Footage not in focus (Mavic Pro)
I have attempted several test flights including an orbit and a simple map. in both missions, the focus was set to auto and the focus box on the screen said AF. But after reviewing the footage, none of it is in focus. What could be the issue?
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There are very few situations where auto focus is of any benefit when flying a drone. When manual focus is set properly everything from 10 feet or so to infinity will be in focus with these small camera and their lens. So typical drone video or photo distances do not need the focus to ever change. Auto focus produce more problems for most than it is worth. Set you focus manually and leave it alone unless you really need to change it.
Many serious videographers would never use or trust auto focus on the ground or in the air
that's fine and all, but the footage is in focus when using dronedeploy, pix4d, hangar and litchi.
and regardless of what you think of auto focus, dronelink should work properly if it is set to auto focus. and every mission i've tested so far with dronelink, the footage has been out of focus. when flying manually with the go app or with any other app, the footage is perfect so it is not an issue with the mavic pro.
Dronelink isn't doing anything special to the camera during missions. If the controls on the UI aren't performing as you would expect then its a problem in the DJI SDK UI Library, which is where all these controls come from.
it looks like the app isn't commanding the drone to focus then.
just for comparison, in pix4d, the only setting I set is white balance. I don't even touch dji go and all images are in focus. if i do the same in dronelink, every image is out of focus. video too. if I tap the screen so that AF is displayed, the same thing. if I switch to MF, the same thing.
I will do a screen recording and post it here.
I actually have the same issue. Using a Mavic Pro also. I usually realize it. Then I have to pause a mission, pull up DJI go, focus and the start the mission on dronelink again. So I guess another feature for the roadmap would be to enable tab focus during missions.
@Roland , i tried your suggestion to use dji go to focus, but when i started dji go, dronlink complained about delayed commands. i forced quit go and dronelink refused to continue with the mission so i had to force quit dronelink.
i haven't had a successful test with dronelink yet but i will keep trying.
Autofocus is working on M2P at least. Tap focus as well. Is this related to MP only?
Totally agree with franknitty, I tried 6 missions today, orbits, destination, path and mixtures, building up from Eric’s tutorials, main focus, (excuse the pun) was the altitude and direction etc. However the focus was completely out on every mission, (mavic pro)
when I tapped to focus it tried but wandered back to out of focus.
its not always true that manual focus is ok from 10’ to infinity, depends on the effective aperture and also the manufacturers wouldn’t bother with AF if all it had to do was have one focus position!
Is it the mavic pro that’s the issue or shouldn’t dronelinks commands select AF correctly?
Need to know otherwise and pics/vids will become useless.
i've tried the autofocus component as well and that did not work. so from what i can gather, it looks like the component (set camera to autofocus), tap the screen to focus (auto) or tap the screen to focus (manual) does not work on the mavic pro.
anyone else with a mavic pro with good focus when using dronelink?
If it is truly a bug with just the Mavic will add to the list and ask DJI for a fix.
Here is a test I did. Working autofocus with M2P at least.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/664354490743845/permalink/674988299680464/
Don’t do Facebook, is there anywhere else you can upload it please
This was only posted on Dronelink User Group on Fb. I'll see if I can upload to YouTube as well
Tested the focus and exposure options on the Mavic Pro today and everything worked well. Not sure what I need to do to try to reproduce the issue.
Not sure what your picture is meant to be showing Jim, presumably when you say tested options, is this “in actual flight”?
when I did my 5 flights (Above) I never did anything other than leave default AF and exp. It was in flight that the iPad view was in/out of focus etc as described etc, but never is in dji or other app eg litchi.
is there a log we can view do you know?
The mavic was out of focus until I tapped to enabled AF and everything looked great. You are saying if I do that and the go fly a mission it becomes out of focus?
Just flew a mission and it was in focus the whole time.
