Crappy Grainy image at sunset and dawn

Lakes Stu · May 10, 2017

So I've had the mavic a while now and I've had some amazing footage so far in full daylight, however the last few days I've been shooting some sunset and sunrise type footage and the images are really really grainy, I'm using an ND4 polarising filter iso 100 I've tried settings at -1 -1 0 and 0 0 0, both were rubbish both times a i was shooting in 4k at 24fps, am i making a simple mistake here?

omega_vfx · May 10, 2017

Well whatever problem you have with the footage is user error.

An ND filter is doing more harm than good in this light situation.

Honestly, I think the footage still looks great.

tmoerel · May 10, 2017

What ISO are you shooting at? In darker conditions it is better to keep ISO low and if needed drop the ND filter. The ND filter might have pushed your ISO higher into the noise area!

geigy · May 10, 2017

I'm not seeing anything, other than the slight loss of detail due to youtube re-compression your sample looks great.

Lakes Stu · May 10, 2017

Thanks for the input guys, it was shot at ISO 100 if you look at some of the other videos I've shot you can see a huge difference in wondering if it's struggling with the light and so shutter speed to low to catch detail? I might have to try it without the filter or even increase ISO slightly?

omega_vfx · May 10, 2017

Honestly, I can't see your problem with the footage. Can you make 100% crops of areas that bug you?

geigy · May 10, 2017

Sharpness. -1 will kill shadow detail. Set to 1.

Qoncussion · May 10, 2017

Definitely remove that ND/CP filter in dark situations.

Chris.K · May 10, 2017

Lakes Stu said:
So I've had the mavic a while now and I've had some amazing footage so far in full daylight, however the last few days I've been shooting some sunset and sunrise type footage and the images are really really grainy, I'm using an ND4 polarising filter iso 100 I've tried settings at -1 -1 0 and 0 0 0, both were rubbish both times a i was shooting in 4k at 24fps, am i making a simple mistake here?

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are you sure its filming at iso100 ?

if its sunrise/sunset and you're using an nd4, i highly doubt its at iso100, its probably automatically bumping the iso up to like 1600, alternately it may be filming at a shutter speed like 1/5s or something.

the nd filter in and of itself isnt what makes the image grainy. its the exposure value thats important.

Lakes Stu · May 11, 2017

Hopefully its just because i forgot to take of the filter, the iso was definitely set at 100 and i don't think it over rides that in M mode? I use the histogram to get the correct exposure so I'm guessing the extreme shutter speed has probably caused it. Is there some way to review the settings from the video footage? like you can in photoshop from an image?
Cheers

Michael Ainsworth · May 11, 2017

I would take the ND4 off, looks like there is a lot of low lying cloud around could be messing the focus up as well.
I use EV +1
Still looks good though, does it look like this on your monitor as YouTube could be changing it.

Lakes Stu · May 11, 2017

yeah it looks even worse on my monitor I'm using 5k iMac you can see every pixel wiggling around like ants

beach_Dr · May 11, 2017

Lakes Stu said:
Hopefully its just because i forgot to take of the filter, the iso was definitely set at 100 and i don't think it over rides that in M mode? I use the histogram to get the correct exposure so I'm guessing the extreme shutter speed has probably caused it. Is there some way to review the settings from the video footage? like you can in photoshop from an image?
Cheers

As far as I know, if the lights low it will drop shutter speed to 1/30 and then has to push up ISO to maintain exposure, even if it was set at 100 initially. Can't shoot video at less than 1/30 shutter.

Chris.K · May 11, 2017

Yep, that sounds like what happened.

Kilrah · May 11, 2017

What profile are you using? Looks like you're using one that lifts the shadows quite a bit, so that's perfectly normal. You should be careful to use dynamic range correctly i.e. probably overexpose a bit in this case.

Lakes Stu · May 11, 2017

i think it was in d-cinilike

Lakes Stu · May 11, 2017

Ive been out tonight and got a couple more shots with the Mavic, I've found D-LOG and settings +1 +1 +0 seem to work best with the filter on, also I've read somewhere that the memory card can make a difference? I'm using a 64gb sandisk ultra which is U1, I've seen other threads that say only U3 cards should be used? any thoughts?

Stu