Soft focus on P3 Adv. Any solutions?

Ievgen Bevz · Jan 14, 2016

Hi everyone!

Yep, this is another topic about soft focus issues.

Just hoping, that comunity have came up with some general solutions by now...

After few test flights have noticed that stills are quite blurry. So there I went and took side-by-side pictures of the same object with my cell (Xiaomi Redmi 1S; cheap old chinese barphone) and with P3A. And here is what I've got:
[file]P3A VS Cell|center|P3A camera comparison[/file]

Drone was sittin on a parapetee, props off. Cellphone was just hand held.
To me image quality of P3A is way below "shitty". It really looks like either sensor has tons of smudge on it, or lens is out of focus. This is not an issue of a certain frame part, the whole shot is always out of focus.

Get me right, I am not expecting a DSLR level quality. But shouldn't it be providing at least same quality of image as a low-level cell-phone does?
If anyone curious, here is the link to download source files, if anyone wants to take a closer exam:
DropMeFiles – free one-click file sharing service

I've tried contacting DJI support with sample images, but they claim that there is nothing wrong with them and they are up to specs... :-\
Have tried to make a thread on the DJI forum, but got back only grunting that I want way too much from this camera...
So here is the deal: did anyone had success fixing similar issues on his own? Unfortunatelly, going through a replacement of the unit is almost impossible in my case, so this is not an option.

My idea would be to try doing following:
1. Clean the sensor and back of the lens, if there is any contaminant?
2. Check the focusing of the lens?
3. Check alignment of the lens to the sensor?
4. Replace lens with another that is guaranteed to be 10MP or higher? I suspect, that DJI might be using 2MP lens ( which is enough for the 1080p video) to cut their costs?..

However, I'd like to get as much input as possible, before I crack my camera open. Wanna be on the right path before making any steps.

P.S.: I dont see any issues with the video, BTW. If anyone curious, here is one of the test vids:

happydays · Jan 14, 2016

Hmmm, that's not good. Silly question - but did you peel off the protective film from the front of the lens when you unboxed the phantom? Can't tell how long you've had it as you're a new joiner to this forum.

Ievgen Bevz · Jan 14, 2016

happydays said:
Hmmm, that's not good. Silly question - but did you peel off the protective film from the front of the lens when you unboxed the phantom? Can't tell how long you've had it as you're a new joiner to this forum.

Yes, I did. UV fliter is clear as well.

I have this drone since Sep 2015. About 40 flights so far

marzipana · Jan 14, 2016

Maybe another silly question, but in the Go app camera settings, under Style, you don't have the Soft feature chosen?

Ievgen Bevz · Jan 14, 2016

marzipana said:
Maybe another silly question, but in the Go app camera settings, under Style, you don't have the Soft feature chosen?

It was set to normal/none

marzipana · Jan 14, 2016

Definitely something wrong...this is a 100% crop on the left, of the image on the right. There's no blurriness there at all. This was shot in RAW and quickly processed just now in CS6. I think it's disgusting that DJI are telling you it's up to specs, because it's definitely not!

sydneymark · Jan 17, 2016

I just posted this over at the DJI...

After reading a couple of threads about peoples cameras being soft and having just had a couple of small crashes and now being worried about the Phantom 3 camera I decided to do a controlled comparison test using a Canon DSLR and my Phantom 3. I was also interested to see if hovering in flight made a difference to the image quality, likewise with shutteer speed.

Three photos were taken in each setup using both RAW and jpg, I chose the best from each set of three RAW where noticable (no real difference tbh) and used Photoshop CS6 to process the RAW images and then tried to match them all in terms of exposure and colour

On my Canon 600D SLR I used a Sigma 10-20 f3.5 lens set at about 12mm (to match as close as possible to the specs of the Phantom), the Canon was on a tripod.
Photos with the Phantom 3 were with it resting on a box with motors off, then hovering in flight at about the same height using both a slowish and then slightly faster shutter speed. The Phantom had a ND32 filter on it.

Settings
Canon : ISO 100, f/22, shutter 1/40th second.
Phantom on a box with motors off : ISO 100, f/2.8, shutter 1/40th second
Phantom hovering, slow shutter : ISO 100, f/2.8, shutter 1/40th second
Phantom hovering, faster shutter : ISO 200, f/2.8, shutter 1/80th second

Images show the four photos side by side, then an extreme crop of both the fence that was about 4m away then of a tree that was about 30m away

here are the originals, in no particular order, spot the diffference

In conclusion, though I could see a difference between the DSLR and the Phantom I am not so sure that there is that much of a difference worth getting excited about
I can post dropbox versions if anyone wants to see the full sized originals.