Camera Comparison Mavic 3 vs Autel Lite+

[Bussty]

Thanks to Suren he was able to fly his Mavic 3 and Autel Lite+ to roughly the same location and take a shot looking down with both drones. The view is close enough, not precisely lined up and the Autel view appears to be slightly narrower but good to draw some comparisons. The two RAW files used are here:- Link to RAW files

I have not done anything to the RAW files apart from aligning brightness. I'm not posting screen shots as the compression here doesn't help.

Here's a side by side at the Centre 100% LINK

What strikes me here is the colour science appears to be so close and the images look pretty similar (apart from the Autel being a little narrower)


Here's a side by side at the Centre 200% LINK

At 200% I believe you can start to see the impact of the large sensor of the Mavic 3 and you start to see a little more noise in the Autel Lite+ image


Here's a side by side at the Top Right Corner 200% LINK

This again shows that corner edge trait of the Mavic 3 to start to blur whereas the Lite+ appears to retain corner to corner sharpness.

VERDICT?
For video if these are the sensors generating the images then between the two drones I think you would see very little difference. There is no "ground breaking" differences between these images.

For low light, contary to footage you see on Youtube you would have to say the bigger sensor of the Mavic will generate less noise and does on the 200% crop. Autel must be doing some clever post processing to keep up with a smaller sensor and I personally think the Supernight Video footage of the Lite+ does look a little too bereft of noise.

For stills I think the Mavic 3 may out do the Lite+ when you see that noise in the 200% crop, but noise is easy to remove so I think they would be close. They both show similar levels of detail.

I think it's very obvious (well not very) but if you are doing corner to corner big enlargements on the wall the Lite+ appears to be sharper corner to corner.

Now I have to decide which one I'll buy!

Thank you Suren for your efforts.

Cheers

Andrew

 

[DARKSeifer]

You should try to open those DNGs in Rawdigger in order to properly compare image quality. Drones pre apply lens corrections on camera that come embedded in the DNG files and can't be deactivated on Lightroom and similar programs.

In my opinion Lite+ has a crisper lens, M3 has a bigger sensor, but optical quality is a bit poorer and images come more preprocessed than in the Lite+. Anyways, both are way crisper tha Air2S and of course, Mini 2.

The greater difference when it comes to photography on drones doesn't come form the camera itself (you can take nice pictures even with the Mini 2), come from the fact that all DJI drones are vulnerable to DJI Aeroscope system and come with GeoFencing, while Autel drones can fly under the radar and don't come with a "babysitter", so you are able to fly in paces where DJI drones will just tell the police your location. And I'm not talking about flying near airports or prisons, I'm talking of doing general landscape or architectural photography.

Maybe that's not a problem in coutries where you can fly almost anywhere except near Airports, prisions, military bases, etc, but in Spain or France drones are almost forbidden for hobby so the last thing you want is a drone that tells the police all the telemetry... that's the main reason to chose Autel for me over DJI.

 

[Bussty]

I'm hearing you! I live within 5 kms of an Airport (Queenstown New Zealand) and very frustrated with my Mavic Mini and having to dial up DJI for a code to launch every time I want to capture a sunset or cool clouds. So yes, this will factor heavily in my final decision. I agree with the lens on the Mavic 3, corners are quite obvious. I'll try Rawdigger, thanks...

 

[Rubik3x]

Thanks to Suren he was able to fly his Mavic 3 and Autel Lite+ to roughly the same location and take a shot looking down with both drones. The view is close enough, not precisely lined up and the Autel view appears to be slightly narrower but good to draw some comparisons. The two RAW files used are here:- Link to RAW files

I have not done anything to the RAW files apart from aligning brightness. I'm not posting screen shots as the compression here doesn't help.

