x5r calibration question-Fear mine has issues

[giumick]

Hello everyone,

I wanted to ask a simple question about how your x5 calibrates and if mine is having issues if its behaving as it is currently.

As it stands i always use auto focus to set the focus up on our x5 as the infinity focus is always way out of focus so thus useless.

Every time i calibrate the camera it is always blurry at infinity after, we shot a nature reserve the other day for a client and i had to write off the whole lot of footage as it was just not focused quite right.

My understanding is that it should be perfect at infinity if calibrated correctly but from owning the camera it has never been this way so do we have potentially a faulty unit?

Every guide i have ever read for basic calibration has always explained that they get perfect focus at infinity and i see everyone on here uses it for mapping etc so why do we not get this with our unit?

I really dont want to send it off to Dji as we have a video series to complete for a wildlife trust and i sold our backup drone this weekend.

Thanks
Mick

 

[giumick]

Come on. Not one person can tell me how their camera cals? Ive had nothing but vague answers from Dji and want just confirmation from someone who knows how the get the best from the x5.

I think my main issue seems to be we are calibrating every use which is not ideal when there is no high contrast items nearby

 

[Pompey]

Greetings Mick

I have posted similar posts on the forum... I am still having focus issues (I admin I haven't flown for a long time since getting the x5r - personal issues), I got it when first released - Inspire 1 RAW.

I have tried many things... calibration, focusing, infinity, aperture, mf, af, dlog, cine, none etc.... I always leave the actual physical lens aperture setting on A (Automatic) is this correct? Or should I set it at f5.6? Because I presume this can be controlled by MF aperture settings via the go app...?

I can calibrate, use infinity, hyper, get the tablet screen pin sharp, I can then video... dlog, none etc.... I review the footage, sd footage is pin sharp, and looks great.... the SSD footage looks awful, even after post, so much so that noise begins to appear because I'm trying too hard to make it look slightly decent... should these be so drastically different - sd pin sharp and ssd out of focus?

I am seriously stuck between the camera is faulty.... or its my settings... I am still trying and testing... popping out in the next hour even...

It does seriously concern me that some users report, they go out, they fly and the footage, sd and ssd is perfectly sharp... my ssd footage has NEVER been sharp... for the amount I paid and for the amount of testing, its infuriating... and I come from a photographic background.

If after testing this week I am still not getting anywhere, I will be contacting DJI... another hope is that there is another pilot in the Sydney region to hook up and test with to see if its the camera or me.

Okies off for some flying, will let you know the results.

 

[Pompey]

Greetings

OK, before I flew yesterday, I had done heaps of research to pick up any new info for testing... one of which was to completely uninstall the Go App from your tablet, then re-install... I have had this installed since my Phantom 3 Pro days... so I uninstalled and reinstalled.... started from scratch - calibrated at 50m, aperture priority f5.6... and took lots of footage with default settings, none, dlog, cine... but of course this shouldn't effect raw... had a quick play after importing RAW into Premiere CC, quick colour correction etc and a basic quick sharpen... Lumetri Color Sharpen 15 and Sharpen 15... exported as h264 4k 40mbps... usb stick in my 60" 4k tv.... and it looks good to go....

Therefore my advice... uninstall and reinstall the Go App... get a calibration at 50m if possible, then if using infinity, click on the macro first, then back to infinity, so you actually see the screen go out and in focus... stay at that 50m and film/photo for focus testing when editing. If you change height, make sure you adjust the manual focus, or check that is appears in focus if possible... even try the AF zoom helper. I just used the manual slider and screen image/hyperfocal.

One thing that is disappointing is that Android Go App doesn't have Focus Peaking, where as iOS do... does anyone know why? I 'borrowed' my daughters ipad and installed, connected and home tested and sure enough Focus Peaking worked... so not sure how much Focus Peaking would help on a flight... do iOS users use it? If so is it useful?

Hope this helps. Will be doing some more testing, but a lot happier with the results

Good luck!

 

[giumick]

As regards my issue i think its been down to calibrating too often as oppose to waiting until l had the right scenery to calibrate against. It seems the object of focus has to be fairly contrasting or a building to work well.

I have been filming nature reserves the past few weeks and had nothing really standing out to cal against thus the issues. From now on ill cal at home before i set off to site.

It must be awkward changing lens on the x5 in remote places if its only vegetation to cal against.

 

[Pompey]

Test footage

 

[niki]

Hi Giumick, what you are describing is not a normal behaviour. We regularly change lenses on set dji 15mm and olympus 25mm and never had to calibrate them instead of their first time. I remember somewhere have read that an older firmware had this issue that the camera can't remember the setting it was left at power off.
So I guess it could be a firmware or if you are with the latest one it can be the go app ( reinstall it as Pompey suggest). If the problem still persist then it could be a hardware issue with the camera itself if all lenses have to be recalibrated every time.

Pompey, the low bitrate footage is internally processed by the camera's software. There is with sure denoise as well strong sharpening applied on it while the raw sequence is untouched at all, it doesn't matter what setting you'll set for it, all the settings like white ballance, sharpening and color toning are applied only on the low bitrate stream (mov/mp4). So to make the raw look as the mov then you have to do all those processes by yourself with your liking. Definitely the raw can be more sharper and less noisy if processed with high quality tools which need tons of processing power which the inspire camera don't have internally.

 

[giumick]

Hi Giumick, what you are describing is not a normal behaviour. We regularly change lenses on set dji 15mm and olympus 25mm and never had to calibrate them instead of their first time. I remember somewhere have read that an older firmware had this issue that the camera can't remember the setting it was left at power off.
So I guess it could be a firmware or if you are with the latest one it can be the go app ( reinstall it as Pompey suggest). If the problem still persist then it could be a hardware issue with the camera itself if all lenses have to be recalibrated every time.

Pompey, the low bitrate footage is internally processed by the camera's software. There is with sure denoise as well strong sharpening applied on it while the raw sequence is untouched at all, it doesn't matter what setting you'll set for it, all the settings like white ballance, sharpening and color toning are applied only on the low bitrate stream (mov/mp4). So to make the raw look as the mov then you have to do all those processes by yourself with your liking. Definitely the raw can be more sharper and less noisy if processed with high quality tools which need tons of processing power which the inspire camera don't have internally.

So on that note do you think we should just start periodically calibrating and try changing lenses to check results without recal on site? Ill wait until i have everything we need first of course incase it causes issues.

There has been no updates for the x5r for a long time has their? Just looked online and it seems last year was the last.

Also i will re-install the go app to to ensure its working as it should.

Thanks again for the help pal