Brownout.

[ruisantosdotme]

Brownout.

[dagnall53]

Solved:
For me, the power supply to the board needed to have more capability than the ftdi I am using can supply:
SOLUTION:
Use separate 5V (+) supply to feed the 5V and Gnd pins.
This directly feeds the linear 3V3 regulator and the board then starts as expected. I kept the FTDI Ground and RX and TX connected (and the FTDI set to 3v3), but disconnected the FTDI 3v3 output between the ESP32 board and the FTDI.
The picture had lines when running at 5V, but these got a lot better as the supply voltage was turned up.
-HOWEVER, the ESP32 "3v3" linear regulator, (the large 4 pin device near the reset button), gets significantly hotter as you increase the input voltage on the "5v" pin. At 8v input , it was at nearly 90 degrees, compared to about 70 centigrade when 5V input is applied.
I would therefore recommend adding a small heatsink to the regulator if you plan to use more than 6V input to get nice pictures.