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X7 camera with 16mm soft in prores

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Hi, I am new inspire 2 pilot and the first results I get are not so good and I deffinetly need some help. I use x7 camera with 16mm lens and record in prores 422 HQ so far. When I import footage into davinci resolve I found out that the image are very soft compare to what I get from my panasonic s1h or Eva 1 camera. I used autofocus on inspire 2. Should I calibrate a lens before use or it is normal with this camera and lenses? Still image also seems to be blurry without detail on trees and others. Before inspire I used phantom 4 pro and raw stiil image was deffinetly sharper with much more detail.
 
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I use dlog so there is no sharpnning yet. I used AF. Is it better touse MF? My Davinci use prores.
I checked also the same clip from sd card which was h264 and rec709. Colours are terrible on that. What setting I should use for it? Second strange thing for me is white balance. When I use cloudy everything seems to be redish/magenta (dng, prores and h264). Strange behaviour has this camera for me.
 
Hi, I am new inspire 2 pilot and the first results I get are not so good and I deffinetly need some help. I use x7 camera with 16mm lens and record in prores 422 HQ so far. When I import footage into davinci resolve I found out that the image are very soft compare to what I get from my panasonic s1h or Eva 1 camera. I used autofocus on inspire 2. Should I calibrate a lens before use or it is normal with this camera and lenses? Still image also seems to be blurry without detail on trees and others. Before inspire I used phantom 4 pro and raw stiil image was deffinetly sharper with much more detail.
I usually use AF to select focus on the subject, then switch to MF. It usually needs a bit of sharpening in post but result looks great and my clients love it.
 
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I get a bit better result today morning. There is a screengrab from davinci resolve with some volour correction in attachement. Could you check if you get similar results in regards to detail and sharpness. It was dlog, prores 422 HQ, 16mm lens with internal nd filter, iso 400 f8 (i think) stable without camera movements, no sharpening in post, no resize
 

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I get a bit better result today morning. There is a screengrab from davinci resolve with some volour correction in attachement. Could you check if you get similar results in regards to detail and sharpness. It was dlog, prores 422 HQ, 16mm lens with internal nd filter, iso 400 f8 (i think) stable without camera movements, no sharpening in post, no resize
Looks close but not quite sharp.... what F stop? The sweet spot I've found is about f4 or f5.6.

Did you calibrate lens using the target?
 
Hi, I am new inspire 2 pilot and the first results I get are not so good and I deffinetly need some help. I use x7 camera with 16mm lens and record in prores 422 HQ so far. When I import footage into davinci resolve I found out that the image are very soft compare to what I get from my panasonic s1h or Eva 1 camera. I used autofocus on inspire 2. Should I calibrate a lens before use or it is normal with this camera and lenses? Still image also seems to be blurry without detail on trees and others. Before inspire I used phantom 4 pro and raw stiil image was deffinetly sharper with much more detail.
Without knowing if there is a genuine issue with your lens I just wanted to mention that this topic was broadly discussed on various forums long time ago and the general concensus was that X7 has a stronger AA filter than x5s or Phantom and therefore photos and videos look softer. They apparently react well to post sharpening. I got my hands on a few DNG stills taken with the 16mm and X7 and IMHO the fine details, like foliage in lndscape shots was simply not present. It was lost in the strong AA filter no matter how much sharpening I applied. Movie creators apparently love it and call it a "cinematic look". I do know what that means but to me X7 simply produces soft images and that is more apparent in photos than video. But that is only my layman's view, so do not take my word for it
 
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It was f8 and I use autofocus. Should I calibrate a lens when I use AF or only when use MF?
 
It was f8 and I use autofocus. Should I calibrate a lens when I use AF or only when use MF?
At f8 difraction might have contributed marginally to the softness. I would not go past f5.6 unless absolutely had to for extra depth of field.
Lens calibration is only good for MF. It has no effect in AF.
The AF can sometimes be a hit and miss. When shooting distant landscaping, infinity focus is the way to go and accurate calibration can result in more consistent and accurate focus.
 
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Without knowing if there is a genuine issue with your lens I just wanted to mention that this topic was broadly discussed on various forums long time ago and the general concensus was that X7 has a stronger AA filter than x5s or Phantom and therefore photos and videos look softer. They apparently react well to post sharpening. I got my hands on a few DNG stills taken with the 16mm and X7 and IMHO the fine details, like foliage in lndscape shots was simply not present. It was lost in the strong AA filter no matter how much sharpening I applied. Movie creators apparently love it and call it a "cinematic look". I do know what that means but to me X7 simply produces soft images and that is more apparent in photos than video. But that is only my layman's view, so do not take my word for it
Yes, I read it in various place, but I did not realize that AA filter is so strong. Some people wrote that X7 camera use panasonic eva 1 sensor, but I use Eva1 and never observed such strong effect on detail. In my opinion it has nothing to do with cinematic look, which I understand as special colour palet, dynamic range, motion cadence, not oversharpening, Lost of details is completly different story than oversharp image. When I look on a my x7 DNG stills there is exactly what you wrote: completly no detail on trees branches. I am very dissapointed. I do not know what is the idea to have 6K resolution camera when you have less detail than on 4K camera. As I wrote before I say about detail not sharpness.
 
