DJI Inspire Pro X5 - Olympus 45mm & 25mm Comparison Video

[Phil-RCGeeks]

For

What have you found to be the best way to handle focus? It seems to me once I tap on an object to focus, the rest of the shot is ruined as I'm then having to tap on every little thing on which I want to focus and it detracts from my ability to fly and capture the shot.

Thanks!

For filming, we (my cam-op) use manual focus. Holding down C1 and scrolling the top left scroll wheel. That way you don't get any sudden changes in focus if your mid shot, it's silky smooth.
It takes a bit of getting used to get it nailed down but with the help of the focus peaking feature you can get some great shots.

 

[Fink]

For

For filming, we (my cam-op) use manual focus. Holding down C1 and scrolling the top left scroll wheel. That way you don't get any sudden changes in focus if your mid shot, it's silky smooth.
It takes a bit of getting used to get it nailed down but with the help of the focus peaking feature you can get some great shots.

Great information! I've only got about 25-30 hours on the Inspire and didn't even know you could set it up that way. I appreciate the input! My 1,200 hours on the Phantom 2 and 800 on my S1000 don't seem to provide much value with the Inspire other than basic flying mechanics.

Another general question. Let's say you do your initial power-on, start flying and just snapping pics/video without having ever tapped an area on the screen on which to focus - how does it focus? Probably doesn't, right? Until you tap or manually focus? Just curious...

 

[laselvasurf]

I would say that I saw a bit of Jello/wobbling on the olympus 45mm approach shot at the beginning.
Has anyone hacked a motorised lense onto this yet to control zoom in the air?

You have very good eyes. I have been watching it on a 70" 4K monitor at my studio and can see a little shake, but I don't see any jello. The gimbal isn't perfect with that long of a lens, there is no gimbal capable of being perfect at 90mm(eq). But it is REALLY good.

 

[laselvasurf]

What have you found to be the best way to handle focus? It seems to me once I tap on an object to focus, the rest of the shot is ruined as I'm then having to tap on every little thing on which I want to focus and it detracts from my ability to fly and capture the shot.

Thanks!

I fly in manual focus all the time. I check focus before I hit record, just like I would on any of my ground cameras. Once focus is locked I roll the shot and fly off. For some shots, I've had a third person pulling focus for me, but most of the time it's locked after I record.

 

[laselvasurf]

I have an Olympus 14-42mm lens but find that it is a very tight fit in the gimbal and the knurled zoom ring just binds slightly agains the gimbal body. Anyone else experiencing this. I expect that I could sand them down a bit to increase clearance!!!

It's a tight fit, but it does work. I would rather mess up the zoom ring on a cheap lens than sand anything down on the gimbal!

 

[Fink]

I fly in manual focus all the time. I check focus before I hit record, just like I would on any of my ground cameras. Once focus is locked I roll the shot and fly off. For some shots, I've had a third person pulling focus for me, but most of the time it's locked after I record.

Great info. I need to try it with manual focus, then. Sometimes it's tough for me to check the focus because even though Lightbridge does deliver a high quality signal, it's often times not clear enough for me to really gauge how clear the image on the card will be. Just comes with more practice, I suppose.

 

[laselvasurf]

Great info. I need to try it with manual focus, then. Sometimes it's tough for me to check the focus because even though Lightbridge does deliver a high quality signal, it's often times not clear enough for me to really gauge how clear the image on the card will be. Just comes with more practice, I suppose.

I always check focus in still mode as it zooms in when you select the focus slider to verify focus. I then switch over to video mode once I'm confident the focus is correct and I'm ready to roll. I can't tell focus well enough without the zoom feature to be confident in focus either, even with the HD downlink.

 

[m00se]

You have very good eyes. I have been watching it on a 70" 4K monitor at my studio and can see a little shake, but I don't see any jello. The gimbal isn't perfect with that long of a lens, there is no gimbal capable of being perfect at 90mm(eq). But it is REALLY good.

I have been watching video taken with drones for nearly 6 years now....... and jello was the name of the game back then.
I would have killed for video this good back then, perhaps even sold a body part.

I wouldnt say that the shake is too much of a problem in that shot, but its definitely visible in just the youtube on fullscreen. Were you flying especially fast? was there any wind? Perhaps air was blowing against the lens and managing to move the gimbal?
I however suspect that the higher zoom factor is the reason. One of the things I think that we will see with the x5 is that as people experiment with higher zoom lenses, they will notice that the stabilisation isn't as good as it first appears.

 

[Drone Vision]

What have you found to be the best way to handle focus? It seems to me once I tap on an object to focus, the rest of the shot is ruined as I'm then having to tap on every little thing on which I want to focus and it detracts from my ability to fly and capture the shot.

