P4P Optimal settings for Still Photography?

Ebjerke · Feb 28, 2018

Hello, and thanks in advance for helping me out.

I realized I know precious little about the CAMERA in my P4P, so I thought I would find out. Here are my questions:

1. What do most consider the "sweet spot" as far as aperture for this camera?

2. When the aircraft is hovering in place, what is the minimum shutter speed needed to get sharp photos free of camera shake?

3. Obviously the P4P camera will have more noise at lower ISO than I am used to with my semi-pro DSLR. I am going to try to keep it at 200 or 400 tops to minimize my noise. Does that sound right?

Thanks!

Tomas Wangen · Feb 28, 2018

Ebjerke said:
Hello, and thanks in advance for helping me out.

I realized I know precious little about the CAMERA in my P4P, so I thought I would find out. Here are my questions:

1. What do most consider the "sweet spot" as far as aperture for this camera?

2. When the aircraft is hovering in place, what is the minimum shutter speed needed to get sharp photos free of camera shake?

3. Obviously the P4P camera will have more noise at lower ISO than I am used to with my semi-pro DSLR. I am going to try to keep it at 200 or 400 tops to minimize my noise. Does that sound right?

Thanks!

1. F/5.6
2. Depends on wind etc. 1/60 should be safe. Faster is better
3. Stick to iso100. Only increase as last resort (or when speed is essential such as a mapping mission in non ideal light)

Note that color noise is evident even at iso 100. Baseline luminance noise reduction 15 and color 50 is a good start especially when lifting shadows. (Lightroom / camera raw values)

Pjotr · Feb 28, 2018

I agree to Tomas Wengen but in my opinion the motiv is more important than the technical truth. I made a 360 Pano and used 0,4 sec/ F2,8. Appends one of 34 pictures. No noise reduction. No sharpening. The P4P is incredible stable when exposing Panos. Especially in tripod mode.

Ebjerke · Mar 1, 2018

Tomas Wangen said:
1. F/5.6
2. Depends on wind etc. 1/60 should be safe. Faster is better
3. Stick to iso100. Only increase as last resort (or when speed is essential such as a mapping mission in non ideal light)

Note that color noise is evident even at iso 100. Baseline luminance noise reduction 15 and color 50 is a good start especially when lifting shadows. (Lightroom / camera raw values)

Thank you very very much.

Meta4 · Mar 1, 2018

Pjotr said:
The P4P is incredible stable when exposing Panos. Especially in tripod mode.

Tripod mode is badly named.
Tripod mode doesn't do anything to make the Phantom more stable for long exposure.
Tripod mode just slows down the flying controls for slow, precise flying.

Meta4 · Mar 1, 2018

Ebjerke said:
1. What do most consider the "sweet spot" as far as aperture for this camera?

There's no real sweet spot for the lens.
It's very good from full open to f5.6 and still fairly good at smaller apertures.

John Locke · Mar 2, 2018

Meta4 said:
Tripod mode is badly named.
Tripod mode doesn't do anything to make the Phantom more stable for long exposure.
Tripod mode just slows down the flying controls for slow, precise flying.

Agreed, they should have been named it TURTLE mode, like Yuneec. Tripods specifically designed to not move, keeping the camera solid as a rock. That's clearly not what "Tripod Mode" in the Phantom does. It's a very bad name, embarrassing for DJI to have such a poor translator on staff when they named that. Could have been called "Slow Mode", "Snail Mode", "Creep Mode", "Snail Mode", "Steady Mode", "Easy Mode" "Slug Mode" "Crawl Mode".... there are many names what would have been more appropriate than "Tripod".

What I find amazing and fun is 2 second exposures on a calm day. The P4P is incredible shooting long exposures at night at 150' in the air. Freeways are fun to shoot at 2sec exposures at night.