Here's a side by side at the Centre 100% LINK

What strikes me here is the colour science appears to be so close and the images look pretty similar (apart from the Autel being a little narrower)


Here's a side by side at the Centre 200% LINK

At 200% I believe you can start to see the impact of the large sensor of the Mavic 3 and you start to see a little more noise in the Autel Lite+ image


Here's a side by side at the Top Right Corner 200% LINK

This again shows that corner edge trait of the Mavic 3 to start to blur whereas the Lite+ appears to retain corner to corner sharpness.

VERDICT?
For video if these are the sensors generating the images then between the two drones I think you would see very little difference. There is no "ground breaking" differences between these images.

For low light, contary to footage you see on Youtube you would have to say the bigger sensor of the Mavic will generate less noise and does on the 200% crop. Autel must be doing some clever post processing to keep up with a smaller sensor and I personally think the Supernight Video footage of the Lite+ does look a little too bereft of noise.

For stills I think the Mavic 3 may out do the Lite+ when you see that noise in the 200% crop, but noise is easy to remove so I think they would be close. They both show similar levels of detail.

I think it's very obvious (well not very) but if you are doing corner to corner big enlargements on the wall the Lite+ appears to be sharper corner to corner.

Now I have to decide which one I'll buy!

Thank you Suren for your efforts.

Cheers

Andrew

I basically agree with your verdict. In your right corner 200%, I see a little chromatic aberration around the roof gutter and deck railing in the LIte+ image. Also, the colors in the Lite+ appear to be just a bit more saturated. Otherwise, there is very little to distinguish between the two. I'm not seeing any more noise in the Lite+ images. I do see the corner blurring in the M3 top right corner at 200%. Autel is cranking out some impressive cameras.

 

[Michael Pu]

Thanks for sharing your experience, since I have no opportunity to fly the Mavic 3. The sensor of the Evo Lite + seems to be outstanding fine and I am ver happy with it. However, the lenses of the Evo Lite + have disappointed me. Just keep an eye on the enclosed image of our airfield: The windmills at the horizon are anything else but not vertical. So I went around a windsock and tried to get images with the windsock vertical, as in reality. I tried several shoots from upside down, then I tried from a very low altitude with the gimbal at the 0° position. No chance, whenever the windsock was out of the center, it tilted to the left or right. Since plenty of very cheap mobile lenses do this much better, I'd say the lenses are not worth the sensor, sad to say. OK, I can fix this in Lightroom, but that's not a real solution for a camera at this price tag.

 

[OldBlueHeron]

Unless they fix that wandering gimbal, the Lite+ is all but useless. Keeping my fingers crossed and waiting for some firmware. I haven’t flown mine in over 2 weeks.

 

[Cicero24]

^No joke! We need an update soon. There hasn’t been an update since January. Autel knows of the issues. I have notified them of the wandering gimbal, no histogram and no EV compensation readout in manual mode. Silence so far. They have not responded to me in over a week.

 

[Rubik3x]

It's unlikely that Autel will add all the camera adjustment features to the Lite+ as found in the EVO II Pro. They will want to differentiate the models with price points that reflect the features. Of course, known problems need to be fixed.

 

[Bussty]

Thanks for sharing your experience, since I have no opportunity to fly the Mavic 3. The sensor of the Evo Lite + seems to be outstanding fine and I am ver happy with it. However, the lenses of the Evo Lite + have disappointed me. Just keep an eye on the enclosed image of our airfield: The windmills at the horizon are anything else but not vertical. So I went around a windsock and tried to get images with the windsock vertical, as in reality. I tried several shoots from upside down, then I tried from a very low altitude with the gimbal at the 0° position. No chance, whenever the windsock was out of the center, it tilted to the left or right. Since plenty of very cheap mobile lenses do this much better, I'd say the lenses are not worth the sensor, sad to say. OK, I can fix this in Lightroom, but that's not a real solution for a camera at this price tag.View attachment 13395View attachment 13396

Cheers for those. I think it was Captain Drone that commented on this in his review. I think most drones do this and correct in the RAW conversion. I know the Mavic 3 main camera shoots 16:9 and no 3:2 or 4:3 but I think part of the reason is above the 16:9 crop the fall off and lens distortion is too much. At least the Lite+ appears to hold it's sharpness across the frame which is a big plus for me. So many pross and cons at the minute between the Mavic 3 and Lite+!