I have had similar focus issues and early on in my trials could not get the autofocus to work. I eventually used a cable from the USB A main port on the controller to iPad mini and then noticed I could get control on the screen of the autofocus. ( I had been using the usbc connection or whatever the one on the side of the controller is) . The Exposure and focus switch on the screen need to be watched carefully as seems to default to exposure often. In the end not sure if it was the cable or eventually figuring out how to use the on screen switch. Flew 5 different trial missions this morning and it all seems to be working as expected. (Mavic pro original)
I have same issue in Mavic Pro when set to autofocus. When I try to focus manually, it hits focus for a second or so and goes out of focus again. I will try with manual focus only and see what happens. Happy to share footage if needed.
EDIT: works fine with focus set to manual. In fact, it seems to autofocus in manual setting, but you can re-focus.
Just started using the Dronelink mission program this week Thought I was just missing a setting or something. Using a Mavic Pro. Created and flew a successful circular point of interest mission but as stated above, the entire footage was out of focus. As for setting the focus to 10' to infinity? Do not agree. I was doing a circular POI and then fly straight over an intricate sculpture today. Got within a few feet from the top and needed a tight focus. Had to do a manual flyover with DJI Go4 and splice it into the video. Would have been nice if I could have figured out how to auto focus using Dronelink mission.
You used this control to change it to AFC and it still didn't work?
Yes, I used exactly this and it did not work.
It would get into focus for a fraction of a second and out of focus again. But once I put everything into manual (including going into DJI Go 4, setting to manual and then going to Dronelink and again setting to manual) it worked.
So it appears there is some sort of mismatch between what's "inherited" from DJI settings and the setting in Dronelink.
Very strange, because it worked for me, no problem. The flight dashboard is mostly DJI code (from the UXSDK), which includes the AF/MF focus toggle widget. The state of the camera itself is stored onboard in the camera's firmware, and Dronelink doesn't modify it unless you issue camera commands (as part of your mission plan), or use the DJI UI controls, so still not sure where to go from here.
Could it be that Dronelink perhaps did't inherit correctly? What happens if a line of program is not interpreted in right way? Does it stop or continue? I will try to modify and re-fly couple of missions with different focus settings (both for DJI and Dronelink) to see what happens and if the issue repeats itself for any of the scenarions.
It's a great app, by the way - I'm still a bit apprehensive to fly it in certain situations (mountains and over water), but this is more to do with making sure that waypoints are defined correctly than with the behaviour of the drone itself.
Not sure if I understand what you mean by inherit. If you mean does Dronelink inherit the camera settings from DJI GO, the answer is yes because the settings are saved to the hardware (the camera itself), and are independent of the app that sets them. This goes both ways also. For example, if you use a Dronelink camera command to set the camera photo file format to RAW+JPEG, and then open DJI GO, you will see the camera has retained that setting.
Was this solved? I recently purchased a hobby licence for dronelink and today tried my first mssions with Mavic Pro Platinum and Mavic Mini, I ran a mapping mission with the Pro and the photos were all out of focus, I also ran an orbit mission with video and all was out of focus.
I have used a Settings Reset Component which includes a Drone settings reset, Camera Settings Reset, and Gimbal settings Reset. The Camera settings reset includes commands Camera Focus Mode = Auto, Camera Exposure Mode = auto and Camera Exposure Compensation = 0.0ev. I have checked and these all seem reasonable.
This is the first component so it is exectued prior to flight. Immediately after the flight I switched to Litchi and the focus was perfect.
Is there something I'm missing here?
You have a few options:
Note: we are adding a focus command like this automatically now to map components, but it won't be until the 1.7.1 release.
Thanks for the fast response Jim, I am new to Dronelink, it is extensive and complex.
I will try your suggestion tomorrow.
Thanx again. Steve
Release 1.7.1 from what do you mean?
I'v tried the camera focus command but i did not see (M2P) any difference..
And what does focus target exact?
1.7.1 is the next version of the native app.
Focus target specifics where the auto focus actually focuses. 50/50 is center screen, 0/0 is top left, 100/100 is bottom right, etc.
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