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DJI Mavic Air 2


androidlad
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Looks quite cool, I sold my P4Pro a month ago as is big and very noise and it becomes more and more a problem also with people complaining with these "big" drone. The photo and video quality of the P4p are quite good compared to the size. 
The idea was to replace it with the Air II that has probably not the same image quality but closing in but much smaller and lighter. 

But now with all this regulation here, registration above 250g, max 120m altitude, line of sight etc... I'm wonder if for the b-roll stuff a mavic mini will not be good enough, now that they have manual WB and manual exposure...
I whish they would have also add sharpness, contrast etc. settings (not sure if it has it or not but it seems not).

 

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2 hours ago, androidlad said:

It's official:

https://www.newsshooter.com/2020/04/28/dji-unveils-mavic-air-2/

It supports HEVC/H.265 codec but only at 8bit.

Initial review suggests significant image quality improvement over the original Air, including low light.

what's your take Vs the Mavic 2 Pro? I have barely used mine, I wouldn't like to sell it already..

Obviously the sensor is bigger in 2 Pro, and more sensors I guess.. I do not mind the size, I believe it is just perfect, not Phantom-like, which it was too much, but feels more substantial than the Air 2 design (I guess).

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49 minutes ago, Kisaha said:

what's your take Vs the Mavic 2 Pro? I have barely used mine, I wouldn't like to sell it already..

Obviously the sensor is bigger in 2 Pro, and more sensors I guess.. I do not mind the size, I believe it is just perfect, not Phantom-like, which it was too much, but feels more substantial than the Air 2 design (I guess).

Image quality wise, in daylight Air 2 will be very similar, if not slight better than the Pro. Of course it won't be as good in low light, and it doesn't have 10bit and D-log M.

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45 minutes ago, androidlad said:

Image quality wise, in daylight Air 2 will be very similar, if not slight better than the Pro. Of course it won't be as good in low light, and it doesn't have 10bit and D-log M.

So, M2Pro still makes sense for us advanced users, right? 10bit and the size of the sensor is a big thing, I guess.. Of course the Mavic is double the price..

Thanks for your contribution @androidlad and @OliKMIA

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2 hours ago, Kisaha said:

So, M2Pro still makes sense for us advanced users, right? 10bit and the size of the sensor is a big thing, I guess.. Of course the Mavic is double the price..

Thanks for your contribution @androidlad and @OliKMIA

The M2P makes sense if you want 10 bits, D-log, better image quality especially in stills mode. I also prefer the DJI go app compared to the basic DJI fly. The MA2 has 4k60 but it's not really important in aerial video for most scenario unless you film sports and actions stuff.

 

1 hour ago, gt3rs said:

Download the dng pictures from this thread: https://mavicpilots.com/threads/mavic-air-2-sample-photos-and-videos.86461/ but I'm not impressed I would like to the see the 12 Mpix dng because these 48 Mpix tricks brings nothing at least with this samples..... did not check the video yet

 

The 48mpx thing is not really good. Kind of like sliding the sharpness bar in post.. Video is good though.

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2 hours ago, gt3rs said:

Download the dng pictures from this thread: https://mavicpilots.com/threads/mavic-air-2-sample-photos-and-videos.86461/ but I'm not impressed I would like to the see the 12 Mpix dng because these 48 Mpix tricks brings nothing at least with this samples..... did not check the video yet

 

Because it's Quad Bayer RAW, it can look better than native 12MP if you capture 48MP and downscale in post.

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14 minutes ago, androidlad said:

Because it's Quad Bayer RAW, it can look better than native 12MP if you capture 48MP and downscale in post.

I did downscale in PS to 12MP and also did some post test but still not impressed. I did take a look at the video and that seems quite good.

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I noticed that the new remote seems a lot more practical than the owful - older - design. That's a good thing I guess.

This is clearly their amateur line, while we are waiting obviously a new Mavic series, and probably keep the existing ones with reduced price. Probably the Mavic 2 zoom near 999, the Mavic 2 Pro for 1.199 and the new ones at 1.249 and 1.499. Something like that.

I am wondering what's the size difference between the two..

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2 hours ago, Kisaha said:

I noticed that the new remote seems a lot more practical than the owful - older - design. That's a good thing I guess.

This is clearly their amateur line, while we are waiting obviously a new Mavic series, and probably keep the existing ones with reduced price. Probably the Mavic 2 zoom near 999, the Mavic 2 Pro for 1.199 and the new ones at 1.249 and 1.499. Something like that.

I am wondering what's the size difference between the two..

