P4P image not true 20MP

If you are shooting raw for panoramas and photogrammetry, you are fooling yourself.
You are only going to put your images in a blender (stitching program) and no-one is going to see the difference.
Jpgs work just fine for panoramas and photogrammetry.

In addition to what was already said above to refute this logic, our issue isn't with the DNG output. The jpeg output retains all of the same issues and massively cropped shot in an attempt to reduce said issues - so it offers no benefit.
 
So then, how much is this crop? Could the enlarged image lead to noise, besides the fact you're not getting the 20mp when working for photogrammetry?
 
I've never used that package, but my morbid curiosity did me in. I downloaded UFRaw and opened some images I'm working on now.

Holy CRAP! My impression of the P4Pro camera has been permanently ruined! It's like waking up with a hangover realizing the woman in the bed next to you looks NOTHING like the hot babe you drunk-flirted with at the pub. (Not that I get drunk and take girls home, I'm happily married, but you get the idea how I feel about it.)

The barrel distortion is huge, the color noise is HUGE, and the vignette is absolutely HUGE HUGE.

Ya gotta hand it to DJI for choosing to automatically perform the processing natively in the drone so that users don't see how bad the source image actually is. I guarantee that the guys that did all the YouTube and web reviews haven't seen these source images or the reviews would have been much different.

After examining some landscape images, I now see where some of the image quality hits are occurring, especially the chromatic aberrations, which appear to be introduced in the automatic post-processing. While they were at it, they should have run some chromatic repairs in their automatic raw process because that's the one thing I always feel a need to fix.

Well honeymoon is over... now I'm way less optimistic about the kind of results I'm going to get using the drone for certain high tech applications. Too bad they can't do a version with a high quality rectilinear lens... oh wait, that would be the inspire 2 with XR5 that costs 4x as much.

I have been shooting top of the line Canon DSLR's for the last 12 years - 1DsMkII, 1DsMkIII, 5D, 5DMkII, 5DMkIII, and currently still have the 5DIII and two 5Ds (50mp) bodies. All Canon L glass too, including the superb 17 TS-E, 24mm TS-E Mk II and 16-35 f4 L that is also tack sharp.

My impression of the P4Pro image quality after learning about the barrel distortion and vignetting?

Same as it was before I knew about it. For the price - I am still stunned at the quality.

Would I enter this camera and lens into a competition for best MTF chart of the year award? No. But I will not hesitate to use it for paying work and I will be proud to offer what it can do to my clients because, well, they are not paying for a camera operator. They are paying for a photographer. It is a tool. I am convinced that in the right hands the P4P does its job admirably.
 
I am convinced that in the right hands the P4P does its job admirably.

You certainly won't get an argument from me about the quality of photographs for straight forward photography. The distortions are only an issue for photogrammetry work, which I do a lot. I didn't mean to give the wrong impression.

I've only had it for a few weeks, and already I'm really pretty shocked that I'm getting images this good from a drone. The resolution is what sold me on it in the first place, and after the automatic lens corrections are done, it's very usable for video/film/photo work. If I can just get my tablet working reliably, I think I'm going to enjoy it a great deal. I've got the whole week lined up with shoots, so hopefully it's more reliable than my P2, which randomly dropped out of the sky on every flight... and the flights weren't many as a result. So far I've had a dozen solid flights with it, and only my tablet software has been an issue. Fortunately, the flying part is solid.

But the most shocking thing about the system is how good it does in low light. I can start shooting a good 45 minutes before sunrise, and up to an hour after sunset, and get incredible images that I wouldn't have imagined possible. The RAW files make that possible, of course, but the camera lens is really fast and actually pretty dang sweet for what it is. I shot this on my second day of shooting with it. I had to darken the image significantly because it looked like a mid-day shot even though the entire scene was in shadow... it really does great in low light and high contrast situations.

Pictures are worth a thousand words, as it were, so here are a few to illustrate low-light shooting.

Fantasy2.jpg
 
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This is my very first photo with the drone on my first actual flight, and it was shot on a severely overcast evening about half an hour after sunset, I mean I was SHOCKED that it picked up anything at all, let alone something this detailed. It was only a test flight, just so I could familiarize myself with the rig and be ready for sunrise the following day, and I wasn't planning on getting anything worthwhile at all. I was talking to myself the whole time saying "there's no way this is gonna get anything in this light." Ha! So wrong.
RedCliffs.jpg
 
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Road Column.jpg
This one was also shot about half hour after sunset on an overcast day. This was on my second day of shooting. It almost looks like a mid-day shot. It's a photographer's dream, really.
 
To my knowledge, you will get true 20MP when you're using 16:9, the image has been cropped when you shoot 3:2
 
A 50% loss of image area is a massive crop. I would guess that the DJI software gives up less than 10%.

Yup. 10% loss to correct distortion & vignette is nothing. Actually the vignette isn't completely cropped out, but a feathered lightening from the corners.

As far as not being able to see the Uncorrected image in Lightroom, can't you just go into the "Lens Correction" tab, UNcheck the lens profile box? Then choose Manual for corrections and do the yourself to the degree you want.

For panoramas, I've been going them on dslrs since 2007-2008, used to use Nikon 16mm, or Sigma 8mm. Huge distortion. Lots of vignetting- and my panos then and now in Lightroom always look WAY better if I do lens corrections first, especially vignette to get a smooth blend.
Removing the CA actually improves the sharpness out toward the edges.

For panos with the Phantom 3 and when I get a 4, I usually do a 50% overlap. Could do less, but they come out far better, less errors with 50%.
So what if I have to do an extra frame?
1e292ff03607174789eed68ef0468116.jpg
 
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"Pro" lulz indeed. I'm gonna try hard not to complain too much, because I'm still getting a 20mp aerial image, which I couldn't do before in this small of a form factor. It's a HUGE leap ahead from the 12mp gopro stills I've been using. The results aren't stellar, but will still be useful for some of my more creative projects. Here's a little render I did last night with three elements I processed from P4P photos.
A beautiful picture my friend. Keep showing them.
 
I believe that Lightroom (Adobe Camera Raw) provides automatic corrections for most types of "raw" files. In other words, these raw files are not exactly raw. I think you would find similar surprises if you extracted the true raw data from other cameras as well.
 
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