DJI Mavic Pro Picture Settings - No More Soft Footage

What up guys, welcome back to another episode. Eddie Bear here. And I've seen a lot of you guys complaining about the focus feature with the DJI Mavic Pro and I'm pretty sure we all will have the same problem with the DJI Mavic Pro Platinum. So I decided to do a tutorial on how to properly use the focus feature with the DJI GO 4 app. So I will give you a thorough overview on how you can tweak the sharpness of your footage and what you have to do to always keep a sharp and crispy image as you like it. But before we get into all the techy stuff and all the adjustments, don't forget to subscribe to my channel and make sure to check out also the written article on eddie-bear.com and make sure that you visit my next uploads because I'm pretty sure there will be a lot of stuff in there that you are looking for. So let's jump right into the features. Let's start with the focus peaking feature. This one is the first and the most important feature I'm going to show you today. In order to activate the focus peaking feature, select the picture settings menu on the bottom right corner, then select the gear symbol and go all the way down to focus peaking threshold. If you're ever wondering where those weird red lines are coming from on your controller, well, this feature is what is controlling those red lines. In this menu, you can set the threshold for these lines. So if you select none, the lines are completely turned off and if you select high, you really need to be in complete focus to see any kind of red lines on your screen. Most of the time I'm using normal threshold because this gives you a good average where you don't have too many lines and you can actually quite good determine whether you're in focus or not. The second thing you can adjust for a crispy image is the picture style and this one can have really big implications on your footage. To access it, select the camera symbol on the top and then select style in the menu. In the custom picture style mode, you are able to adjust the sharpness, the contrast and the saturation settings in this order. These settings have a dramatic effect on your footage so make sure to test them out before you use them in the real life. To give you a better understanding how these settings are affecting your footage, I will give you a series of test shots where I compare the sharpness from minus two to plus two. Let's begin with a reference shot where the sharpness is set to zero. Setting the sharpness to zero has some big pros and cons. One big pro is that you don't receive any kind of noise in your footage. A big con is, on the other hand, as you can see in the cornfield down below, you don't see too much detail in the fine lines so it's kind of a bit mushy but not too much so it's a kind of good average to go with. And with that said, for all the users out there that are not going to edit their footage in post, the normal picture style is more than sharp enough for you but if you want to get a bit more crispy, you will definitely need to take a look on the other sharpness settings that are out there. If you're taking test footage yourself, make sure that you are moving your drone around because with the movement you get some motion blur and this is what will cost you some additional sharpness in your footage. Okay, so next up, sharpness plus one. Since my recordings are all in 4k, you will definitely benefit on a 4k display with this footage to see how much the sharpness is affecting this footage. So with sharpness plus one, you will notice that there is more noise in the footage, the shadows are a bit more noisier, unrested, but you will also notice that on the fields you get way more details on the grain and also on the trees if you look closely to them. So if you pause this video on a random point, you can see how crispy the sharpness plus one setting actually really is. Next up, sharpness plus two. In my opinion, sharpness plus two is really a beast. I don't like it too much because it introduces really a lot of noise in the shadows and you already start to receive some artifacts which I really don't want in any of my footage. On the other hand, it's unarguable that you receive a ton of additional information in your footage as you can see on top of this field or in the corn or also in the trees. So you're welcome to pause this video at any given time to check out the additional infos you can see. Now let's check out the sharpness minus one next. At a glance, you immediately see that there is no real sharp edge in this footage. It even kind of looks dull. So on the other hand, there is absolutely no noise in this footage. So if you are on a job where you have to ramp up your ISO, maybe this could be a lifesaver where you can compensate for the noise in the high ISO with the sharpness minus one. And if you pause this video, you will notice that the individual images have way more motion blur than the image before. Next up the absolute overkill sharpness minus two. If you ever want to ruin your 4k footage, sharpness minus two is the best way to do it. As you can see here with this settings, you definitely are losing a ton of information and everything gets kind