The Air 2 is somewhere between Mavic 2 and Mavic Mini regarding size. I am waiting to see some HDR footage from Air 2 as the first clips in YT looked interesting. I don't expect much though as i saw no real benefits by using HDR in Osmo Action.

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4 hours ago, Kisaha said:

I noticed that the new remote seems a lot more practical than the owful - older - design. That's a good thing I guess.

This is clearly their amateur line, while we are waiting obviously a new Mavic series, and probably keep the existing ones with reduced price. Probably the Mavic 2 zoom near 999, the Mavic 2 Pro for 1.199 and the new ones at 1.249 and 1.499. Something like that.

I am wondering what's the size difference between the two..

Also consider Autel EVO II series, they are rapidly catching up and are pushing frequent firmware updates.

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7 hours ago, Kisaha said:

I noticed that the new remote seems a lot more practical than the owful - older - design. That's a good thing I guess.

This is clearly their amateur line, while we are waiting obviously a new Mavic series, and probably keep the existing ones with reduced price. Probably the Mavic 2 zoom near 999, the Mavic 2 Pro for 1.199 and the new ones at 1.249 and 1.499. Something like that.

I am wondering what's the size difference between the two..

Actually, DJI have increased their prices lately. Might be the consequence of the US-China trade war. The smart controller used to be $650 but is now sold at $750. I haven't seen significant price reduction on the Mavic 2 kits since launch.

 

3 hours ago, androidlad said:

Also consider Autel EVO II series, they are rapidly catching up and are pushing frequent firmware updates.

Finger crossed as we need more competition in this field but in my experience, Autel drones are half-baked. I recognized that Autel is working hard but they are always one or two steps behind DJI and their gimbal tech is weak with frequent if not constant horizon drift (roll). Most of the videos and reviews I've seen so far are not encouraging for the EVO 2....

The CEO of DJI started the company in 2006 by manufacturing and tweaking flight controllers, stabilization is in the DNA of DJI. They came up with full drone bundle much later.
I'm trying to get my hands on the EVO II to review one. I really want to like it because I'm tired of the constant DJI tracking and no fly zone restrictions. Unlike big brother DJI, Autel doesn't force you to create an account and let you fly as you please.

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53 minutes ago, androidlad said:

On current sub 1" CMOS sensors like the IMX586 used on MAVIC Air 2, the ADC operates at only 10bit, this is the reason why even at base ISO, in both photo and video mode, anything below middle grey is covered in noise.

Perhaps their HDR photos compensate for this? 

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1 hour ago, androidlad said:

On current sub 1" CMOS sensors like the IMX586 used on MAVIC Air 2, the ADC operates at only 10bit, this is the reason why even at base ISO, in both photo and video mode, anything below middle grey is covered in noise.

The Mavic 2 Zoom and Pro, and Mavic Air 1 are also very noisy in the shadows. The Mavic 2 Pro is 1 inch sensor. The previous generation of drone didn't show this type of noise. Apparently it has something to do with the Processor in these drones when DJI went the cheap route and skipped the ambarella processor. Which they corrected on the Mavic Mini but I haven't tried this drone.
All this noise wasn't there on the Phantom series. The Phantom 3  also had great 4k at 60mbps whereas the Mavic 1 was a disaster in 4k. The compression artifacts were so bad on the first mavic that I sold it after one week. All that suggest an image processing issue.

https://dronedj.com/2019/11/27/ambarella-processor-dji-mavic-mini-mavic-3-pro/

On the Mavic Air 2, there seems to be less noise in regular mode but the HDR mode displays a lot of noise in the shadow, borderline unusable.

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5 minutes ago, OliKMIA said:

The Mavic 2 Zoom and Pro, and Mavic Air 1 are also very noisy in the shadows. The Mavic 2 Pro is 1 inch sensor. The previous generation of drone didn't show this type of noise. Apparently it has something to do with the Processor in these drones when DJI went the cheap route and skipped the ambarella processor. Which they corrected on the Mavic Mini but I haven't tried this drone.
All this noise wasn't there on the Phantom series. The Phantom 3  also had great 4k at 60mbps whereas the Mavic 1 was a disaster in 4k. The compression artifacts were so bad on the first mavic that I sold it after one week. All that suggest an image processing issue.

https://dronedj.com/2019/11/27/ambarella-processor-dji-mavic-mini-mavic-3-pro/

 

Those drones with 1" sensor have 12bit ADC, so the noise level will be noticeably better.

Mavic 2 Pro is a special case because the 4K is either heavily subsampled from 5.5K full width, or 1:1 sampled from the centre. Both of them amplify noise level.

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