DJI Mavic Pro II

[sanveer]

1 hour ago, Andrew Reid said:

There I fixed DJI's marketing material!

 

I have now ordered both the Zoom and Pro so we'll do a shootout next week in Berlin and I'll send the loser back to DJI's warehouse.

The Zoom has H.265 as well, just 8bit not 10bit and CineLikeD instead of D-LOG.

But that is equivalent to H.264 200Mbit and easier to edit than 10bit.

We'll see how CineLikeD holds up colour wise. Maybe dialled down flat and with a LUT in post it can be quite nice (like on Panasonic GX9).

Not sure if posted previously...

Entertaining to watch but there is a mistake at the start on the chart. The Mavic 1 is not a better image than the Mavic Air. It's more compressed and softer.

The Zoom shots of the rollercoaster and beach are really cinematic.

So the Mavic 2 Zoom has NO crop in 4k mode?

About the actual crop (on the Mavic 2 Zoom in 4k mode), this is the literature on the Sony IMX377, which may be (not absolutely sure) the sensor on the Mavic Pro (and Mavic 2 Zoom). In 4k mode, while the reduction in width may be unnoticeable, the reduction in height is pretty substantial, from 12MP to 8+MP or so that it does for 4k. The sensor area being used, effectively reduces from 1/2.3 inches to 1/2.5 inches, which us enormous. 

The ratio of the sensors (4/3, 3/2 etc) also determines the Crop (apart from the total pixels required to perform a certain job). 

Source:

https://www.sony-semicon.co.jp/products_en/IS/sensor2/products/imx377.html

 

Also, that image above, is from DJI's official release/ record? I could be wrong, but I believe you may have exaggerated the applicable Crop Factor in the image. The difference is between 77° and 55°, like I posted earlier, from DJI's literature, which is more like 30% (actually less). That is, unfortunately not correctlt represented by the image you shared. In 55° crop mode it cropa into approx. 14.28 megapixels from the original 20MP. Also the pixel sizes are Different in the Inch and 1/2.3" sensor. The pixels are 2.4 micron on the 1 inch sensor  and 1.55 micron on the 1/2.3 inch sensor. You would have to take this into consideration, while making the image too. 

 

"... What is the difference between Full FOV mode and HQ mode under Mavic 2 Pro’s 4K resolution?

Full FOV down samples from the 5.5K sensor to 4K resolution while HQ crops in the center for finer image quality but less FOV. Full FOV view is 75° and HQ view is 55°. You can select between them according to your actual shooting demands.."

Source:

https://m.dji.com/product/mavic-2

 

1 hour ago, Luke Mason said:

That crop mode is quoted in the IMX183 sensor spec: https://www.sony-semicon.co.jp/products_en/new_pro/may_2014/imx183_e.html 1/1.4" equivalent.

 

Except, that I was unable to find a difference between an 8-bit and 10-bit 4k mode, w.r.t. to Crop Factor, in the sensor material. 

[Cliff Totten]

Andrew Reid...VERY important!!

Don't forget that DJI says that this 1inch-type "Hasselblab"  (made in Sweden by Sony) sensor put's out 14.....[snicker].....stops....[giggle]....of....[heheehe]....dynamic....[HAHAHA!]......range!!....[LMAO!!!!!!!!!]

I'm sorry, I couldn't type that with with a straight face.

OMG...the ONLY customers that would EVER believe that are ones that don't even know what "dynamic range" even is!!

CT ? 

 

P.S....Guys, I'm sorry but "Hasselblad" is nothing more than a Chinese camera "FASHION BRAND". It's just a big joke now.

[sanveer]

56 minutes ago, Cliff Totten said:

Don't forget that DJI says that this 1inch-type "Hasselblab"  (made in Sweden by Sony) sensor put's out 14.....[snicker].....stops....[giggle]....of....[heheehe]....dynamic....[HAHAHA!]......range!!....[LMAO!!!!!!!!!]

ONLY in HDR mode. Otherwise it has the same dynamic range that the Phantom 4 Pro probably has. But less noisy shadow and better highlight rolloff. So better image.

