P4 Pro Camera Is Incredible - From a Professional Photographer

Found out how to get the h265 codec installed in PP. rename .mov to .mp4 and import. It prompts you to install codec. Now .mov will work too.
I went through a load of trouble to get this issue fixed. I'm talking hours and hours of uninstalling, cleaning up using special adobe tools, reinstalling, talking to their support again.. If it's named .mov there is no way it will open.

And now I tested what you said and it works as if nothing was ever wrong. Lol thanks a LOT.
 
I went through a load of trouble to get this issue fixed. I'm talking hours and hours of uninstalling, cleaning up using special adobe tools, reinstalling, talking to their support again.. If it's named .mov there is no way it will open.

And now I tested what you said and it works as if nothing was ever wrong. Lol thanks a LOT.
I take payment in craft beers :D
 
Agreed .... The P4 was nice, but coming from a Phantom 3 Advanced, it wasn't enough to purchase one (for photography stills). I considered buying the Inspire 1 /Zenmuse X5, but the price and size was hard to justify. It was a no brainer for me to pick up the P4P. I've been doing extensive image testings the past 2 weeks with it. Definitely blows away the old 1/2.3 sensor. Especially in low light. Here's a test image I shot the other week. Some post was added.
can you post 100% crop? and shooting info...
 
the p4pro is great if you come from a phantom 4.

i'm using right now a ricoh gr with a phantom 2 and an esacopter with gimbal and shutter for photos.
from the samples i see so far the apsc sensor is another league...and in addiction i'm not convinced by the lens.
the ricoh has perfect lens while the phantom 4 is good but show not good corner till f8.
sure it's a nice combo and i will buy one but i still want an apsc camera sensor..
 
Compare the Sony RX100IV (smaller, stacked sensor similar to P4P) to the Panasonic GH4 (larger sensor same as X5/X5R) and you will see that the smaller sensor can hold its own against the larger one. DOF is obviously different but there isn't always a clear advantage in size for latitude and sensitivity.
maybe...the sensor is the same as sony rx....if you look the duo mark the microfourthird is better in every respect.
 
Well my trial of premiere pro is not off to a good start lol. :(
Just go ahead and buy it man. Your gonna need it eventually for sure. I am just starting out with Premier Pro a month ago. Quite a learning curve for sure. But stay after it and YouTube your *** off on it and you'll be fine. It's awesome!
 
For stills yes, video is crippled. H.365 banding, slog useless.........4K 60fps is a joke at 100mbs transfer rate. Side sensors not available in p mode, and it looks like there are a bunch of folks loosing connections with the tx.
You don't fly drones do you man? Yuneec employee? lol
 
As a heads up to folks just getting started with Premiere Pro let me recommend an online series of PP tutorials by a guy that goes by the YouTube handle of "Chinfat". I'd recommend starting with this video then following through that series.

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Then, you can check out his new series that covers the newer release of PP.

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It's probably easier starting here as the video are more logically grouped this way and easier to follow the series from start to finish.

chinfat


Brian
 
Just go ahead and buy it man. Your gonna need it eventually for sure. I am just starting out with Premier Pro a month ago. Quite a learning curve for sure. But stay after it and YouTube your *** off on it and you'll be fine. It's awesome!
Yep we are buying it. I love it, more than Sony vegas.
 
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As a heads up to folks just getting started with Premiere Pro let me recommend an online series of PP tutorials by a guy that goes by the YouTube handle of "Chinfat". I'd recommend starting with this video then following through that series.

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Then, you can check out his new series that covers the newer release of PP.

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

It's probably easier starting here as the video are more logically grouped this way and easier to follow the series from start to finish.

chinfat


Brian
Can't agree with you more on this guy Raptorman! Love the way this guy teaches. Talks very fast but very thorough!
 
Hi All,

I just wanted to make one more observation on the P4P vs X5. It's the nature of the noise (on stills anyway). On the X5, when you boost shadows you see severe banding in the noise. The P4P images seem to tolerate much more push, and the noise is more random from what I've seen so far.

Malcolm
 
I would encourage the ambitious to take on After Effects after learning Premiere. It's a somewhat daunting interface at first, but plenty of good online tutorials are out there.

While Premiere is where you'll be making your cuts and syncing audio, After Effects is where you'll turn for masking, color grading, compositing, animated titles, etc.

It's the perfect compliment to Premiere and integrates seamlessly into your workflow. I know it's not for everyone, but for me it has added immensely to what i can do with video. Imo it really makes the difference between a good youtube clip and a professional looking piece.
 