of smushy and more washed out than before. So I wouldn't recommend using sharpness minus two ever. Since sharpness minus and plus two are out of the race in my opinion, I'm now giving you a side-by-side comparison of the normal picture style and sharpness minus and plus one. So you'll be able to decide for yourself which one is the right for you. The moment the transition moves in, you already can tell that there is a big difference between sharpness zero and sharpness plus one. Especially in the shadows of the trees, you see that there is some noise introduced with this setting. On the other hand, you get a bump on the crispiness of your image and you are also able to spot more details in your footage. Overall, while the drone is moving, you won't spot too many differences between the two settings. But when the drone starts to turn to the left side, when the trees come up again, you will notice that sharpness plus one has a benefit over sharpness zero when it comes to the details of the leaves and the branches. So for me personally, the decision comes down to these two settings when it comes to the perfect crispy image. If you pause the side-by-side comparison, you will notice that there are only little differences between the two sharpness settings. The biggest difference comes when there is motion introduced into the footage and the motion blur kicks in. Now let's compare sharpness zero against sharpness minus one. The difference between zero and minus one sharpness isn't as big as it was between zero and plus one. Some differences are easily spotted. So for example, if you look at the treetops, you will notice that this high contrast area is definitely not benefiting from the loss of sharpness. Since there is not much detail left to begin with by the introduction of additional movement, the motion blur takes away again another portion of the little details you have left. Especially with the fast sidewards movements of the Mavic, you will see that the motion blur is amplified in the treetops. In my opinion, this setting is something that you can use if you have a lot of noise in your footage. Otherwise, I wouldn't recommend using it. So maybe better stick with the normal picture style or the plus one. All the shots you've seen here today were taken with a manual focus point on the Mavic. So let's talk about how you can focus your Mavic when you're out on the road. There are two different ways on how to get your DJI Mavic Pro's camera to get in focus. But what are you doing if the autofocus on the DJI Mavic Pro is failing you? There is also a manual way to get the focus right with the Mavic. Getting your focus right is always depending on the scene you're shooting. So if you're shooting something like landscape scene or something, you will need to move your focus near to the infinity. But if you're shooting something up close, you will have to go for the flower, the macro area. So basically this is it what you are looking for. But to get the nice smooth sweet spot, you need the peak focus feature. In this example, I'm going to show you how the focus dial is affecting your focus area. You can see in this setup that the focus is on a good average. And as I'm dialing towards the flower, e.g. the macro area, you see that the focus is shifting from the treetops to the foreground. So if you go all the way in either direction, you will lose all your focus in your footage. So you definitely need to find the sweet spot within those two areas. So in this setup, we are trying to achieve a good overall focus throughout the whole image. In order to achieve this, we need to spin the dial in the direction of the infinity symbol. And I'll be honest with you, hitting a real sweet spot where the overall image is completely in focus can be hard at times. So a big screen like from an iPad will be of great assistance if you have one. So using the manual focus can be tricky at times, but when you get the hang of it, it will definitely improve your drone footage because you get the focus always as you want it. And you don't have to rely on the autofocus of the Mavic. Okay, so what do you think about this little tutorial here? I hope this will help you to get rid of all the nasty, mushy and unsharp footage you have produced in the past. Hopefully not too much of it. But I'm hoping that this will help you to improve your drone footage. And it definitely helped me to increase the production value of my drone footage. The techniques I showed you in this video sometimes can require some practice and you will not get it right at the first time. But as always, you have to practice what you want to be good at. So go out, go fly and hopefully you come back with great footage. So did you get the focus right in the past with the Mavic all the times? Hit me up in the comments below and tell me what you did wrong then and what was your worst experience with the focus on the DJI Mavic Pro. Also don't forget to subscribe to my channel because I'm waiting passionately for my DJI Mavic Pro Platinum and when it's here I will do a thorough comparison between the Mavic Pro and the Mavic Pro Platinum. So hit the like button and I'm hoping to see you next time. Oh, and thank you for watching.