LEARNING TO FLY A DRONE PART 2: STILL IMAGE QUALITY
Since I got hold of the DJI Mavic Pro last month I've been slowly trying to get to grips with flying and filming with drones, as well as filming and editing in general. While I principally bought the drone for shooting video I am also interesting in it's capabilities for still photography, particularly as I'll be in Iceland later this year and I'd like to have a go at some abstract aerial images of glaciers and rivers. So I decided to experiment with the RAW images on the Mavic and create a video review for my Youtube channel while I was doing it.
I headed out to shoot a sunrise at Portinho da Arrabida, but it was really windy which limited how much drone flying I could do...still, I did manage to get a few photographs that I could experiment with in Lightroom. A few days later I shot a sunset at Praia do Ouriçal, which gave me an opportunity to test out the low light quality of both the video and the still photos.
Besides getting footage and shots for the video review, I also learned a lot about controlling the drone in high wind and got more confident flying the drone further away and out over the water. I also managed to get a couple of images in both locations that I was happy with.
Overall, as you'll see from the video review the images are certainly useable for the web, although the amount of noise in areas of blocks of colour makes me wonder how well they'll print. Still, I reckon with some careful work on noise reduction I could certainly print them at A4 size. Check out the video below for an in-depth look at the Mavic Pro's RAW photos.
