Best camera settings for Mavic 2 Pro (guide)

[CanadaDrone]

I’m suggesting not changing exposure at all during the take. Expose to the right for the brightest framing.

That can be risky because the threshold where highlights are impossible to recover is much smaller than with shadows. The slightest increase in scene brightness will ruin your footage unless you like blown highlights. The M2P has decent enough DR that I personally would be doing the opposite. ETR helps with ISO performance but most of the time you are at base ISO anyway.

ETR was the go-to advice on much older sensors with horrible DR but things are better now.

 

[WithTheBirds]

That can be risky because the threshold where highlights are impossible to recover is much smaller than with shadows. The slightest increase in scene brightness will ruin your footage unless you like blown highlights. The M2P has decent enough DR that I personally would be doing the opposite. ETR helps with ISO performance but most of the time you are at base ISO anyway.

ETR was the go-to advice on much older sensors with horrible DR but things are better now.

You seem to have missed my intent here- I am suggesting the scene be metered for the brightest framing and the exposure set at that point and kept constant for the whole take. The idea being that you can maximise the full dynamic range of the sensor. Blown highlights almost always look nasty, I agree absolutely. But why have blocky shadows when they might be avoided?

 

[CanadaDrone]

You seem to have missed my intent here- I am suggesting the scene be metered for the brightest framing and the exposure set at that point and kept constant for the whole take. The idea being that you can maximise the full dynamic range of the sensor. Blown highlights almost always look nasty, I agree absolutely. But why have blocky shadows when they might be avoided?

I think we're mostly talking about the same thing, but the problem is that on a 25+ min drone flight, you will never know for sure what the brightest part of the scene will be. If you set the exposure manually to be as bright as possible without losing any highlights, then start flying, even the tiniest fluctuation in scene brightness is going to blow the highlights and ruin your footage. With today's sensors, we can afford to leave ourselves a little more leeway than that, because it is much easier to fix a slight underexposure than any kind of highlight overexposure. I am not suggesting any kind of significant underexposure, just a nice balanced exposure being mindful of the histogram.

You won't have any shadow problems at all with a proper/balanced exposure, even if it isn't a maxed out ETTR exposure. ETTR does not work very well for high contrast scenes, as you still often end up with blown highlights. ETTR also assumes you are always using base ISO, as there is no value introducing more noise into the image and then reducing the exposure in post. The other problem you run into with ETTR is if there are moving subjects in the frame, ETTR is going to force a slower shutter speed which may not be optimal. It's far less of an issue for stills when you can analyze everything and make a judgement call (or bracket your images), but with ever changing scenery, It's just a lot riskier is all I'm saying. It's the same reason sports/wildlife photographers do not use ETTR - the subject matter is often too unpredictable. ETTR also requires you to shoot RAW or any benefit is essentially eliminated. ETTR is good in theory, but there are many situations where it is not ideal, and it is less important than it was in the past with today's sensors.

 

[UnlimiteDrone]

Thank you for this article. I just printed it for future reference.

Thanks

 

[Hiflyer808]

With small sensors i usually expose to the left not right. Cant do much at all about blown highlights which look nasty, while shadows can be lifted at the cost of some noise which to me is much more acceptable. Ettr is largely a relic of when digital had very little dr and lifted shadows had horrible noise.

 

[Cliff_622]

With small sensors i usually expose to the left not right. Cant do much at all about blown highlights which look nasty, while shadows can be lifted at the cost of some noise which to me is much more acceptable. Ettr is largely a relic of when digital had very little dr and lifted shadows had horrible noise.

Exposing to the right is critical for all sensors and all cameras. The idea is to fill your image sensor with as much light as you can stand WITHOUT clipping any highlights that are important. Doing this will deliver the maximum signal to noise ratio. You want to keep your signal as high off the noise floor as you can without clipping.

If you under expose you are literally leaving UNUSED signal to noise ratio on the table. Doing that also leaves UNUSED dynamic in the trash can too.

One last thing....lifting shadows is great but it does NOT bring "more" information into the shadows. It just "amplifies" what is already there and nothing more. However, exposing to the right WILL bring in more or "new" shadow image information that you can work with. This new "deeper seeing" shadow information will not exist if you under expose.

