DJI Phantom 3 Professional Owners' Thread

[smartaquad]

Hi there,
I´m looking in to buying some ND filters for the little banger. Which ones would you recomend?
1-DJI Phantom 3 originals https://store.dji.com/product/phantom-3-nd4-filter
2-Polar Pro Filters https://www.polarprofilters.com/collections/phantom3filters/products/phantom3filter
Laters,
S

 

[Av8Chuck]

I have the PolarPro filters and they work well, but I think I only paid something like $60 for the set. I purchased mine before they included the polarizers so it was just the CP ND8, 16 and 32. Not sure their worth $150, I pretty much only use the ND32, ND16 is a bit light and ND64 is a bit too dark on a camera that isn't very good in low light.

 

[SamaraMedia]

Ok, so I broke down and bought a P3Pro to take on vacation, the day before leaving. Not necessarily the best move but I'm not really interested in the P4 and all the rumored features so BestBuy had a sweet deal and I could take on the plane with me which none of the other rigs I own would be able to do. My F550 with GP Hero3 has been my work horse but with the proposed micro-drone ruling I figured it was time to get out of the past and into the present.

Loving all the features on the camera but so far I'm hugely disappointed in the quality of the video and some photos, seems mostly in the shadows but not always. While filming at sunrise of a lighthouse the results a pretty useless, black artifacts all over the place like little marching ants. Same with stills. All were shot at 100 iso so could be low light since stuff in the highlight area seems of but still finding black specks.

About two hours later I was out filming a ship wreck near shore and I thought that would be no problem but again disappointment. I don't have the PolarPro filters yet but I can't see that being the problem. All firmware was update upon setup here in Aruba. I'm using an Sandisk Extreme SD card which I think is rated good enough for this camera although I may have to try the Panasonic card included. I'm not shooting 4K, just 1080. Thinking I might need to install old version of firmware and reinstall current one. Anyone run into this issue?

 

[Av8Chuck]

Sorry but the issue your running into is that the X3 is a crap camera. Its a 4:2:0 low bit rate, very little ability to adjust the exposure, terrible in low light - I can go on all night about its shortcomings...

However, before all the DJI fanboys shoot be down in flames, if you slightly over expose, kind of the opposite of a good camera, you can actually get some. for a lack of a better term - decent footage. Its a little like how a GoPro gives you its best footage in the middle of the day when you probably wouldn't even take your DSLR out of the case.

I always shoot in 4K, unless I need a faster than 30fps frame rate. You just have to experiment a lot with it to get the look you want.

 

[FerdinandK]

You not should have this "marching ants", possibly the cam is broken, but I would first try with the SD-card it came with, the Scandisc extreme is too slow (expecially in writing). Scandisk "extreme pro"is what you are looking for.

 

[SamaraMedia]

Thanks guys. Here's the latest. I exchanged the P3Pro for another one after returning from a test flight to see if using PolarPro filters helped the situation and found that one of the motor bell housing had slid up the shaft a good 3/16" which fortunately did not come apart while flying. This is my biggest problem with flying quads! I have to admit that it is different using this rig vs the F550 with GoPro I'm used to. I find I forget to hit record sometimes, adjusting the camera for exposure in manual and how limiting that feature really is with a 2.8 lens in video mode but I can see the benefits of the portability immediately.

I can also say that the video issues I was experiencing with the first P3P was likely user error. I found that I had not removed the little foam gimbal protector for travel before upgrading firmware and taking my first flight. Can't believe I didn't see it before flying but the funny thing is I couldn't understand why the plastic gimbal kept falling off when I first pulled the quad out of the box. That probably caused the camera to not move freely and record properly on the sensor. Gonna have to learn the best settings for video, most people recommend going to a -2, -2 or -3, -2 settings rather than the stock settings that can look over sharpened. Also using D-Log I will need to find the best way to get results in post production and likely will need an upgrade in my MacBook Pro that is now 8 years old...