Yes, I read it in various place, but I did not realize that AA filter is so strong. Some people wrote that X7 camera use panasonic eva 1 sensor, but I use Eva1 and never observed such strong effect on detail. In my opinion it has nothing to do with cinematic look, which I understand as special colour palet, dynamic range, motion cadence, not oversharpening, Lost of details is completly different story than oversharp image. When I look on a my x7 DNG stills there is exactly what you wrote: completly no detail on trees branches. I am very dissapointed. I do not know what is the idea to have 6K resolution camera when you have less detail than on 4K camera. As I wrote before I say about detail not sharpness.
I agree with you 100%. Once there are no details result of strong AA filter, no amount of post sharpening will bring them back. Perceived sharpness is one thing non existent fine detail entirely another
 
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At f8 difraction might have contributed marginally to the softness. I would not go past f5.6 unless absolutely had to for extra depth of field.
Lens calibration is only good for MF. It has no effect in AF.
The AF can sometimes be a hit and miss. When shooting distant landscaping, infinity focus is the way to go and accurate calibration can result in more consistent and accurate focus.
Ok. thank you for help. I did not know that difraction could effect so early. I expected it from F10. I will test it on F5,6 and compare details.
 
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Ok. thank you for help. I did not know that difraction could effect so early. I expected it from F10. I will test it on F5,6 and compare details.
On Super 35 size sensor it is probably marginal at f8 but if you have a strong AA filter in front of the sensor you want the best sharpness a lens is capable of and that would be more likely in this case at f4 or f5.6 than at f8 or f10.
I would also encourage you to perform the lens calibration. It might need to be done several times until the absolute best sharpness at infinity is achieved but once done properly it is worth the effort, IMHO.
 
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On Super 35 size sensor it is probably marginal at f8 but if you have a strong AA filter in front of the sensor you want the best sharpness a lens is capable of and that would be more likely in this case at f4 or f5.6 than at f8 or f10.
I would also encourage you to perform the lens calibration. It might need to be done several times until the absolute best sharpness at infinity is achieved but once done properly it is worth the effort, IMHO.
Thank you for explanations. How do you check the sharpness in field? Do you use focus assist which work only in still mode or just focus peaking?
 
Focus peaking with focus assist in Photo mode is the most accurate way. In reality if you stop down to f5.6 on 16mm lens you get reasonable amount of depth of field. Unless taking a close ups, from my experience the infinity focus is all what's needed for vast majority of drone shots. That's why, at least IMHO the accurate and precise lens calibration is the best way of achieving consistently sharp drone photos and videos. I have no experience with X7 and it's lenses but with my x5s it took me several attempts to calibrate accurately the Oly lenses. Choosing different subjects at different distances until I was satisfied that I achieved the best infinity sharpness. MF and tapping on infinity icon in GO4 is all I now use, unless I need to get really close to subject or use longer (Oly 45mm) lens. Then I use the focus assist with focus peaking in Photo Mode. I mostly shoot stills anyway.
 
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Hi, I am new inspire 2 pilot and the first results I get are not so good and I deffinetly need some help. I use x7 camera with 16mm lens and record in prores 422 HQ so far. When I import footage into davinci resolve I found out that the image are very soft compare to what I get from my panasonic s1h or Eva 1 camera. I used autofocus on inspire 2. Should I calibrate a lens before use or it is normal with this camera and lenses? Still image also seems to be blurry without detail on trees and others. Before inspire I used phantom 4 pro and raw stiil image was deffinetly sharper with much more detail.
Yes you must calibrate the lens. Are you shooting in Dlog? If so, it would be soft until you do post production. I don’t use auto focus. Always set to infinity and check your focus peaking to see if you are sharp. Try recording in the rec 709 and see how sharp you are.
 
I usually use AF to select focus on the subject, then switch to MF. It usually needs a bit of sharpening in post but result looks great and my clients love it.
There's no need to switch to MF. The I2 doesn't have continuous autofocus, so when in AF mode, it will only focus when you touch to focus. Focus will not change on it's own even AF mode until you actually touch to focus.
 
Hello, I'm new to the forum but have always struggled with focus with my Inspire 2 and X7. I'm a still photographer and generally shoot at F4.5 or 5.6. More often than not I calibrate my lens before each session then switch to autofocus. I find focus to be very hit or miss. I shoot architecture and many times will back up my I2 shots with the Mavic 3. I don't really see a tremendous amount of difference between the two cameras and the M3 is much more consistent focus wise. Do any of the still photographers on this forum have similar experiences?
 

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