Bottom line?....fill your image sensor with as many photons as it will take before you clip something. Expose to the right while protecting highlights that are important and you will have the most to work with in post.

 

[Hiflyer808]

You are correct in theory but in practice it is very difficult to go just up to the point where you are not quite clipping highlights. In real life shooting with a small sensor you are almost always going to end up clipping highlights if you expose to the right. And sure, lifting shadows doesnt bring back detail that's not there in the first place, but there is usually SOMETHING there, which you can see better when you lift shadows. Look back to the early days when people were talking about exposing to the right, the reason for not exposing to the left was mostly because of how noisy the shadows got when lifted. These days that's much less of an issue, while there's still nothing you can do about featureless blown out highlights. I speak from experience, as a general rule exposing to the left is better with a drone's small sensor. Big sensor and/or very even, low contrast lighting, sure, expose to the right. To each his own, but for me, featureless blown,-out highlights look much worse than moderately underexposed shadows that have been lifted in post.

 

[Cliff_622]

You are correct in theory but in practice it is very difficult to go just up to the point where you are not quite clipping highlights. In real life shooting with a small sensor you are almost always going to end up clipping highlights if you expose to the right. And sure, lifting shadows doesnt bring back detail that's not there in the first place, but there is usually SOMETHING there, which you can see better when you lift shadows. Look back to the early days when people were talking about exposing to the right, the reason for not exposing to the left was mostly because of how noisy the shadows got when lifted. These days that's much less of an issue, while there's still nothing you can do about featureless blown out highlights. I speak from experience, as a general rule exposing to the left is better with a drone's small sensor. Big sensor and/or very even, low contrast lighting, sure, expose to the right. To each his own, but for me, featureless blown,-out highlights look much worse than moderately underexposed shadows that have been lifted in post.

Im not saying people should burn their highlights in any camera. Im only saying that if you can carefully expose to the right and possibly sacrifice specular highlights, you will gain more shadow as a payoff.

However, it must be said that our over/under expose discussion is HEAVILY based on each individual scene and VERY subjective in nature. There are certainly cases where a stop over is required or a stop under is required based on where your subject is.

If you are exposing a black bear under a shady tree with a bright waterfall behind him and that bear is your subject, than you might be forced to clip the bright waterfall to see the salmon that black bear has. Also, in other scenes you could be forced to protect your highlights more and crush your shadows by a stop when your subject is very bright.

Its very hard for either of us to say "expose left or right" when we dont know the scene being shot.

Generally, my style is to press them right and take my important highlights just under clipping and live with whatever shadows I'm crush under that.

But yes,...I certainly know there are valid cases for both. Its VERY scene and subject dependant.

 

[Hiflyer808]

Agreed about it depending a lot on subject matter, what is in the shade and what is in the shadows, how contrasty, etc. But for me personally at least, there are very few situations where blown out highlights are acceptable. In your bear and waterfall example, I'd accept having an underexposed bear that I bring up in post in order not to have the waterfall blown out. With backlit scenes a blown out sky is usually acceptable... My usual exposure with my mp2 is 1/3 or 2/3 under, but sure, i will overexpose once in a while if main subject matter is in the shadows and blown highlights are mostly in the sky. Looking forward to the better dr of dlog and larger sensor from the mp2.

 

[UnlimiteDrone]

Depth of field is of no concern with such a wideangle lens in aerial photography.

Depends on the situation, am I right?

 

[CanadaDrone]

Depends on the situation, am I right?

You are right but it would have to be a fairly extreme situation for it to matter with that particular camera and sensor.

In the case of the M2P you have a 1" sensor which even at F2.8 has the depth of field equivalent of F8 on a full frame camera just for an easy reference point. By F4 you have a full frame equivalent DOF of F11. In both cases, everything is going to pretty well be in focus under any typical flying situations. With such tiny sensors, DOF is generally far less of a concern, especially hundreds of feet in the air.

The 28mm equivalent lens on the M2P is also rather wide, and a wide angle lens makes it easier to get an entire scene mostly in focus. Provided the subject size (i.e. occupies the same proportion of the frame) and aperture remain constant, all lenses actually have essentially the same depth of field. What changes is the distribution of that depth of field around the focal plane. At very wide angles, depth of field beings with around 30% of the image in front of the subject being in focus to 70% of the image behind the subject in focus - as you increase focal length, this trends ever closer to 50%/50%. Longer focal lengths also compress the image and enlarge the out of focus areas of the background, which is due to a change in magnification. There are several factors that come together which contribute to our perception of sharpness.

