Any thoughts on night shooting?

[davedrone 178]

After my initial test shooting at night, is it possible that the 5 can't quite measure up to the 4??
I have the 5 Pro, 4 Pro, and Air 3s. Recently flew the 5 and the 3s and thought the results would be comparable because they use the same camera but I found the the 5 seems to have substantially more noise with both units in "Auto" setting. The 4 pro with it's night mode feature seems to gather way more light than the 5? Has anyone else tested at night? I'll conduct further testing to duplicate.

 

[Meta4]

Recently flew the 5 and the 3s and thought the results would be comparable because they use the same camera but I found the the 5 seems to have substantially more noise with both units in "Auto" setting.

You would need to have the same subject and same lighting conditions as well as the same settings to be able to compare the results and draw conclusions.
If you leave the camera on Auto, letting it make decisions and adjust settings, it could be that the cameras are using different settings that could cause the differences that you perceive.

The 4 pro with it's night mode feature seems to gather way more light than the 5?

With a similar aperture and a sensor size that's almost double the size of the Mini 4's, it's the Mini 5 that's gathering way more light than the 4.

If you were shooting stills, upload a couple of examples from each camera to Google Drive etc and post a link here.
The image metadata will show the actual settings your cameras chose and this might help understand what's going on.

 

[skycam509]

In a recent YouTube video comparing the Mini 4 Pro in Night Mode and the Mini 5 Pro in Auto (it doesn't have a dedicated Night Mode), the shadows were definitely brighter with the Mini 4 Pro, but the overall quality of the footage looked better with the 5. The 5 had less noise in this person's test. I was surprised at the results, though, expecting the 5 to be significantly better.