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Left Side Blur/Focus Issue?

Im also having issues with left side being out of focus. ( Stock DJI 15mm lens / or re-branded Panasonic Lumix lens if someone prefer ).
Its look like there is a problem with parallelism between lens mount and the sensor.
I was told by one of DJI admins its a shallow depth of field but I think they didn't understand the problem correctly.

Anyway, I've sent my X5S and lens to EU service today, as its not a user adjustable misalignment, feature, or the way that this setup should behave.
 
Im also having issues with left side being out of focus. ( Stock DJI 15mm lens / or re-branded Panasonic Lumix lens if someone prefer ).
Its look like there is a problem with parallelism between lens mount and the sensor.
I was told by one of DJI admins its a shallow depth of field but I think they didn't understand the problem correctly.

Anyway, I've sent my X5S and lens to EU service today, as its not a user adjustable misalignment, feature, or the way that this setup should behave.
Solved your problem?
 
They send X5S replacement with more accurate alignment, but the new gimbal have jello issues. ( no jello with old gimbal ).
So they fixed one thing but now I have another one, spoke with them and they want me to send it back again.
Madness
 
They send X5S replacement with more accurate alignment, but the new gimbal have jello issues. ( no jello with old gimbal ).
So they fixed one thing but now I have another one, spoke with them and they want me to send it back again.
Madness
That sad! I'm afraid to send my drone from Brazil to the US and not fix the problem. Time and money thrown away!
 
I think its the only way... as we spend our money ( and this is not a pocket money ) for something brand new and it doesn't work as advertised.
I bought few DJI products and none of them was flawless... there was always something.
Got Mavic for example a moth ago, same issue with half of the frame out of focus.
DJI have really bad quality control and need to sort this or at least send good units to services so they can actually resolve your issues by replacement method.
 
I think its the only way... as we spend our money ( and this is not a pocket money ) for something brand new and it doesn't work as advertised.
I bought few DJI products and none of them was flawless... there was always something.
Got Mavic for example a moth ago, same issue with half of the frame out of focus.
DJI have really bad quality control and need to sort this or at least send good units to services so they can actually resolve your issues by replacement method.
Be sure to comment on the official forum. Maybe before the number of complaints they do something.

X5S sensor/lens mount misaligned?
 
Bah! I'm seeing this now too with my X5S.

Got the new Laowa 7.5mm today and I noticed the grass was blurry on left side compared to center and right. Thought it was a bad lens perhaps, but it has a signed QC checked in the box so I give them a little leeway. I could focus it manually while in the red focus assist mode in GO 4 and make the left side sharper so I knew the bayonet is tilted. I also put on the Oly 45mm that just came back from Olympus repair and it too was soft on the left. So two lenses point to a bad alignment of the bayonet/sensor from the factory.

I might try and put some brass shim stock on one side of the lens mount temporarily (i.e. Between lens and camera bayonet.) and see what difference it makes. If it helps, I'll cut it down to a shim to go under the bayonet ring rather than deal with DJI Service and a refurb camera. Might be a lot of trial and error, but I have some brass shim stock from the hobby shop in .001", .002", .005", and 0.010" stock to play with.

DJI really needs to get their act together. Their QC is awful. Tilted sensors and bayonets, and a magenta tint in manual white balance too. Awful camera!
 
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Carrying on from the above today....

A nifty way of check this is with the X5S facing the "USAF Resolving Power Chart" available from Edmund Scientific for $40 here: 36" L x 24" W, Resolving Power Chart | Edmund Optics

If you center it up and perpendicular about 9 feet away from the X5S with the Olympus 45mm lens set to f/1.8 (wide open), turn the Manual Focus on the GO 4 screen with a stylus, or better using a Focus Wheel to examine the focus. Have the Focus Peaking in GO 4 camera menu set to High where the red lines appear around the edges of contrasty objects for a sharp focus.

If you scroll the focus wheel, you can see the image on one side become red and then it rolls the red across the other target squares if the sensor alignment is off as you turn the wheel. Turning the wheel back and forth and you can see how the red focus peaking rolls across the target if it's bad. It shouldn't do that at all.

