AF vs MF in Map Pilot Pro

Noticed during a flight yesterday text at the bottom of the camera view showing the camera was using MF and a setting of 7.00 Having never set any camera settings in MPP I was a bit puzzled by this, but as this was seen during a mapping flight, and MPP had worked fine for me in the past, I did not explore further until today.

Checking setting icon in the upper left of the camera view I find a number of settings one of which is AF/MF. It seems the MF runs on a scale of 0.0 (flower) to 38.0 at infinity. No idea how the default 7.0 setting was arrived at unless testing has shown that this is the hyperfocal distance for a Phantom 4 Pro (UAV being flown). I assume that MF set to infinity (or 7.0) is recommended for mapping flights?

The other setting in this set of icons than puzzles me is an angle icon that by default is set to 5 degrees and has the text 5 degrees recommended. Not sure what this is referring to, all mapping imagery is collected with a nadir (90 degree) camera setting.

Appreciate any comments on this.

Thanks,

DAve

Dtewksbu September 20, 2021 18:38

Official comment

Sorry for the delay.

There is always a camera focus setting. It just either gets set by the AF or the user with the slider. When you update the autofocus you can see that value change a bit.

You can read more about that here:

https://support.dronesmadeeasy.com/hc/en-us/articles/4401958968468-Camera-and-Gimbal-Controls

The default gimbal angle in 5 in Map Pilot Pro. Getting it off of directly nadir makes some of the tags better while not affecting the processing. Most people don't even notice that it is tipped up a bit until they look at the tags.

Zane September 21, 2021 20:53

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5 comments

Please confirm or deny: when working in autofocus, does the camera only focus at the beginning of each flight, and does not change again during that flight? Or is the focus of the camera constantly changing when photographing in AF-mode?

Phantom 4PRO

Jalolov Khushnud November 08, 2022 06:43 0 votes

As noted in the link above:

"Auto Focus - At the top of the climb to the flight height an autofocus solution is pulled after the aircraft settles using the standard on-camera DJI autofocus using the center of the camera preview area. This process is done for every flight. This is the default setting. "

The focus occurs at the top of the climb for each flight. One time.

For further focus adjustment the article then goes on:

"If you are ever questioning your focal quality you can stop the flight and double tap on a contrasty spot in the camera preview screen to force the auto focus to pull another solution. "

Zane November 08, 2022 16:23 0 votes

How does AF work when flying with "Terrain Awareness" in mountain landscape, where there are very large height differences - 200-300 meters. Does the camera also autofocus ONCE and ONLY at the beginning of the flight when climbing the flight altitude?
I like the image quality when flying in autofocus mode, but unfortunately, when processing images with accurate PPK coordinates, the accuracy of the model in height is very poor (>1meter), and I do not know what could be the reason. I tried to process only one flight separately, and given that during one flight the focus value should not change and remain constant, but still the resulting altitude accuracy is very low...
Tomorrow I will try to fly with MF, and please tell me, should I set the Focus value to "Infinity =0"?

thnks

Jalolov Khushnud November 08, 2022 19:30 0 votes

With Terrain Awareness it isn't as much of an issue as it is WITHOUT the terrain correction. The focus is generally good for one distance (depending on the height) and Terrain Awareness attempts to keep the distance the same.

For higher flight the focus solution is likely going to be infinity or near it. At those heights if you just want to set the focus to manual and select infinity that would work too. That way it will always been the same value too and won't affect your camera calibration.

Zane November 08, 2022 19:35 0 votes