Hi All,

I just wanted to make one more observation on the P4P vs X5. It's the nature of the noise (on stills anyway). On the X5, when you boost shadows you see severe banding in the noise. The P4P images seem to tolerate much more push, and the noise is more random from what I've seen so far.

Malcolm

The same is true of video. Low light noise is greatly reduced. Higher ISO settings are much more usable.
 
So today I upgraded from an Inspire 1 Pro to a P4 Pro. Yes you read that right, the 1" sensor in the P4 Pro blows away the Micro 4/3rds sensor in the I1 Pro's X5.

The good

1) Sensor size - DJI finally upped the sensor size for a Phantom family member to 1" and the improvement is nothing short of incredible. I posted over a year ago that the only thing that would make me buy another Phantom is if they improved the camera; which is why I sat out the P4.

2) Dynamic Range - This is more important to photographers and videographers than just about any other specification; somewhere I read it has between 11 and 11.5 stops of dynamic range, that's close to pro series DSLR capabilities! So of course I had to see it for myself, the attached photos show how incredible the dynamic range is on the P4 Pro.

3) H.265 Encoding - My #1 gripe for everything DJI creates has been their awful H.264 implementation. Most users mistakenly think that their footage does not look that great because DJI limited the bitrate to 60Mbs, the reality is; DJI's H.264 compression implementation is terrible. The bitrate is more than sufficient, but after they get done compressing it, there's so little clean data to work with that it is very hard to get professional results with the compressed footage. So when they introduced the H.265 codec I have high hopes that they also tweaked their H.264 algorithms. My DSLRs use the same codec and bitrate (or lower) and the footage is much cleaner. But more on H.265 in a minute.

4) Mechanical Shutter - This is huge; no more rolling shutter. The P4 Pro may be the only mass produced drone in the world right now with a mechanical shutter. It is mind blowing that they were able to keep the price so low, with a sensor size that large, and still throw in a mechanical shutter.

5) Adjustable Aperture - Finally...the ability to adjust the F stop to control the shutter speed. I know many photographers just use ND filters but I never have; you are risking burning out the camera servos due to the increased weight on the end of the camera (even a few oz could throw off the extremely delicate gimbal balance), and with an ND filter you cannot adjust the filter strength without landing and changing the filter.

6) Minimal Barrel Distortion - This blew me away, I thought sure that I would have to make my own lens profile to fix the barrel distortion until Adobe released one, but in my first few test shots I do not see any. Another incredible feat by DJI. I'm sure pixel peepers will be able to find some, but no end customer will be able to see it.

7) Battery life - The I1 Pro takes great pictures but has terrible battery life. Sometimes to frame that perfect shot or while waiting for that perfect shot I ran out of battery juice with the I1 Pro because it was just too short. Having a camera like this tied to a platform that can stay in the air more than 6 minutes will be a big improvement.

8) Resolution - Of course the increased resolution is nice but I care more about dynamic range than resolution. I would take a 5MP sensor over 20MP any day if the 5MP gave me 20 stops of DR.

The bad (so far after just one flight)

1) What used to be the shutter button is now I think the focus button. Very minor but I'm going to remap that button to being the shutter button.

2) H.265 - I learned the hard way that even though my NLE says it supports H.265 and my video card says it supports it as well; I was unable to edit or even play anything shot using the H.265 codec. Also it appears that YouTube does not support H.265 encoded video files. So tomorrow I will have to shoot my test footage using H.264 compression. I can only hope that DJI improved their H.264 codec while they were at it. I had planned on shooting everything in H.265 then transcoding the final product to H.264.

3) Sensors - This post is mainly focused on the camera and video capabilities but the P4 Pro seemed to have problems thinking something was in front of it and came to a screeching halt on the return trip to land. I'm hoping this will not become a major issue where the sensors "see" things that aren't there and impede flight progress. I'm not sure yet if it's possible since I have not been through the whole DJI App yet, but it would be nice to be able to turn off all of those sensors if desired.

Two Gotchas

* Autofocus - I have seen a lot of users complaining about blurry pictures and a lot of discussion around Autofocus. The reality is the "Pro" in it's name signifies this is not meant for the casual aerial enthusiast. If you want to leave everything on Auto and shoot everything in Infinity focus, then this is not the right model for you. For the I1 Pro I have always manually picked my focus point before pulling the trigger, and for video I always switch to continuous focus before recording. I then switch back to spot focus for photography; its the best way to get tack sharp pictures; even for landscapes.

