P3P Stills Camera quirks

[ghinson]

After one week of use, I have some thoughts on the camera.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that it has a setting to shoot 3 or 5 auto brackets. I like having the option of HDR processing in post and prefer to have 5 varying exposures than adjusting the EV on the fly, looking at a reflecting, shiny monitor. The first few times, however, I set the AEB to 5, I got 3 exposures. Not 5. Not sure why. I later reset it, and now seem to get 5. It might've just been my thick thumbs.

There isn't great buffering feedback from the camera, and if you're not careful, it is easy to miss a series of shots. I was flying offshore this morning, looking back towards the shoreline, and decided I wanted to take three sequential shots, all three 5 AEB, looking left, middle and to the right. Then later stitch them into a panorama. Took the left facing series, took the middle facing, and then took the right. After each set, you see a little swirling blue circle around that shutter button, implying something is loading. Sometimes it spin time is short, other times it is long. It seems like, if you push the shutter (at least in the 5 AEB setting) while the blue circle is still spinning, it doesn't take a picture. So trying the above pano series twice this morning, I didn't get either set of the right facing pics.

Also, I notice, sometimes I get the artificial shutter sound when I take the 5, and other times I do not. (Could be my iPhone 6+, I assume.)

Interested to know if anyone else has had this experience.

So far, I'm not overly impressed with the quality of the stills. They are at least as good as the ones from the GoPro, but they pale in comparison to the quality of the video. Not sure why. Hopefully I will get a better feel for the proper settings.

Anyone with enough experience with one of these yet to offer tips on how to maximize the quality of the stills?

 

[loganboyd]

1) Are you shooting DNG or JPG?
2) the AEB is only 2/3rds of a stop apart so even on 5 you only get +/- 1 1/3 stops which isn't enough. It should either be customizable or a full stop between. which would give you +/- 2 stops.
3) I need to do some more testing but yes, sometimes the blue swirley takes a long time to finish writing to disk which is weird being that it easily writes 60mbps during 4K video recording
4) If you are in single shot and recording a video, you can press the camera button and you will hear the "shutter sound" but it does NOT take a photo

 

[ghinson]

I am shooting DNG, though it still has a compressed jpeg-y look to it. I would say that my iPhone jpegs look better than the DNG stills from the Phantom, but, to be fair, I haven't taken a shot on my phone from 80M up either.

The AEB range isn't good enough for most HDR applications, you're right. But It's still a decent range to just make sure you get the right exposure. And the files are still small enough and do not take up much space. So, as long as I don't lose shots like today, I'll keep trying.

 

[cascadeflyer]

You need to run the raw pics through light room. Then you will see the magic of shooting raw.

 

[ghinson]

I do. Is there a Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw camera profile available yet?

 

[waterglobe]

I use the dji inspire profile in Lightroom 6. Works pretty well.
Tested doing some bracketing today (first photo). But I find the second photo better, which is just a single shot. Both are processed in Lightroom.

Photos taken in Malmo, Sweden, around the corner from where I live.

 

[ghinson]

Looks nice. I will test single vs AEB shots to see if there is a difference. I think one generally good idea is to get closer than you think. Should be sharper. Now, the Inspire profile. Where do I find it? Adobe site?

 

[ghinson]

Found the Profile in Lens Correction for Inspire. I didn't think to look. (Funny seeing DJI listed with Nikon, Canon, Zeiss, etc.) It helps. Especially with the funny horizon distortion. Thanks.

 

[dhaslam]

The multi exposure setting doesn't seem to work very well, there seems to be varying numbers of exposures and also seems to make the pilot app close down. I didn't have time to line up properly with the rows of silage for the photograph below because raindrops were starting to fall and the go straight onto the lens filter. At least it is easy to remove for cleaning.