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You must remember that no camera can see and adjust for all the light values {range of contrast) between light and dark, in the same way your eye can see that contrast range and register them on your brain. Therefore when filming stills or video, you will always have to compensate. If you have very bright sky and dark shadowy ground, you must decide what is more important to you when filming, and expose for the most important subject matter. Only a graduated ND filter will allow you to correctly expose a bright sky and dark ground at the same time and that would be the dark park of the filter on the top to reduce the sky and the clear portion on the bottom for the darker contrast of the ground.

Most of the time, the ground is the more desirable thing to have correctly exposed. Still shots are different to filming video of course, because in a still shot you can simply bracket and get everything correctly exposed in a sandwiched final image. As for the low to ground shot, you will always get that blurred effect close the bottom of the camera as you fly faster and low and it is usually a desired effect when shooting that way. You can either reduce the amount of low level ground showing in the frame, or gain altitude for the same shot and or reduce your speed when point towards the ground and as you raise the camera up, you can begin to increase your speed.
 
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The commonest problem with filming a scene with a bright and dark area like dark foregrounds, and bright skies is that we don't have gradient ND filters and even if we did, the vertical movement of the drone is too fluid to use them. We have to decide which is the best area to expose for before the flight starts. I try to do this by first estimating which ND filter I will use. I hold the filter up against the sky and eyeball it. When I decide which filter I will use ( I have VARIABLE ND filters ) then I turn it back and forth against the sky holding it up to my eye. Then I screw it on the drone lens, and, with the drone connected but no props moving, I look at my screen (iPad) and make the best sky adjustment I can make. Only then, do I open the props and take off to a height that will give me a good sky exposure on my screen. If I need to, I bring it back down and open it up or close it down as needed one stop.

Of course all of this takes a lot of time and battery, so if it is something that I really want to capture, I will then turn off the drone, and install a fresh battery and all of the light setting will already have been done.

For the darkened foreground, I will then increase the shadows in post with Premiere Pro.

Thank you Dale. I will try your approach and see if I can improve my skills on it. What brand/type of ND filers do you use? Variable sounds interesting.
 
You must remember that no camera can see and adjust for all the light values {range of contrast) between light and dark, in the same way your eye can see that contrast range and register them on your brain. Therefore when filming stills or video, you will always have to compensate. If you have very bright sky and dark shadowy ground, you must decide what is more important to you when filming, and expose for the most important subject matter. Only a graduated ND filter will allow you to correctly expose a bright sky and dark ground at the same time and that would be the dark park of the filter on the top to reduce the sky and the clear portion on the bottom for the darker contrast of the ground.

Most of the time, the ground is the more desirable thing to have correctly exposed. Still shots are different to filming video of course, because in a still shot you can simply bracket and get everything correctly exposed in a sandwiched final image. As for the low to ground shot, you will always get that blurred effect close the bottom of the camera as you fly faster and low and it is usually a desired effect when shooting that way. You can either reduce the amount of low level ground showing in the frame, or gain altitude for the same shot and or reduce your speed when point towards the ground and as you raise the camera up, you can begin to increase your speed.

Thanks for the helpful information! I know it wasn't the perfect day for a very good video, so I was wondering how you guys handle these situations.
 
Hi guys,

I did not got back in the air, but I did try to re-edit the original clips. It's a bit brighter now and the best I can do with my (little) knowledge on Final Cut.

 
thanks for the comment. I left the jerky clip out of the video. This is the clip I mean. I filmed it at 30 fps and in post i made it 24 fps (80% slowdown). I read on a couple of sites that is very common, but I seem to do something wrong here.


Sample1

I used various nd filters based on the following. I flew my drone without an nd filter and put the settings on auto to see what shutterspeed the camera uses. In one clip (for example) I read shutterspeed 1/240. So I landed my drone and put an ND4 on. Then I could back up in the air and put it on manual with the shutterspeed on 1/60. The results are quite dark. Is there something I’m not getting right? Without the filter and auto setting of 1/240 the screen already felt quite dark. What should I do in this case? Play with the ISO a little bit?
Everytime i shoot in 24 or 25fps I get jerking footage with Mavic 2 Pro. Never have any issues in 30fps.
 
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thanks for the comment. I left the jerky clip out of the video. This is the clip I mean. I filmed it at 30 fps and in post i made it 24 fps (80% slowdown). I read on a couple of sites that is very common, but I seem to do something wrong here.


Sample1

I used various nd filters based on the following. I flew my drone without an nd filter and put the settings on auto to see what shutterspeed the camera uses. In one clip (for example) I read shutterspeed 1/240. So I landed my drone and put an ND4 on. Then I could back up in the air and put it on manual with the shutterspeed on 1/60. The results are quite dark. Is there something I’m not getting right? Without the filter and auto setting of 1/240 the screen already felt quite dark. What should I do in this case? Play with the ISO a little bit?
I always use ND Filters, then correct brightness in Divinci Resolve.i use a 4ND or 16 all the time. That is on M2P though.
 
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I just saw a video on YT about Freewell Variable ND filters. Looks good. I use Pgytech at the moment (4/8/16/32/64).
Love my Freewell variables and for $50 to get the entire set it’s a steal even if not quite as good as my PP filers. The Freewell are marked for the filter settings but actually are infinitely adjustable making fine tuning and “in between settings” easier with less or no post processing.
 
Love my Freewell variables and for $50 to get the entire set it’s a steal even if not quite as good as my PP filers. The Freewell are marked for the filter settings but actually are infinitely adjustable making fine tuning and “in between settings” easier with less or no post processing.

That sounds great. Got my ND filters for Christmas, so I will hold on to these for a while, but the 'in between' settings sound perfect. I try to calculate which ND-filter I need and than take the closest I have, but sometimes that is just not enough and needs correction in post.
 
A Variable ND is no use if you are having problems with correct sky but dark ground. Variable just means you can dial in varying stages of ND but that filter affects the entire scene. Now a graduated ND will just give the ND effect to one section of the scene, that always being the sky. So you get a darker sky but a well lighted ground, if you correctly do the exposure for the scene. That solves this difficult situation of bright sky and dark ground.

A variable ND can not fix such a problematic scene, it can only increase or reduce the entire scene ND, but still gives a vary equal degree of darkness to the entire image area, not just the sky. Only a graduated ND gives one section coverage, so that would usually be the sky only, as I mentioned but then you must be careful about the camera tilt up or down to be sure you don't have too much of a light strip or dark strip right on the horizon.
 
A Variable ND is no use if you are having problems with correct sky but dark ground. Variable just means you can dial in varying stages of ND but that filter affects the entire scene. Now a graduated ND will just give the ND effect to one section of the scene, that always being the sky. So you get a darker sky but a well lighted ground, if you correctly do the exposure for the scene. That solves this difficult situation of bright sky and dark ground.

A variable ND can not fix such a problematic scene, it can only increase or reduce the entire scene ND, but still gives a vary equal degree of darkness to the entire image area, not just the sky. Only a graduated ND gives one section coverage, so that would usually be the sky only, as I mentioned but then you must be careful about the camera tilt up or down to be sure you don't have too much of a light strip or dark strip right on the horizon.
Thanks for the comment Cymryflyer. I didn’t think variable ND would solve the problem in the video, but I find them interesting because you can set it to ND6 for example. Now graduated ND filters are also very interesting, actualy didn’t know that they were available for drones.
 

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