* Shutter Speed - Remember folks, now that DJI has provided a way to change the Aperature you have to keep an eye on your shutter speed if you want sharp pictures. I tested this by shooting at F11 which resulted in 1/25 shutter speed; sure enough it looked sharp on my tablet and was blurry in post.

Sample Footage

I have attached two pictures showing how incredible the dynamic range is of this sensor. I shot right into the sun using all automatic settings (AWB, Auto Shutter, Auto Aperature, etc) then post processed the footage. The results blow away what I could have gotten with even the I1 Pro and come close to what my full frame DSLRs can do. Of course to get these types of results you will need to shoot RAW and post process. There was so much detail in the lows and even the highs had an impressive amount of recoverable data. I can only imagine what a 3-5 shot HDR bracket would do.

Thanks for the credible and useful information - Pro and Con. Information is power.
What city is that on the right side of the horizon? It reminds me of an aerial I shot about 25 years ago in NC w/ Charlotte on the horizon like that.
Terry
 
Wrong wrong wrong!
I don't want to address every misconception in this thread (there are many) but I really wonder about the original poster thinking that video is shot with mechanical shutter! Can you imagine a mechanical shutter tripping 30 or 60 times per second!!? This raises questions about his other claims that the new P4P 1 inch sensor blows away the 4/3 sensor on the X5 camera. There are so many claims on forums like this and people just believe all that they read and don't find out for themselves. A lot of it is absolute garbage!

I just finished some non-scientific testing today by printing out to A3 size some sections of P4P photo and a photo from an X5 camera. I can tell you there is no blowing away of anything. In fact I have to look really hard to tell which is which they are that similar. If anything the P4P camera has a tiny bit more noise. (Both were shot and processed identically). No noise reduction on either. They are very,very similar. I did this because I am tossing up between getting a P4P or an X5 camera for my Inspire. (tests were done with a borrowed camera). I am yet to do video testing.

Another thing many of you have wrong is the 1" sensor is not 1" across or diagonal. It in fact has nothing to do with a one inch measurement. The 1 inch sensor is actually 15.86 mm diagonal, look it up. The "1 inch" comes from the days when images were made with photo tubes. It is the minimum size tube that was needed to make a circle to fit the image they were trying make. Many people make the mistake of thinking the 1 inch sensor is 1 inch across or diagonal .. it is not. The 4/3 sensor also is not 4/3 inch, it is 21.6mm diagonal. The 4/3 sensor has about twice the area of the 1 inch sensor if you do the maths. So the 1 inch sensor does very well against the bigger 4/3 sensor if I can't tell the difference in an A3 print.
 
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@marko1953 you can consider the 1" (25.4mm) sensor as the crop factor related to 35mm standard film lens.
Anyway I own (or owned) many DSLR Canon camera with high end EF-L lens. At the end, a complete flying camera like P4Pro is not completely comparable but, in any case, not so far and it's absolute good enough for the price. Remember that a good mirrorless WITHOUT lens like Fujifilm X-T2 or X-PRO2 are priced at 1500-1600 Euro, then add a lens for other 600-800 Euro! And they don't fly unless thrown from the window;)...
Few days ago I have used a friend's Canon reflex like 750D with the "bottle bottom glass" lens they give you in the kit box that is quite bad, compared to P4P camera still photo.
 
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@marko1953 you can consider the 1" (25.4mm) sensor as the crop factor related to 35mm standard film lens.
Anyway I own (or owned) many DSLR Canon camera with high end EF-L lens. At the end, a complete flying camera like P4Pro is not completely comparable but, in any case, not so far and it's absolute good enough for the price. Remember that a good mirrorless WITHOUT lens like Fujifilm X-T2 or X-PRO2 are priced at 1500-1600 Euro, then add a lens for other 600-800 Euro! And they don't fly unless thrown from the window;)...
Few days ago I have used a friend's Canon reflex like 750D with the "bottle bottom glass" lens they give you in the kit box that is quite bad, compared to P4P camera still photo.

The 1" sensor is NOT 25.4mm. It is 13.2mm x 8.8mm. It has a 2.7 crop factor compared to 35mm full frame. I am struggling to see the point of your post. I agree the P4P camera /lens seems to be very good.
 
@marko1953
What I want to say is simply that p4p is a good camera for my needs and for the money spent. Otherwise you can go to www.red.com for excellent cameras....


Sent from my iPad using PhantomPilots
 
can somebody post a 100% file?
i have seen lot of files but corner seems not very good and lot of ca. u can fix second in pp but bad corner not.
all in all superb drone, a bit overpriced and to spend 1700 euro without any redundancy makes me a bit nervous.
 

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