Exposure varies throughout shot?

[Rastus]

I've done a search. Didn't find what I needed.
Is there a way to lock the exposure when shooting Video? I'm not able to press the AE Lock icon.
When I fly on a sunny day using ND 8 or 16 my exposure changes when I fly around which leads to an uneven exposure throughout the shot.
How do most people handle this?
I fly in P Mode, 60fps, f120 and adjust the aperture at the beginning of the shot to barely have the zebra stripes showing.
Thanks!

 

[CanadaDrone]

Shooting in manual mode locks the exposure. That is generally where you will want to be unless you're just flying around for fun, which is also totally fine - in that case you can just throw it on AUTO.

In manual mode, there is nothing you can do about significant environmental brightness changes mid-flight unless you want to stop and change settings (or swap ND filters to maintain your desired settings). If you leave it in AUTO it will adjust for the brightness changes automatically, but likely in ways you do not like, and those adjustments will be very obvious throughout your footage which end up being even more distracting than environmental changes in my opinion.

Generally speaking it's just a balancing act, and knowing when & where to fly to take advantage of the best light. Significant changes in lighting/contrast across the frame are really difficult to capture properly regardless. It'll never be perfect, and you can adjust those slight changes in post processing if you wish, especially if you are shooting in 10bit DLog-M where you have the greatest leeway to do so.

 

[paulatkin73]

Post above is spot on.
Also, if you switch to A mode in video, with nd8 or nd16 filter on, the exposure will not be altered as bad as in S mode when you lock into certain shutter speed. Try it and decide for yourself.