Hasselblad L1D-20c — DJI Mavic 2 Pro Camera

With the intro­duc­tion of the Mav­ic 2 Pro quad­copter equipped with the Has­sel­blad L1D-20c cam­era, DJI has dra­mat­i­cal­ly raised the bar in the world of aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy. It will be dif­fi­cult for most com­peti­tors to achieve the same lev­el, and for many it is com­plete­ly impos­si­ble with the tech­nolo­gies at their dis­pos­al. The cam­era fea­tures HNCS (Has­sel­blad Nat­ur­al Col­or Solu­tion) for incred­i­bly detailed col­or repro­duc­tion.

Thanks to the use of a 10-bit ADC and a num­ber of oth­er tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tions, the col­or qual­i­ty of a com­pact cam­era approach­es the lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al film­ing equip­ment. Next, we’ll look at how Has­sel­blad’s engi­neers man­aged to improve image qual­i­ty so much and com­pare pho­tos tak­en by the Mav­ic 2 Pro and Mav­ic 2 Zoom quad­copters.

Unique color reproduction

Mod­ern civil­ian drones have made aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy a real art. At the same time, to obtain the best results, it is nec­es­sary that the col­ors in the result­ing images be as bright and juicy as pos­si­ble. This is pre­cise­ly the goal that Has­sel­blad engi­neers pur­sued when devel­op­ing the L1D-20c cam­era.

If we do not take into account the fea­tures of optics, but con­sid­er only the capa­bil­i­ties of the matrix, then three main fac­tors affect the qual­i­ty of the pho­to:

• qual­i­ty of ana­log-to-dig­i­tal con­ver­sion;

• dynam­ic range (ADC bit depth);

• col­or pro­file fea­tures.

All three para­me­ters play an impor­tant role and are deter­mined by the qual­i­ty of the matrix, as well as the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the ana­log-to-dig­i­tal con­vert­er.

The main para­me­ter of the ADC is its capac­i­ty. Most mod­ern con­sumer cam­eras use an 8‑bit con­vert­er that pro­vides 256 gra­da­tions for each col­or. The total num­ber of trans­mit­ted shades is 16.7 mil­lion. It sounds impres­sive, but in prac­tice this col­or repro­duc­tion is not enough.

The A/D con­vert­er of the cam­era installed on the Mav­ic 2 Pro uses 10 bits per chan­nel. This allows you to sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve col­or repro­duc­tion, increas­ing the avail­able num­ber of shades from 16.7 mil­lion to 1 bil­lion. The dynam­ic range is increased by 64 times, which is enough for the human eye. Please note that this ben­e­fit is only avail­able when using the Dlog‑M pro­file and HDR.

Thanks to its high qual­i­ty and accu­rate repro­duc­tion of col­or shades, the DJI Mav­ic 2 Pro quadro­copter can be safe­ly attrib­uted to pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­phy equip­ment, which allows you to get high-qual­i­ty images from any height and angle.

HNC technology

Every pho­tog­ra­ph­er knows that for any sit­u­a­tion, you can choose the opti­mal col­or pro­file that pro­vides the best image qual­i­ty. HNCS tech­nol­o­gy is designed to pro­vide flaw­less qual­i­ty and col­or accu­ra­cy in any envi­ron­ment. It includes sev­er­al solu­tions, each of which brings the pic­ture clos­er to per­fec­tion. Let’s con­sid­er these solu­tions in more detail.

LUT (Look Up Table). This is a tint con­ver­sion sys­tem devel­oped by Has­sel­blad to achieve max­i­mum col­or fideli­ty. You can eval­u­ate the oper­a­tion of this sys­tem by the fol­low­ing pho­to.

Has­sel­blad L*RGB. To the user, it’s just anoth­er col­or pro­file. But the engi­neers had to solve a num­ber of seri­ous prob­lems, cre­ate spe­cial algo­rithms for con­vert­ing data from the sen­sor, improve the char­ac­ter­is­tics of fil­ters and the CMOS matrix itself. This made it pos­si­ble to expand the col­or gamut and ensure the trans­mis­sion of the small­est details.

Uni­ver­sal pro­file. This solu­tion is designed to facil­i­tate the shoot­ing process, so as not to force the pho­tog­ra­ph­er to select a col­or con­fig­u­ra­tion for each spe­cif­ic sit­u­a­tion. The uni­ver­sal HNCS pro­file is suit­able for any con­di­tions, allow­ing you to quick­ly get a high-qual­i­ty pic­ture with a high lev­el of detail and flaw­less col­or repro­duc­tion with­out unnec­es­sary “shaman­ism” with the set­tings.

Opti­mal con­trast. To opti­mize con­trast lev­els, Film Curve tech­nol­o­gy is used to achieve a good bal­ance between light and dark areas of the pho­to.

Col­or selec­tion. Has­sel­blad’s Nat­ur­al Col­or Solu­tion tech­nol­o­gy cap­tures col­ors and shades inde­pen­dent­ly, elim­i­nat­ing the need to com­bine dif­fer­ent col­or pro­files. The pic­ture will always store a max­i­mum of use­ful col­or infor­ma­tion, allow­ing you to achieve the desired effects dur­ing sub­se­quent retouch­ing.

Photos taken by Mavic 2 Pro

You can talk about unique tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tions for a long time, but it is much more inter­est­ing to look at the pic­tures and eval­u­ate their qual­i­ty. We invite you to com­pare pho­tos with Mav­ic 2 Pro, Mav­ic 2 Zoom and Mav­ic Pro. The shoot­ing was car­ried out simul­ta­ne­ous­ly in absolute­ly iden­ti­cal weath­er con­di­tions. To make the com­par­i­son as objec­tive as pos­si­ble, sev­er­al pho­tographs were tak­en with dif­fer­ent shut­ter speeds and aper­tures (this infor­ma­tion is pre­sent­ed in the cap­tions for the cor­re­spond­ing pho­tographs).

Com­par­ing the col­or qual­i­ty of pic­tures tak­en by dif­fer­ent mod­els of quad­copters, you can see that the pho­tos tak­en by Mav­ic 2 Pro look brighter and sharp­er, the col­ors are more juicy, and the detail is very high even at 5x zoom. This makes this quad­copter an excel­lent tool for pro­fes­sion­al aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy.

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