If it all pops into red focus peaking at once with all four corner targets red at the same time, then congratulations as it's aligned correctly as in the attached screenshot. Prior to me shimming my X5S bayonet, only one side would go red while the other side remained untouched until I turned the focus wheel and soon that side became red while the first faded out. The attached screenshot of the iPad Air 2 shows all four corners red now at once so I'm good to go.


For the tech inclined, the tolerance of the bayonet-to-sensor distance is +/- 0.0012" if one looks at a Canon service manual. Pretty tight, and likely much tighter than DJI's tolerance level.

Given one side was less sharp on mine, I went with the DJI supposed tolerance (Ack!) of 0.005" and put that thickness of brass sheet under the two rightmost bayonet screws facing the sensor. You can see the two shims I cut out with scissors at the 1 and 5 o'clock positions (One is under a sensor protection pad.) in the photo where the four screws for the bayonet go. My final shims were 0.005" thick with a #44 drill (0.0860") screw hole. At the right tip of the screwdriver is a bent piece of brass shim that I put under the lens at various positions to determine the evenness of the focus plane. A cut Pec-Pad (Lens tissue.) is covering the sensor just in case. I used a 0.002" shim first, but the 0.005" did a much better job (It's tight in the testing portion placed underneath the lens against the 0.002" too!) and it showed me how much DJI erred on their assembly. Much better now.

Granted, I could have done it far better if I had my old Pearl Optical Autocollimator from decades ago when I repaired this junk for the majors, but trial and error works too - albeit much slower.

Fwiw, I recommend one getting a screwdriver made for these things rather than buggering up the soft heads. Most camera screws are JIS (Japanese Industrial Standard) screws and not the US Phillips design. Using a USA Phillips will result in a cam-out of the screw head (i.e. Reaming out the head.). The NIWA's PD-30 was the JIS industry standard for decades and the following site sells their copy and the blades too. Not cheap, but good, and they last!

Info on cross-point screw heads: Cross-head screws - a caution: - PentaxForums.com

PD-30 copy of JIS driver:
Handle: GRES_PD30 PRO Screwdriver Handle | SPT / C&C
Blade set: Screwdriver Blades: | SPT / C&C

If you do this, might also want to apply some moly grease paste (Honda Moly #60 Paste.) to the bayonet and the flat spring behind it. I used a dab to hold the shims in place prior to put the bayonet and locking ring back on too. The moly paste helps immensely with easing the task of taking the lenses on and off and causing less metal-to-metal shards to come off the bayonets being dry. Just don't go overboard with the stuff, and wipe off any excess.

USAF-Chart.jpg iPad Air 2 Focus Peaking Screenshot.jpg Shims under the bayonet.jpg
 
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Just as a follow-up for those who read Casey's posts, I too (like nearly everyone) have bad left-side blur, so I tried what he suggested. Here are my findings thus far.
I was NOT able to get the screws out of the bayonet. It seems they are lock-tighted in there and I didn't want to strip the heads. So no-go on that.
However, I went to my hardware store and bought a pack of K&S brass shim stock (0.001, 0.002, 0.003, 0.005 thickness, all in one package). I took some scissors and cut a strip about 1/4" wide and 1/2" long.
Knowing that I needed to shim the right side of the lens (as you face it from the front), I unmounted the lens, put the shim under there (between the bayonet and the lens), then twisted the lens into the locked position.
I used one piece of 0.005" shim and was just barely able to get the lens to lock in place (good luck ever getting it off of there again). I then trimmed the shim to not interfere with anything.
As best I can tell after about a dozen shots (stills), the problem is much better, if not totally gone. Prior to this mod, not only did I have bad left side blur (and much worse at infinity than at close distances), but I also had asymmetric vignetting, that required an X-axis offset to compensate during post-processing. That too is now gone, indicative that the lens is much better aligned to the (presumably badly misaligned at the factory) sensor.
So that's my two-cents-worth, in case anyone else has this problem and wants to try a quick-fix.
 