Thanks!

Hi Fink

Well I'm sure plenty of people would be horrified but with the combination of using a craft scalpel and a nail file I have gently removed the knurled section from the zoom ring where it was binding against the gimbal, It's still close but the zoom ring is now free to move in both directions against its spring loading. This was not the case before, so I suggest people check to see if the zoom ring is jammed one way or the other. Those few thousands of an inch have also made it easier to fit and remove there lens. I did have a vacuum running adjacent to where I was doing the filing to minimise the risk of any dust contamination.!!

 

[laselvasurf]

I have been watching video taken with drones for nearly 6 years now....... and jello was the name of the game back then.
I would have killed for video this good back then, perhaps even sold a body part.

I wouldnt say that the shake is too much of a problem in that shot, but its definitely visible in just the youtube on fullscreen. Were you flying especially fast? was there any wind? Perhaps air was blowing against the lens and managing to move the gimbal?
I however suspect that the higher zoom factor is the reason. One of the things I think that we will see with the x5 is that as people experiment with higher zoom lenses, they will notice that the stabilisation isn't as good as it first appears.

I'm with you there, I've been doing this about as long and even two or three years ago if someone said I could get this kind of footage from a UAV under $5K with a 90mm eq lens, I would of just laughed at them! To me jello is a product of rolling shutter because of higher shutter speeds and poor stabilization. It mostly has been because of poor vibration dampening, not usually because of poor gimbal performance. Although I have seen it with people who have poorly configured Movi's tuned too high.

That said, I think the shake is mostly because of the wind resistance, my horizontal speed was around 15mph against a 5-10mph wind. With the longer lens it's a bit of a challenge, I've flown longer lenses on my other platforms and done a years of handheld work with my Movi and never had this consistently good results with anything near 90mm. The X5 has the best stability out there right now in my opinion. If it's well balanced, you can get pretty dang clean footage consistently.

 

[RaptorMan]

Thanks for the video and feedback. I know that location well having spent nearly a year in the Santa Cruz Scotts Valley area back on 2002.

I have yet to purchase the Inspire and am planning to get the Zenmuse X5 version with single control. At this point I'm thinking about the lens options and to cover the bases this is what I'd like: 12mm, 17mm, 25mm and 45mm. The zoom would be nice as a way to save money and reduce the lens changes, but you don't shell out five g's and then cheap out on lenses.

Before deciding on the I1 with X5 I'd looked at the S1000 with GH4, but that's a bunch more expensive for maybe a tad better quality. I have an older GH2 but was planning to upgrade to the GH4 if I got the S1000.

The other option, the I1 with X5R would be nice but I can't justify the price delta at this point. I do wish the X5 had options for higher bit rate like 100Mbps and up to 200Mbps, but I guess I can live with 60Mbps at this point. Hopefully DJI will provide new firmware to increase the bit rate and if not perhaps someone will hack it to do so.

Brian

 

[m00se]

I'm with you there, I've been doing this about as long and even two or three years ago if someone said I could get this kind of footage from a UAV under $5K with a 90mm eq lens, I would of just laughed at them! To me jello is a product of rolling shutter because of higher shutter speeds and poor stabilization. It mostly has been because of poor vibration dampening, not usually because of poor gimbal performance. Although I have seen it with people who have poorly configured Movi's tuned too high.

That said, I think the shake is mostly because of the wind resistance, my horizontal speed was around 15mph against a 5-10mph wind. With the longer lens it's a bit of a challenge, I've flown longer lenses on my other platforms and done a years of handheld work with my Movi and never had this consistently good results with anything near 90mm. The X5 has the best stability out there right now in my opinion. If it's well balanced, you can get pretty dang clean footage consistently.

Agree with all of that, 100%
I have have problems with a gopro on an alexmos. When I have a tail wind the image is pretty decent, when im stationary the image is decent, when I have a headwind, I get a lot of jello.
Before I got the inspire I was modifying a CCTV camera dome to go over the whole gimbal to try and protect it from wind.

Now I have the inspire, why bother?

 

[laselvasurf]

Thanks for the video and feedback. I know that location well having spent nearly a year in the Santa Cruz Scotts Valley area back on 2002.

I have yet to purchase the Inspire and am planning to get the Zenmuse X5 version with single control. At this point I'm thinking about the lens options and to cover the bases this is what I'd like: 12mm, 17mm, 25mm and 45mm. The zoom would be nice as a way to save money and reduce the lens changes, but you don't shell out five g's and then cheap out on lenses.

Before deciding on the I1 with X5 I'd looked at the S1000 with GH4, but that's a bunch more expensive for maybe a tad better quality. I have an older GH2 but was planning to upgrade to the GH4 if I got the S1000.

