Propellers in the way

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Hello everyone,

I'm seriously considering purchasing the P3. Note that I have not had any Phantom so far.
The one thing I noticed are folks complaining about the propellers showing up in the videos of their P2s, depending on the moves they were making. Which meant cropping & resizing at editing.
I am no professional videomaker but I like clean videos and being able to enjoy the full potential of the device.
- How much of an issue is this on the P2V+? are we talking 50% of the shots impacted or 2%?
- Do you reckon the P3 will suffer from the same pb? or will the modified landing gears and camera FoV have an effect on that? I guess a P3 owner or DJI person would know but perhaps the answer can be infered from the specs.

thanks in advance for your answers!
 
Not a big deal.
Props will show if you have the camera up and fly fast but with the camera down a little and easy on the speed the issue is gone.
The camera on the P3 has a narrower field of view instead of the fisheye lens which will also reduce the incidence of props in shot.
 
morhedec, it looks like the props are still going to show if you fly aggressively:
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To be fair .. that was Blade's first flight and he says he was driving it hard to see what the bird would do. Not the way you fly when filming and no surprise props are showing..
His second test flight is completely different
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thanks for the quick answers and the videos - very useful.
The comparison between the 2 vids shows how slow/smooth you need to be if you don't want the props to show up. Should be ok most of the times but means following a moving target may be an issue. The first vid was also a bit worrying when the owner is yawning the drone - very shaky.
For me, seeing the props in the frame kills the viewer's experience - at least when the objective is to immerse folks into the landscape vs. showing how your latest drone flight went.

The Inspire 1 surely doesn't suffer from that but that's another story (and many existing posts)
 
also dont forget you can adjust the camera as your flying. that will help with moving targets and also if you can allow it, where you wont see the props
 
I had and have avoided the propeller effect by remembering which direction the sun is coming from. When the sun is high enough for the light to pass through one of the front props and hit the lens, you get that effect. You aren't actually seeing the prop, just it's shadow. You can see the props when accelerating but a slight tilt down solves this. The prop shadow flashes over the lens rapidly. I am sure that the P3 will have this issue as well as does the Inspire.

The P2V+ 3.0 has another camera issue in which it tries to adjust too rapidly to light changes that causes a much more serious issue to me. I can avoid the prop shadow by careful shot planning but the stair stepping effect is more problematic.

I doubt that cropping the blade shadow effect would help much since the effect is seen in so much of the video, However, with such a wide lens viewpoint, you can just yaw the machine 15 degrees right or left and the problem is gone. I love my phantom and have gotten great video with it. Like all camera equipment, you just have to learn it's quirks and work around then.
 
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thank you Donco234 - I hadn't realized we were seeing the shadows (I should have!) and your explanation makes total sense.
 
thank you Donco234 - I hadn't realized we were seeing the shadows (I should have!) and your explanation makes total sense.
You can see the front props when accelerating hard in the forward direction but that strobing is caused by all that light bouncing around in that lens from the shadows.

I thought about making a lens hood but found it easier just to yaw right or left a few degrees.

None of us know it all but each of knows something that is useful to others.
 
The comparison between the 2 vids shows how slow/smooth you need to be if you don't want the props to show up. Should be ok most of the times but means following a moving target may be an issue.
Two points:
You do realise that the P3 flies doesn't just fly in one direction?
Fly backwards as fast as you like and you won't be seeing any props

There is no more stair stepping when exposure changes now with the P3
Watch the video here to see more ...
http://blog.jeffcable.com/2015/04/dji-just-announced-phantom-3-after.html?m=1
 
The H33d gopro combo gives you horizontal and vertical limit on the gimbal settings in the Phantom assist. This sets the range on how much up/down it can tilt. I wonder if they can enable this in the phantom3.

On my H33d, I restricted mine to 10 degress so it doesn't look all the way up. This prevents props in the video when I am gunning it fwd.
 

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