The bottom line is that a 1" sensor behind a 28mm equivalent lens is pretty much going to have everything in focus all the time even at F2.8 unless you're flying really close to something.

 

[TotalExposure]

Awesome guide! Thanks so much

 

[UnlimiteDrone]

Awesome guide! Thanks so much

Thank you very much

 

[UnlimiteDrone]

You are right but it would have to be a fairly extreme situation for it to matter with that particular camera and sensor.

In the case of the M2P you have a 1" sensor which even at F2.8 has the depth of field equivalent of F8 on a full frame camera just for an easy reference point. By F4 you have a full frame equivalent DOF of F11. In both cases, everything is going to pretty well be in focus under any typical flying situations. With such tiny sensors, DOF is generally far less of a concern, especially hundreds of feet in the air.

The 28mm equivalent lens on the M2P is also rather wide, and a wide angle lens makes it easier to get an entire scene mostly in focus. Provided the subject size (i.e. occupies the same proportion of the frame) and aperture remain constant, all lenses actually have essentially the same depth of field. What changes is the distribution of that depth of field around the focal plane. At very wide angles, depth of field beings with around 30% of the image in front of the subject being in focus to 70% of the image behind the subject in focus - as you increase focal length, this trends ever closer to 50%/50%. Longer focal lengths also compress the image and enlarge the out of focus areas of the background, which is due to a change in magnification. There are several factors that come together which contribute to our perception of sharpness.

The bottom line is that a 1" sensor behind a 28mm equivalent lens is pretty much going to have everything in focus all the time even at F2.8 unless you're flying really close to something.

Do you work with drones?

 

[SteveCA]

Do you work with drones?

hmm I too wonder about that. If those statements were true, why bother focusing your Mavic or mavic 2 Pro lol...

 

[CanadaDrone]

Do you work with drones?

Yes. I am also a professional photographer and I have a keen interest in the physics surrounding sensors, optics, DOF, etc. Most of the principles are very easy to test if you are interested.

 

[CanadaDrone]

hmm I too wonder about that. If those statements were true, why bother focusing your Mavic or mavic 2 Pro lol...

They are true - there are lots of good resources if you have a further interest in the physics side of it as they apply universally and not specifically to the Mavic line. I understand that you don't like me, but your second comment was never implied so I am not sure what you're trying to get at there.

 

[Meta4]

hmm I too wonder about that. If those statements were true, why bother focusing your Mavic or mavic 2 Pro lol...

Focusing allows you to shoot very close subjects, or swap to more distant scenes instead of having it locked at just one focus setting like an old phantom.

 

[SteveCA]

They are true - there are lots of good resources if you have a further interest in the physics side of it as they apply universally and not specifically to the Mavic line. I understand that you don't like me, but your second comment was never implied so I am not sure what you're trying to get at there.

I dont have particular feelings about you one way or the other. In any event, perhaps you ought to go out and test your Mavic 2 Pro (if you have one) and see if everything is in focus at F2.8, which i agree, in theory ought to be the case, but in practice..... ymmv

 

[CanadaDrone]

I dont have particular feelings about you one way or the other. In any event, perhaps you ought to go out and test your Mavic 2 Pro (if you have one) and see if everything is in focus at F2.8, which i agree, in theory ought to be the case, but in practice..... ymmv

It's not a theory, it is literally physics. You can calculate exactly what the DOF will be at any given focal length, aperture, and subject distance. It's not something that is up for debate. Nobody's mileage will vary. If you read my previous posts, that is what I have been saying.

For example at 300 ft in the air, assuming something on the ground is your subject, your DOF is ~289.21ft in front of your subject to infinity. Virtually everything will appear in focus from ~10.79 feet from the drone and beyond, and anything between 5.61ft and 10.79ft will still be acceptably sharp. At 50 feet in the air, everything from ~9.15ft to infinity will be in focus.

You also need to remember the lens on the M2P is ~10.3mm, which is extremely wide, and is another reason why there is near limitless DOF even at F2.8.