The other option, the I1 with X5R would be nice but I can't justify the price delta at this point. I do wish the X5 had options for higher bit rate like 100Mbps and up to 200Mbps, but I guess I can live with 60Mbps at this point. Hopefully DJI will provide new firmware to increase the bit rate and if not perhaps someone will hack it to do so.

Brian

I own a S1000 and GH4 setup, complete dual operator with light bridge and the works. It's about a $16K package new. I haven't flown it once since I got the X5. The only thing I keep it for is VR work where I'm suspending a nest of GoPros from a pole underneath it. The A2 flies really well compared to my other heavy lifters that use MK FCs, and I love having the light bridge downlink, even if it's just for my FPV camera when flying VR rigs. But as far as flying a GH4, it's really just not necessary. The bitrate isn't as good, but if we're honest with ourselves, 98% of our work is getting compressed far more than 60Mbps by the time it's being viewed by the intended audience. Unless you're shooting for a feature film... In which case a GH4 isn't going to cut it either way.

I'm extremely interested in the X5R, I hope the price point is more reasonable than I've heard so far. It will be a game changer at any price point though and DJI knows this.

 

[RaptorMan]

I own a S1000 and GH4 setup, complete dual operator with light bridge and the works. It's about a $16K package new. I haven't flown it once since I got the X5. The only thing I keep it for is VR work where I'm suspending a nest of GoPros from a pole underneath it. The A2 flies really well compared to my other heavy lifters that use MK FCs, and I love having the light bridge downlink, even if it's just for my FPV camera when flying VR rigs. But as far as flying a GH4, it's really just not necessary. The bitrate isn't as good, but if we're honest with ourselves, 98% of our work is getting compressed far more than 60Mbps by the time it's being viewed by the intended audience. Unless you're shooting for a feature film... In which case a GH4 isn't going to cut it either way.

I'm extremely interested in the X5R, I hope the price point is more reasonable than I've heard so far. It will be a game changer at any price point though and DJI knows this.

Yeah, I have been looking into drones for more than a year but didn't get serious until recently. I thought about starting with a Phantom but the camera options just didn't reach the go/nogo point. I have a GH2 and have thought about upgrading to the GH4 but doing that pushes you to the S900/S1000 class and going there is well over $10K when all is said and done. So that then brought me to the Inspire and with the M4/3 cameras and Zenmuse mount ... well that's kind of the clincher.

I have to wait until January to buy but I already have dozens of missions in the works. Probably spend several flight hours acquainting myself before doing any serious work and I am already planning to add Litchi to my workflow as it seems way more advanced as far as the intelligent flight modes are concerned.

I can see why a barometer is needed at the RC end in order to provide elevation matching in follow me mode but there's other things I think they can do to improve follow me performance. The 2D position info appears to be entirely derived from the RC and AC GPS units, but there a good deal of latency with them resulting in undershoot/overshoot issues. If the software tracked the accelerometers at the RC end and the orientation of the device with accelerometers is correct it should be possible to use data from them to detect operator motion and begin AC motion long before the GPS detects motion. I could see such an implementation reducing errors to a few feet versus 100 feet or more.

Brian

 

[philip_poupin]

Could you fly with the lens hood of the 45mm on ? Or is it too big? Do you know approx the weight of the filter and adapter ring you put on the 45mm?

 

[laselvasurf]

Could you fly with the lens hood of the 45mm on ? Or is it too big? Do you know approx the weight of the filter and adapter ring you put on the 45mm?

Technically you could. But I would not as the wind resistance caused by lens hoods really throws gimbals off. I don't know the exact weight, I could tell you in the next few days though, I just need to dig out my scale.

 

[philip_poupin]

Thanks.

 

[RaptorMan]

Yeah the problem with using different lenses is that the matrix of possible lens, filter, hood combinations can grow very large and maintaining proper mount balance isn't a one size fits all thing.

What would have been nice is for the camera to be adjustable fore/aft so that as you can the lenses, hoods and filters you could re-balance by moving the assembly fore or aft 10mm or so.


Brian

 

[philip_poupin]

I have purchased the 45mm. Super sharp lens ! But It's difficult to get it balanced. After many different attempts, I can not get smooth shots as you do. I get something wavy/kind of shaky. I tried to balance it perfectly, to get it little nose-heavy, side-heavy, but no chance. Could elaborate a bit more on how you got balanced. Did you have to calibrate the gimbal (auto-calibration gimbal in gimbal settings)?

 

[creativedogmedia]

I have tried the 45mm with the lens hood and without and can't get video that isn't wobbly. Even yaw-only video hovering in one position has a tiny bit of shake in it. What gives?