Just as a follow-up for those who read Casey's posts, I too (like nearly everyone) have bad left-side blur, so I tried what he suggested. Here are my findings thus far.
I was NOT able to get the screws out of the bayonet. It seems they are lock-tighted in there and I didn't want to strip the heads. So no-go on that.
However, I went to my hardware store and bought a pack of K&S brass shim stock (0.001, 0.002, 0.003, 0.005 thickness, all in one package). I took some scissors and cut a strip about 1/4" wide and 1/2" long.
Knowing that I needed to shim the right side of the lens (as you face it from the front), I unmounted the lens, put the shim under there (between the bayonet and the lens), then twisted the lens into the locked position.
I used one piece of 0.005" shim and was just barely able to get the lens to lock in place (good luck ever getting it off of there again). I then trimmed the shim to not interfere with anything.
As best I can tell after about a dozen shots (stills), the problem is much better, if not totally gone. Prior to this mod, not only did I have bad left side blur (and much worse at infinity than at close distances), but I also had asymmetric vignetting, that required an X-axis offset to compensate during post-processing. That too is now gone, indicative that the lens is much better aligned to the (presumably badly misaligned at the factory) sensor.
So that's my two-cents-worth, in case anyone else has this problem and wants to try a quick-fix.

Glad it worked for you too.

I got gutsy and unscrewed the jar-like rear cover off the X5S, then another thinner back cover with four screws under it, but when I began to pull the second cover off, there was a bunch of blue heat sink goo along with some clear goo off to one side that was adhered to the three sensor circuit boards and that back cover. Plus, there are a couple of copper heat pipes to the sides of the camera with more blue goo. Sensor must generate a lot of heat. I gave up rather than tank the warranty and left the 0.005" spacers installed under the bayonet which worked rather than dig deeper for the sensor calibration/tilt screws with all that goo involved.

Least I learned how bad DJI optical tolerances are compared to normal camera makers like Canon and Nikon.

And yeah, those bayonet screws can be tight and damaged without the proper driver to fit them. Might help to let them soak up some "Break Free" lube, MEK, or acetone prior to snapping them loose with the driver. They had a lot of Loctite on them too. Least it wasn't the German Loctite as that stuff takes heat and looks like glass shards when broken loose.
 
It sounds awful,if only there was a real alternative to DJI!

There are, but they are costly and the big ones are huge! DJI pretty much has a monopoly for the price, features, as well as marketing, but their quality control and ability to correct quirky flight issues lags badly. I don't know if they've ever produced a bug-free firmware or app yet as they seem to try and fix one thing and break something else. GO 4 is just too big now to run efficiently on small devices and croaks, imo.

The Freefly Alta series is the size of a washing machine and one outfit in Hollywood uses a van to haul theirs around. Loud too. Maybe 3-4 times that of DJI prices depending on the camera and radio. Don't know what their after sales service is like, but I read once where they grounded them due to some wiring issue when folded down.

I think Advexure sells other brands too?
 
That is what I mean, if you want something that is transportable and relatively light there isn't anything equivalent. O.k. there is Yuneec but I doubt that it's more reliable than DJI...
And then there is the Falcon 8 but at € 25k - and I guess even more for the new intel falcon 8+ that's not the same league!
 
I think Advexure sells other brands too?

Thanks for the shout. In addition to DJI as our primary line here at Advexure, we also carry GDU as we are their primary US dealer and distributor. GDU has made great strides in the industry with their Byrd Premium 2.0 (which was the first foldable drone on the market well before the Mavic). The Byrd Premium 2.0 is a universal mid-size drone that offers support for applications outside of just filmmaking and photography. It's been a popular aircraft of choice for search and rescue as well as for operators running custom payloads (typically sensors).

And then there is the Falcon 8 but at € 25k - and I guess even more for the new intel falcon 8+ that's not the same league!

The Falcons are in quite a different class and are very capable and powerful aircraft (check out their live Falcon 8+ demo by their CEO at InterDrone on YouTube).
 
