Hundreds of little black specks

Rifleair · Jan 30, 2019

I am finding photos and videos with hundreds of tiny little flecks across the picture, does anyone know what causes this?

you can see them best when zoomed in.

Liger 1956 · Jan 30, 2019

It looks to me like they are dead pixels on the sensor. If you enlarge the photo so you can seee the pixels the black marks appear to be rectangular. Has this just happened?

The GPS coordinates on the photo also appear to put you above the sea off the coast between Lowestoft and Kessingland!

Rifleair · Jan 30, 2019

Liger 1956 said:
It looks to me like they are dead pixels on the sensor. If you enlarge the photo so you can seee the pixels the black marks appear to be rectangular. Has this just happened?

The GPS coordinates on the photo also appear to put you above the sea off the coast between Lowestoft and Kessingland!

Strange, as I'm just by the land rover factory in Solihull!
As to the specks, my son thinks it may be the speed of the card if not the sensor. I have seen them before , but never as many, although this was the first time I tried 2.7k instead of 1080p.

Liger 1956 · Jan 30, 2019

My fault on the GPS. I had the longitude the wrong side of the Greenwich Meridian. I must keep taking the tablets in my old age!

Are you able to ascertain whether they occur in the same place every time? If so then it could be the sensor. if they are in random positions then your son may be correct about the write speed of the card. There are free programs on the internet to test for card speeds e.g. Best tools for sd memory card speed test on Windows / Android . There are also a lot of counterfeit SanDisk micro SD cards about with some of them selling at full price.

Rifleair · Jan 30, 2019

They don't appear to be in the same place, the above photo is a 5 piece merge and looking at the originals they are in different places so maybe he is right, tomorrow i'll get a faster card. The current one is the one that came with the drone.

Landbo · Jan 30, 2019

Rifleair said:
I am finding photos and videos with hundreds of tiny little flecks across the picture, does anyone know what causes this?
View attachment 1109
you can see them best when zoomed in.

Yes it looks like dead pixels on the sensor. To be absolutely sure it is the sensor that fails, you can try and look in a DNG file that must also contain the same dead pixels.

If you cannot find them in the RAW file, there is an error on the software you use on the file, possibly in Anafi FirmWare.

If your SD card is too slow, it will not give dead pixels on your picture but instead give an error message in FF6 that your SD card is too slow.

Regards, Leif.

Landbo · Jan 30, 2019

Rifleair said:
I am finding photos and videos with hundreds of tiny little flecks across the picture, does anyone know what causes this?
View attachment 1109
you can see them best when zoomed in.

Moreover. In case of a photo, the dead pixels should be in the same place if the sensor fails. If you record video, the dead pixels will change the location from side to side due to the electronic stabilization in the camera.

Regards, Leif.

ufosaboveus · Jan 30, 2019

I am thinking not dead pixels as that would be a ton to happen all at once. More likely a card issue and I would try a different card as a test. Also, hold drone facing a white wall and slowly pan and see if they appear.

Krusty Geeza · Jan 30, 2019

Is there any possibility that they are bugs of some sort? They are not uniform & they are randomly spread around the image. We get masses of certain bugs in the sky nearing sunset, I think they are catching the last of the heat for the day before settling down for the night. I have never investigated it, but am curious now.

IronSky1 · Jan 30, 2019

I would say camera artifacts I had a a BB2 with a lot of debris in video floating around (Parrot sent me new camera which fixed). Could also be slow memory. I would start with Parrot support. If they stay in smae place from flight to flight with same settings its the camera (pixels) or firmware for same. Parrot should replace the drone for this.

Randy · Jan 31, 2019

Rifleair, post: 10579, member: 147"]I am finding photos and videos with hundreds of tiny little flecks across the picture, does anyone know what causes this?...

I had the same issue with my first Anafi. In addition I had the issue that the recorded movie has pink flickr. When I paused I was able to see that the hole screen or even a part of the picture got a pink strip. I got the Same problem with other sd-cards. So it was definitiv caused by the Anafi it self and not by the sd-card or the transmission from Anafi to my mobil.

I returned the Anafi and got a new one. Nie everything ist fine. The only problem I hab on one flight was a loud fan (downside the Anafi). I am afright of a damaged bearing. But now the fan ist running smooth.

Rifleair · Jan 31, 2019

Cheers guys for all the comments, they do appear to move around and don't always occur so I'll try the card first if that doesn't work then I'll contact parrot. Thanks again for all your help.

AaronB · Jan 31, 2019

Krusty Geeza said:
Is there any possibility that they are bugs of some sort? They are not uniform & they are randomly spread around the image. We get masses of certain bugs in the sky nearing sunset, I think they are catching the last of the heat for the day before settling down for the night. I have never investigated it, but am curious now.

If you pixel peep the image you can see a highlight around each dark spot - this is an artefact from jpeg compression trying to represent a truly black pixel - which it appears to be when viewed at normal resolution - it's all smoke and mirrors . I would imagine bugs would be captured in various shades of black with a reduced surrounding highlight.

The pixel peeped images from above look like normal healthy jpeg compression. I doubt the problem is with the memory card - it looks like information is lost prior to compression.

Krusty Geeza · Jan 31, 2019

AaronB said:
If you pixel peep the image you can see a highlight around each dark spot - this is an artefact from jpeg compression trying to represent a truly black pixel - which it appears to be when viewed at normal resolution - it's all smoke and mirrors . I would imagine bugs would be captured in various shades of black with a reduced surrounding highlight.

View attachment 1118

The pixel peeped images from above look like normal healthy jpeg compression. I doubt the problem is with the memory card - it looks like information is lost prior to compression.

That is a mystery indeed! I've never seen anything like it before. There is variation within them, when looking at the pixel level that you provided. I'll be interested to see what the Parrot Tech's have to say about it.

IM35461 · Jan 31, 2019

Perhaps the digital image stabilization used by Anafi?

liztorra · Jan 31, 2019

Is it an image extracted from a video?

Rifleair · Jan 31, 2019

No, the image above is a merge of five , but all 5 had flecks in different places.

on the video at 1.40 you can see flecks in the darker clouds above the tower and just after in the grass to the left of the tower.
I have just emailed support and am waiting for their reply.

Rifleair · Feb 1, 2019

Had a reply early this morning asking me to update to 1.3.2 and see how it goes. In the meantime I had bought a much faster card which seems to have improved things somewhat, as to the 1.3.2 I was already on that so now waiting for a further reply.

Krusty Geeza · Feb 1, 2019

Rifleair said:
Had a reply early this morning asking me to update to 1.3.2 and see how it goes. In the meantime I had bought a much faster card which seems to have improved things somewhat, as to the 1.3.2 I was already on that so now waiting for a further reply.

That's interesting that the memory card change has made a difference, when I tried recording 4K with a normal class 10 card it stopped recording after a short time, but not with any artefacts. It did record DNG's correctly though!

I use the U3 class cards & have no problems with either video or still images.

Was there no card included with your machine? My 16 GB card that came with the Anafi is U3 U1 class.

Rifleair · Feb 1, 2019

Krusty Geeza said:
That's interesting that the memory card change has made a difference, when I tried recording 4K with a normal class 10 card it stopped recording after a short time, but not with any artefacts. It did record DNG's correctly though!

I use the U3 class cards & have no problems with either video or still images.

Was there no card included with your machine? My 16 GB card that came with the Anafi is U3 class.

My included card was a u1, I changed it to a u3, still waiting for parrot to come back.