According to Ming Thein it had between 11.5-12 stops:

"...At base ISO, we have a solid 11.5-12 stops of usable DR; a bit more if you are careful with exposure and post processing. This is a noticeable improvement over the original Mavic, and given the way highlight rolloff has been tuned, quite close to what M4/3 delivers in practice. ..."

https://blog.mingthein.com/2018/08/24/2018-dji-mavic-2-pro-review/#more-17580

 

[Andrew Reid]

A review by a Hasselblad sales executive, basically. I do like Ming, but it's like Atomos Jeromy reviewing his own monitor

He's a superb photographer but not impartial on this.

[Cliff Totten]

1 hour ago, sanveer said:

ONLY in HDR mode. Otherwise it has the same dynamic range that the Phantom 4 Pro probably has. But less noisy shadow and better highlight rolloff. So better image. 

Interesting.....Ken Booth on YouTube has released some Mavic-II Pro files right off the card for public download. His Mavic-II Pro has a good center and right side sharpness. However, the entire left side of his lens (the entire 1/3 left of his image) is WAY out of whack. It's very soft and clearly defective in a pretty bad way.

Guys,...when you get your Mavic-II Pros next week, pay VERY close attention to the manufacturing tolerances of your lens. INSPECT ALL SIDES CAREFULLY. You "could" be stuck with a bad left or right side like Ken Booth did. (His is an early copy and is going back) 

OK,....I'll say this out loud,....why did DJI delay the launch in a sudden, almost emergency manner? Production issues? Sorry,...I just HAD to say it. I'm only wondering out loud. It was prolly delayed because of something very small and simple. I'm sure it was nothing serious.

CT ?

[Andrew Reid]

Did he have an early shipment, or a pre-production cam? Got a link to the files?

[BTM_Pix]

17 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

It's like Atomos Jeromy reviewing his own monitor 

I read a post on another forum today saying that Jeremy of Atomos sounds like a Game Of Thrones Character and I can't stop sniggering about it  

[Cliff Totten]

6 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

Did he have an early shipment, or a pre-production cam? Got a link to the files?

https://www.youtube.com/user/bbc92314/videos

Look at his newest two videos. In the descriptions, he has the download links to short files right off the card. You can open the files with "MediaInfo" and check out all the DJI metadata.

CT 

[Andrew Reid]

Those are quite interesting. He starts the drone at pretty much the same place in both the HQ and FOV shot. The FOV is a bit softer, definitely a lot wider. It's a big crop to HQ. However the quality looks OK in FOV, despite the pixel binning going on which DJI kept under the rug. So the idea of a nice lossless 4K two focal lengths is on, with the Mavic 2 Pro, I think. It would be nice if you could actually digitally zoom between the two modes in-flight when rolling, but I doubt that is possible. Can you even toggle instantly between FOV mode and HQ mode when rolling? Or do you have to stop recording, fiddling with settings, etc.

Onto the Air samples he also has on his channel. I am impressed. The 4K holds up well on that small 1/2.3" sensor. Small sensors have got a LOT better in recent times. Even smartphones now do usable ISO 1600 (in RAW at least). Looks just as detailed as the Mavic 2 Pro, somewhere in-between the HQ and FOV modes but very subtle differences. The Air should give us an idea of how the Mavic 2 Zoom holds up, as it's similar sensor. I dare say Zoom has a advantage - H.265 at same bitrate as Air's H.264, but I think they will end up similar enough.

I'd say it looks like the Pro 2 is the one if you shoot a LOT of low light stuff. 10bit will also help with the shadow detail.

I'd say the Zoom 2 is more versatile creatively.

It's a dilemma and a half.

For stills, I think since it acts as a tripod in mid-air and you can do 10 second long exposures, the difference in high ISO performance is less of a factor. Zoom will be able to do some nice photography in near darkness. As long as it isn't windy

Despite the slightly dishonest marketing... What great tech this is.

