Can't seem to get correct night time video settings

[Apollo X 1965]

My night videos always look horrible, I've tried a number of different settings that I saw on YouTube but still can't get it right any help.

 

[AlwaysAWOL]

Manual settings, keep ISO low, fly slow. Now that the Go4 app can record your voice to the the cached copy on the phone, you can use that feature to make note of settings you change as you hover. I haven't played much with night video, just pictures, which come out pretty nice, so others may have some suggestions!

 

[Apollo X 1965]

Thank you

 

[Dan C]

My night videos always look horrible, I've tried a number of different settings that I saw on YouTube but still can't get it right any help.

I love night video, and I feel your pain. Blown out lights, and shadows with no detail.

It's tough with video; for photos you can use HDR. The best you'll get is via post-processing.

How you set your drone depends on what you have. I've got an Air, and I use D-Cinelike and 0,-3,0. In post, I push the contrast (the -3) back up, increase saturation, maybe vibrancy, then tweak shadows, highlights, etcetera until I get the best I can get. I can tell you there isn't a single answer to all this. It's just about trial and error, and through that building experience. The settings that worked for me on one shoot, don't necessarily work on the next.

If there is a way to improve dynamic range through settings, I'm not aware of it. Use your histogram, set things as best you can to avoid clipping (you probably won't completely succeed), then do your best to fix the problems in post. You can get details in very bright areas, or you can get details in darker places, but you likely can't do both.

For what it's worth, I accept blown out lights; in fact I like the effect unless the lit feature is what I'm filming for. So I allow some clipping in the highs, so that I can preserve more information in the shadows. Then I can recover some shadow details in post.

Best advice I can give you is... go make mistakes. Memory is cheap. Use it. Capture some stuff that's too bright, and some stuff with nothing in shadows. Think about where the balance is (that'll largely be subjective). Then practice reproducing the results you want.