I have found no need to update from my Phantom 3 Advanced or Pro

photojunky · May 12, 2019

I have seen many side by side comparisons between the Phantom 3 advanced/pro and the most recent drones. I do not see any real difference between any of the videos. I have many flights on my advanced and have replaced one motor, but other than size, to me there is no point in upgrading.
Anyway, it was a wet winter out here in California and I have finally been able to get out more and start flying.

Deleted member 62848 · May 12, 2019

photojunky said:
I have seen many side by side comparisons between the Phantom 3 advanced/pro and the most recent drones. I do not see any real difference between any of the videos. I have many flights on my advanced and have replaced one motor, but other than size, to me there is no point in upgrading.
Anyway, it was a wet winter out here in California and I have finally been able to get out more and start flying.

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Nice , coast line lot like ours in NZ,nice and smooth on the cam aswell and love your dog,I got female Irish wolvehound who comes with me flying
Thanks for sharing

With The Birds · May 12, 2019

P3 A/P are great birds- no question.

Agree it can be difficult to appreciate the quality difference in footage where it has been rendered for YouTube viewing. Make no mistake though- the P4A/P and M2 pull the pants down on any P3 variant if you have a need/desire for it and prepared to spend some time in a decent editing package. The differences are most pronounced with difficult lighting.

Meta4 · May 12, 2019

photojunky said:
I have seen many side by side comparisons between the Phantom 3 advanced/pro and the most recent drones. I do not see any real difference between any of the videos.

The camera on the P4 pro or the Mavic 2 pro has a sensor that's 4 times larger than the sensor in the P3 cameras.
It also has a controllable aperture so you aren't stuck shooting at full open all the time.
These make for a massive improvement in photographic ability.

dronesky · May 12, 2019

What uses or applications will determine if you need a upgrade if you simply fly around taking shots no need but the more experience/sophistication the difference becomes obvious

David_Cambridge · May 13, 2019

All of the on-line services dramatically reduce the quality of the videos uploaded. They throw away around 80% of the image data through lossy compression. This is required to get the streaming to work. The Phanton 4 adv captures 4K video at 100 mbps, and that same footage is served up by YouTube at around 15 mbps.

Looking at the original footage on a good monitor will quickly show the loss. Even VIMEO, which is the best of the lot, shows some loss.

Cellblock776 · May 15, 2019

Yeah, my main UAV is a P3Advanced. I film in 1080p at 60FPS and find it suitable for most of what I need for my real estate or construction progress videos and photos
I post some of my stuff on Vimeo if the client doesn't mind but most of it is stored on a hard drive and never posted anywhere. I don't have much high powered video editing computers or software at the moment so I am limited in what I can produce. Most of the time I pop the SD card out and give it to the client for them to edit up.
I do some jobs for family and friends for peanuts. Sometimes a simple, quick video is enough if they don't want to pay much but still want more than just raw footage. Usually for someone who isn't a professional real estate agent but has a property to rent or lease and want something to post on social media.
So I put something like this together for them real fast,
Or it is a simple job of a house being built and the owners want periodic videos and photos of the progress. So I do short videos like this
The P3A is not the latest and greatest but it is getting what I need in my little corner of the market.

netfolks2000 · May 21, 2019

I have always taken still photos with my drones. I have never found video to be satisfying. I don't find anyone who enters my house with the patience to sit and watch a video but they will admire and look at still photos. So, for that reason, I have never gotten into the big discussions about improving videos or desired to spend hours of my time editing. I only fly for pleasure, however, or to check things on a ranch and surrounding area. I do occasionally go straight up in a more metro area for, again, just a few stills. It is relaxing to me, comforting to know, that I don't need to spend all that editing time sitting in front of a PC. I am not hitting on those of you that do, but do you understand what I mean about how it leaves me with just the pleasure of flying and seeing nice photos, not confining me to more time at a PC than flying?????

photojunky · May 25, 2019

ianzone said:
Nice , coast line lot like ours in NZ,nice and smooth on the cam aswell and love your dog,I got female Irish wolvehound who comes with me flying
Thanks for sharing

I have relatives from your part of the world who said the same thing about our coast. I bet yours is a little warmer. 70 degrees is a very warm summer day by our coast.

photojunky · May 25, 2019

Meta4 said:
The camera on the P4 pro or the Mavic 2 pro has a sensor that's 4 times larger than the sensor in the P3 cameras.
It also has a controllable aperture so you aren't stuck shooting at full open all the time.
These make for a massive improvement in photographic ability.

Good point, but for the average person, they will not mess around with the settings whatsoever. I may consider getting rid of my P3A and upgrade to the Mavic 2.

GlobeCruiser · May 25, 2019

I think it is important for photos to be able to work with the camerasettings. For example, what about the sharpness / depth settings. A good aperture is very important for photography.

photojunky · May 25, 2019

GlobeCruiser said:
I think it is important for photos to be able to work with the camerasettings. For example, what about the sharpness / depth settings. A good aperture is very important for photography.

True, but 99% of the time the camera in a drone is going to be set at infinity so depth of field is not as important. Sharpness is very important. Surprisingly, I have had better luck doing screen grabs through my videos than actually using the P3A camera. Not sure why but the quality is noticeably better and I can't figure out why.

Meta4 · May 25, 2019

photojunky said:
Surprisingly, I have had better luck doing screen grabs through my videos than actually using the P3A camera. Not sure why but the quality is noticeably better and I can't figure out why.

Surprising? Yes, because it shouldn't be true.

By taking screen grabs, you are getting much less resolution than you can get shooting stills.
Stills = 4000×3000 = 12MP
Video = 2704 x1520 = 4MP

With The Birds · May 26, 2019

Meta4 said:
Surprising? Yes, because it shouldn't be true.

By taking screen grabs, you are getting much less resolution than you can get shooting stills.
Stills = 4000×3000 = 12MP
Video = 2704 x1520 = 4MP

I might have a clue to this mystery. I helped someone recently who made a similar claim. The screen grabs from their video footage did look subjectively better. It was because the pre applied video style was providing higher contrast and saturation than was depicted in the unprocessed image files. Another more common than might be expected problem is people are working with the DNG thumbnails for image files which obviously are inferior to a frame grab from video.

photojunky · May 26, 2019

With The Birds said:
I might have a clue to this mystery. I helped someone recently who made a similar claim. The screen grabs from their video footage did look subjectively better. It was because the pre applied video style was providing higher contrast and saturation than was depicted in the unprocessed image files. Another more common than might be expected problem is people are working with the DNG thumbnails for image files which obviously are inferior to a frame grab from video.

honestly, I have no idea why the photos are better when grabbed from the video editor. The other poster was correct and the file size is only about 4 megabytes. I have shot photos in both raw and jpeg and they do not come out nearly as crisp. Today if the wind dies down I am going to investigate thoroughly. I rarely shoot photos with my Phantom anyway so it's no big deal, but now it's got me thinking.