[Cliff Totten]

17 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

Those are quite interesting. He starts the drone at pretty much the same place in both the HQ and FOV shot. The FOV is a bit softer, definitely a lot wider. It's a big crop to HQ. However the quality looks OK in FOV, despite the pixel binning going on which DJI kept under the rug. So the idea of a nice lossless 4K two focal lengths is on, with the Mavic 2 Pro, I think. It would be nice if you could actually digitally zoom between the two modes in-flight when rolling, but I doubt that is possible. Can you even toggle instantly between FOV mode and HQ mode when rolling? Or do you have to stop recording, fiddling with settings, etc.

Onto the Air samples he also has on his channel. I am impressed. The 4K holds up well on that small 1/2.3" sensor. Small sensors have got a LOT better in recent times. Even smartphones now do usable ISO 1600 (in RAW at least). Looks just as detailed as the Mavic 2 Pro, somewhere in-between the HQ and FOV modes but very subtle differences. The Air should give us an idea of how the Mavic 2 Zoom holds up, as it's similar sensor. I dare say Zoom has a advantage - H.265 at same bitrate as Air's H.264, but I think they will end up similar enough.

I'd say it looks like the Pro 2 is the one if you shoot a LOT of low light stuff. 10bit will also help with the shadow detail.

I'd say the Zoom 2 is more versatile creatively.

It's a dilemma and a half.

For stills, I think since it acts as a tripod in mid-air and you can do 10 second long exposures, the difference in high ISO performance is less of a factor. Zoom will be able to do some nice photography in near darkness. As long as it isn't windy

Despite the slightly dishonest marketing... What great tech this is.

Andrew,...I think it's a testament to Ambarella's better image processor and noise reduction. That original Mavic Pro has a gawd afoul Ambarella A9 processor that DESTROYED everything under middle grey.

Check out this Mavic pro lab test....it's disgusting to see how that processor weighted it's noise reduction to "blot out" everything so badly in it's shadows. This Ambarella H1 and H2 processors are MUCH better today and are more evenly weighted with smoother temporal noise reduction that doesn't "pulse" every 15 frames.

 

 

[webrunner5]

Wow the Pro in that that video is ehh, well it pretty much sucks in low light. Yikes!

[Cliff Totten]

25 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

Wow the Pro in that that video is ehh, well it pretty much sucks in low light. Yikes!

It's even worse than that. Ambarella was soooooooo Hell-bent on wiping out the noise floor that the reduced the dark greys down to a solid color. When you see the noise floor on scopes, you SHOULD see "speckels" of noise. What Ambarella did was scrub it so bad that it is reduced to a solid dark grey color. Honestly, I think the Ambarella A9 image processor is literally the worst processor chip I have seen in 10 years.  The more I studied it, the more garbage I found. Did you see the indoor tests? Funny thing is that people always blamed the h.264 60Mbp/s bit rate for all these problems. It never was that at all. It was Ambarella's horrifically bad temporal noise reduction all along. Do you see how it "flickers" every 15 or so frames? That's not long GOP IBP frames, that's noise analysis across multiple frames. 

[webrunner5]

I have not seen as ugly stuff since Mini DV LoL. That is beyond ugly!

Only good thing is I would imagine it Can be fixed in a Firmware Update.

Surely they can back off the clampdown on the NR?

[OliKMIA]

4 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

Onto the Air samples he also has on his channel. I am impressed. The 4K holds up well on that small 1/2.3" sensor. Small sensors have got a LOT better in recent times.

Actually the Mavic Air is very good. Definitely softer than the Mavic Pro 1 but DJI footage is too sharp anyway. The only thing that bothers me on the Air is the noise even at base ISO. You must expose carefully. Here is a video I made with the Mavic Air. Most of the artifacts comes from the youtube compression (and from my flashing grading sometime).

 

1 hour ago, Cliff Totten said:

Honestly, I think the Ambarella A9 image processor is literally the worst processor chip I have seen in 10 years.  The more I studied it, the more garbage I found. Did you see the indoor tests? Funny thing is that people always blamed the h.264 60Mbp/s bit rate for all these problems. It never was that at all. It was Ambarella's horrifically bad temporal noise reduction all along. Do you see how it "flickers" every 15 or so frames? That's not long GOP IBP frames, that's noise analysis across multiple frames. 