So here's an odd update. I'd been pretty happy with the results I'd been getting with the 0.005" shim under the 25mm lens, but then due to my own carelessness and stupidity, I crashed that rig and put it out of commission for a good long while. So then I got a new I2 + X5S and began the process all over again. Check this out.
Oddly enough, there doesn't appear to be any left-side blur like there was with the old one, but what I found from about 25 shots is VERY disturbing and I am having great difficulty understanding it. The image is razor sharp around all the edges, and very soft dead-center, exactly the opposite of what you would expect.
Once I had my old rig shimmed, when I shot wide open with the Oly 25, I noted the image to be pretty sharp in the center, and very soft around the edges and especially in the corners, exactly as you would expect. But this new rig gives exactly the OPPOSITE result, which I find nearly impossible to understand. How can you possibly warp a sensor such that the center is blurry and everything else is sharp?
I just hope the X7 shows up before too long, and I surely hope DJI figures out how to align the sensor. I wonder if I should send the new X5S back to B&H?
 
I just focus mine to the left side instead of the center. This seems to address most of the left side being blurry with my 25mm.
 
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So here's an odd update. I'd been pretty happy with the results I'd been getting with the 0.005" shim under the 25mm lens, but then due to my own carelessness and stupidity, I crashed that rig and put it out of commission for a good long while. So then I got a new I2 + X5S and began the process all over again. Check this out.
Oddly enough, there doesn't appear to be any left-side blur like there was with the old one, but what I found from about 25 shots is VERY disturbing and I am having great difficulty understanding it. The image is razor sharp around all the edges, and very soft dead-center, exactly the opposite of what you would expect.
Once I had my old rig shimmed, when I shot wide open with the Oly 25, I noted the image to be pretty sharp in the center, and very soft around the edges and especially in the corners, exactly as you would expect. But this new rig gives exactly the OPPOSITE result, which I find nearly impossible to understand. How can you possibly warp a sensor such that the center is blurry and everything else is sharp?
I just hope the X7 shows up before too long, and I surely hope DJI figures out how to align the sensor. I wonder if I should send the new X5S back to B&H?

Do you have a normal MFT camera body you can test the 25mm on? That would tell you if the lens is bad for sure. I bought the Olympus Pen-F to check on the DJI camera and also to get their lens firmware updates too. This DJI lack of quality control can drive one mad! I've got a gut feeling all they produce has something wrong somewhere, just you have to look for it before it's too late.

I don't know how you are getting the center soft, unless the lens is at fault and why a second body helps sort that out. Might be if the X5S sensor is tight against some thermal transfer device that it could introduce a bowl effect to it, and all it takes is a few thousandths of an inch too. There's a lot of thermal grease (Two different colors too.) inside the X5S body along with some copper heat pipes to the outer shell among the three stacks of circuit boards I saw in there to get heat off the sensor.

Since you mentioned it being new and from B&H, I'd kick it back to them and try another. They are pretty good at doing the online RMA thing with stuff I've exchanged with them if they have it in stock (Laowa 7.5mm lens was my last exchange with them as it never reached infinity with the X5S Focus Peaking, but others on dpreview.com found the same too and B&H knew of it.).

Good luck!
 
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Thanks Casey! I'm out to do some more shooting this morning and will test my other lenses (15 and 45). It is possible the lens (25) is bad because it was part of the crash and took a nasty impact, although shows no visible damage. Will report my findings here later. Cheers!
 
Thanks Casey! I'm out to do some more shooting this morning and will test my other lenses (15 and 45). It is possible the lens (25) is bad because it was part of the crash and took a nasty impact, although shows no visible damage. Will report my findings here later. Cheers!

Ecellent idea!

Could be the 25mm had something knocked loose internally due to the crash inside the focusing unit. A tilted optic would do what you describe (I've been trying to figure out a lens to do aerial tilt-shift shots, but the weight due to the mechanics has been an issue so far.). The 45mm would show the least depth of focus so the focus plane should be sharp if the camera and lens is good.

Also, if it were my crashed X5S I'd be taking it apart to see how DJI adjusts the sensor plane to get rid of the tilt issue with these cameras. I took off the back cover, (First one unscrews like a jar lid, but second has screws.) but I saw it packed with blue and clear thermal grease goop and gave up.

Good luck with the test.
 

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