Clays) from about 300' on a sunny day in late November. The original is much higher resolution, but due to size limits, I had to cut this down.
 

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Re: Best Photo With Vision Challenge - Curious Buyer Inquire

The FC200 need I think, a firmware that has the following:

Control Shutter Speed, (No Tripod, No hands, lot of motors vibations, phantom movement etc.)
RAW Format (Lot of artifacts) 15 to 20% Image quality improvement ?
and
Lenses as 4 or 5.4 mm
better Camera support for minimizing vibrations

or new model camera (Only Photos) fix with phantom vision with quality of the Sony RX100 for example with Wfi control, I´m photographer and I do not care to make videos.

Is my Opinion

brianweis said:
Quick Background:
I do some hobby golf course photography for a golf website I own. I am intrigued by the phantom vision but the photo quality I have seen seems grainy. As an aside, I wonder if it is because the camera is about the same as the first generation iPhone or if the shutter speed is not fast enough to take a clear shot while this thing wobbles in the air. (if it is the latter is true then fear the RAW format will not help...a blurred shot with more data is still a blurred shot)

So I propose the following challenge.- Post your best photo take with the Phantom Vision

1) best photo take untouched - no crop, no straighten, no nothing...I want to see the best it can do right from the camera.

2) best photo photoshopped - ok..straighten it, boost some contrast..but I want to see the image at its highest file size to see clarity/sharpness. Tree leaves need to look like tree leaves..not pixelated green blobs.

If beggars can be choosers...shoot from 100-200 feet. I want to see some earthly features and details..not the view from the moon.

I do resize my photos for the site to 975x350...I have take some shots people have posted on their phantom Vision and reduced sized, increase sharpness, and photoshopped and the quality is still really amateurish...like 2006 smartphone bad.

Can someone change my opinion please...I want to pull the trigger on buying one but so far have not been impressed with photo quality.

As a really big aside:
I am really torn between the vision and the phantom2 and using a gopro. The simplicity and image capturing qualities of the vision is awesome. I think the phantom 2 is the route for better picture quality but I dread sending up a gopro taking photos every 5 seconds and have to sift through 1000 photos to get 5 good ones...or exporting shots from a video feed. (unless they are super clear)

Maybe someone can shed some light on that too.

((I am not looking for Time Life book quality shoots...I think a golf hole take from 100-200 feet is a cool perspective...I want photos that look clear/crisp and have some quality to them.

Thanks in advanced to anyone who has chimed in.
 
Re: Best Photo With Vision Challenge - Curious Buyer Inquire

Thanks for those that have posted...the photos posted are better than previously seen. The one thing I noticed is the quality is solid in the middle but the edges get fuzzy. I believe if I crop some of it out if the photos on the whole will look better. (once again I am shooting for the web and I eventually get my photos down to 975x350.
 
Re: Best Photo With Vision Challenge - Curious Buyer Inquire

Just remember as of right now it not possible to read the RAW files and it's a big deal for anybody serious for photography. I am waiting to see when this function is available as we all know this is where the secret is with all camera, you don't want just 20% of the information taken by the camera (JPEG). Don't get it until this is possible if you want it for Usable photography. We are a bunch of photographer here just waiting for this to happen.

Stephane

www.stephanecouture.com
 
Re: Best Photo With Vision Challenge - Curious Buyer Inquire

I have a photo for you, but I can't figure out how to post it here?

Ron
 
Re: Best Photo With Vision Challenge - Curious Buyer Inquire

Here is a photo taken at about 200 feet. I applied the lens correction filter and straightened it in Photoshop, but not much else. It's a little soft around the edges, but as wide as the field of view is, you can probably afford to crop the image slightly. Unfortunately, when I downsized it to 600 KB to fit on this forum, it lost much of its sharpness. I could email the original, but I don't have your address.

Ron
 

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Re: Best Photo With Vision Challenge - Curious Buyer Inquire

Nice shots..thanks. I was leaning hard toward the gopro route...looks like the raw is coming soon and looks good.

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5454

I am going to wait a few more days.
 

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