Perhaps, as I said earlier in this thread I used the Phantom 3 Pro extensively and I never encountered the image issue I had with my Mavic Pro 1. Both have a 1/2.3" sensor that max out at 60 mpbs so it might be something else. I'm not exactly a pixel peeper but I got rid of the Mavic Pro 1 just a few days after purchase because the footage and "compression" issue was pure garbage.

[Robert Collins]

1 hour ago, webrunner5 said:

Surely they can back off the clampdown on the NR?

There isnt a separate NR adjustment with the Mavic. It is lumped in with sharpening. Set sharpening to 0 or below and you get buckets of noise reduction and blotchy shadows. Setting sharpening to +1 gets rid of the noise reduction but does cause other problems. DJI resolved the problem with the Mavic Air.

[Cliff Totten]

The image processor today has an absolutely equal importance to the overall image quality as the image sensor itself. Many of the improvements we see today are due to processing and NOT image sensors being better and better. The QE (quantum efficiency) of image sensors and photosites has not really improved very much in the last 5-10 years. We have BSI and now fully "stacked" BSI architecture, all that does is make photosites larger on the same surface area. It doesnt change the efficiency of the actual pixel well.

What HAS improved year over year is the image processor. Canon has "Digic". Nikon has "Expeed".  Panasonic has "Venus".  Sony has "Bionz".....and DJI has "Ambarella".

How they read/scan a sensor, deBayer and apply noise reduction makes all the difference in the world! Take the Sony  Exmor-R 1inch-type that DJI uses. DJI can process it with an Ambarella H2 and get "good" quality from it. However that same Sony sensor with "Bionz-X" behind it will produce absolutely amazing results! Sony processing is truly cutting edge. Bionz can read 5K-6K without pixel binning or line skipping and can make +12db noise reduction almost completely transparent with little signs of noise reduction artifacts. We often credit the sensor but it's really the image processor that did the work.

I'm dying to find out which Ambarella chip DJI is using. H1, H2, H22 or H3. I suspect we will see the first teardown video within a month. 

[Robert Collins]

Here are a couple of screenshhots taken from Casey Neistats video

First we have the Mavic 1 v Mavic 2 zoom. They might have the same sensor size but the image quality seems to have come a long way.

Next we have the Mavic 2 pro v the Mavic pro zoom

A clear win for the Mavic 2 Pro here. But I would add that the difference in quality is often less than I have shown here. One thing I like about the zoom is the way the 'zoom' is implemented. Zoom from 24mm to 48mm in the app and it it smoothly and slowly makes the zoom in camera.

[Cliff Totten]

Check out this video. It explains the exact reason why and shows it up close very clearly.

 

[webrunner5]

34 minutes ago, Robert Collins said:

A clear win for the Mavic 2 Pro here. But I would add that the difference in quality is often less than I have shown here. One thing I like about the zoom is the way the 'zoom' is implemented. Zoom from 24mm to 48mm in the app and it it smoothly and slowly makes the zoom in camera.

They are almost making you buy Both of them LoL. I think it is pretty hard to pick absolute winner. I guess there might be enough "meat" to zoom in post though on the Pro.

[Luke Mason]

13 hours ago, Cliff Totten said:

Andrew Reid...VERY important!!

Don't forget that DJI says that this 1inch-type "Hasselblab"  (made in Sweden by Sony) sensor put's out 14.....[snicker].....stops....[giggle]....of....[heheehe]....dynamic....[HAHAHA!]......range!!....[LMAO!!!!!!!!!]

I'm sorry, I couldn't type that with with a straight face.

OMG...the ONLY customers that would EVER believe that are ones that don't even know what "dynamic range" even is!!

CT ? 

 

P.S....Guys, I'm sorry but "Hasselblad" is nothing more than a Chinese camera "FASHION BRAND". It's just a big joke now.

As I've said earlier, the higher dynamic range quote is for HDR stills mode, the Ambarella SoCs are capable of interleaved exposure, essentially it's like Magic Lantern's "dual ISO" feature. On Mavic Air, HDR stills offer a DR of 13.2EV.