Edit: I was wrong above M3 does shoot 4:3!

 

[bkushner]

Lite + is brutal. I've written support about the issue several times since mid February all to no avail.........They don't even respond to support requests anymore. I returned mine.

 

[Bussty]

Lite + is brutal. I've written support about the issue several times since mid February all to no avail.........They don't even respond to support requests anymore. I returned mine.

You have the M3 also don't you? How are you finding that these days? It seems quite the mission to find "the" drone at the moment I feel like I should just wait 6 months and see how they are both faring?

 

[bkushner]

You have the M3 also don't you? How are you finding that these days? It seems quite the mission to find "the" drone at the moment I feel like I should just wait 6 months and see how they are both faring?

Yes. I have an M3. Overall I'm happy with it.

 

[Bussty]

Yes. I have an M3. Overall I'm happy with it.

You finding the optics better, equal, worse than Lite+? Cheers

 

[gophcc]

Anyone here shoots PANO ?

I've tried all the PANO modes, yes I can find every single frame in the PANO directory ( mostly underexposed though) but where are the stitched photos?

Do they ever stitch it or should I stitch in post on my own ?

 

[Michael Pu]

Anyone here shoots PANO ?

I've tried all the PANO modes, yes I can find every single frame in the PANO directory ( mostly underexposed though) but where are the stitched photos?

Do they ever stitch it or should I stitch in post on my own ?

Yes, I tried different pano modes - unfortunately just in .jpg. I was going to fix the gimbal slightly upside down to avoid overexposed heaven. However, the drone processed a kind of a standard setting with a first image directly into heaven and therefore all following images became too dark. Lightroom gave some opportunities to fix the exposure. However, next time I'll try HDR instead. And I will start the first image with the sun in the back ;-)



Here's another pano taken today the opposite direction at a wind speed of about 20 knots and terrible turbulences. Therefore the details are not as crisp as under calm conditions. However - every image taken with a GoPro from a paraglider when airborne wouldn't do better.

 

[bkushner]

You finding the optics better, equal, worse than Lite+? Cheers

Didn't use it enough to find out.. Autel from what I saw was real good.

 

[DARKSeifer]

Objects near the edges will allways be distorted to some degree in wide angle lenses, that's a common thing when you represent a three-dimensional space (reality) on a flat bidimensional plane (sensor/film). Optical design on proper DSLR lenses can prevent it, but on drone lenses size and weight is all that matters. They tend to mount cheap lenses and do all the corrections with an embedded lens profile on the DNG.

On foldable drones, that's as good as it can get. Mavic 3 lens image circle doesn't even cover the entire sensor, and Air2S is way softer, specially on the edges.

 

[DARKSeifer]

Anyone here shoots PANO ?

I've tried all the PANO modes, yes I can find every single frame in the PANO directory ( mostly underexposed though) but where are the stitched photos?

Do they ever stitch it or should I stitch in post on my own ?

Stitched panos are saved on the phone I believe.

If you want some quality on the panos you shoud stitch them afterwards, use the autostitching only as a quick refrence. Hugin (free stitcher) or PTGUI are the best stitchers around. You can also use Lightroom to stitch them, but won't stitch a 360 properly, just use it for "wide angle" panos.

 

[gophcc]

Stitched panos are saved on the phone I believe.

If you want some quality on the panos you shoud stitch them afterwards, use the autostitching only as a quick refrence. Hugin (free stitcher) or PTGUI are the best stitchers around. You can also use Lightroom to stitch them, but won't stitch a 360 properly, just use it for "wide angle" panos.

Thanks, I'll try that, wide angle pano is what I need.

 

[gophcc]

The distortion looks excellent to me, attached is a capture with -2° tilt.