First attempts at longer exposures

Rain stops play · Mar 13, 2017

Hi all,

Owned my Mavic for nearly three weeks now and happily learning more about photography and videography. This is my first drone and I've never been into photography so everything is new and interesting

Here's a couple of the luckier shots from an expedition to try to gauge 'what happens' at various exposure durations, ISOs and so on.

Would welcome any advice or constructive criticism etc.

The file info says the first was a 3.2 second exposure and ISO100 and the second was 4 seconds at ISO100. Both were played about with in terms of lowering exposure and upping 'temperature' a little in photoshop afterwards.

Cheers

Pedro · Mar 13, 2017

I would try a shorter exposure with a higher ISO, say 1 - 2 seconds at 400. I know you won't get such long light streaks but whilst the Mavic is stable, it's not stable enough to get decent sharp focus at the length of exposure, imo.

XLR8R · Mar 13, 2017

Mmm...not in focus but this is way better than what I expected it could do. Good shot man. Where is this at?

Rain stops play · Mar 13, 2017

Thanks

Yeah it was dificult trying to use manual focus as I couldn't really see the screen too well on my iPhone. It's all good learning

This was lookng into Burnley in the Northwest of England. It was a lot darker than the pics suggest.

Rain stops play · Mar 13, 2017

Pedro said:
I would try a shorter exposure with a higher ISO, say 1 - 2 seconds at 400. I know you won't get such long light streaks but whilst the Mavic is stable, it's not stable enough to get decent sharp focus at the length of exposure, imo.

Thanks for the advice. It was the longer light streaks I was after so I think the focus while being less than great was pretty impressive. It wasn't a completely still night either. Will be trying again when it's calmer too.

Cheers

Rain stops play · Mar 13, 2017

I also find it odd/surprising that theres no hint of cars in the pics, just their lights. Even with longer exposures I though I'd see the cars a little but theres nothing! How does that work? Is it because once the vehicle has passed it's space, the road beneath where it was is what gets captured? If so then why no hint of the car at the front of the headlight trail?

XLR8R · Mar 13, 2017

Rain stops play said:
I also find it odd/surprising that theres no hint of cars in the pics, just their lights. Even with longer exposures I though I'd see the cars a little but theres nothing! How does that work? Is it because once the vehicle has passed it's space, the road beneath where it was is what gets captured? If so then why no hint of the car at the front of the headlight trail?

The sensor is a large array of photosites, where each photosite corresponds to a pixel in the final image, and each photosite accumulates a voltage as photons strike it. After the exposure, the voltage at each site is read, and that set of values is the image.

You don't see cars because cars don't emit any light, aside from their headlights and tail lights (which you do see). Cars often do reflect light from other sources, but there aren't any light sources in the image that are close enough to be reflected by the cars.