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HDR vs AEB

It's difficult to give an absolute answer to this question.

If you're shooting jpegs only, then the HDR mode would be your best bet. If you're shooting RAW and are willing to do some basic processing, and you're properly exposing to the right, then AEB will probably get you better results more of the time. If you're willing to do more post-processing (e.g. an actual HDR merge with the AEB files), then AEB will probably give you the better result, most of the time.

Of course, this also depends on the actual dynamic range of the scene you're trying to shoot. Often an actual HDR merge isn't necessary if you're exposing the image well, though with what appears to be a 12-bit signal path on the DJI's 1" sensor, having the additional range from a 5 shot AEB may be useful in more situations than a typical ILC.

If you want the best results on scenes with challenging lighting and contrast (which is generally where HDR comes into play), your best bet is generally to shoot AEB and do the work yourself later in whatever package produces the best result for you. If you want a quick shot (for example, to share) and aren't interested in editing at all, the HDR mode is your best bet.
 
I'm not sure you can answer that. If an HDR image is your ultimate goal then AEB will always require post-processing, if you want AEB to simply select the best exposure from 3 or 5 exposures then why not its a safe way of always nailing exposure.

I've never been overly impressed with the HDR feature so would always use AEB and create an HDR image in post.

So personally forget HDR, use AEB and if you cannot pick a good exposure from the AEB set then run it through HDR in post.
 
for AEB if you take say 5 photos would you keep the ISO and speed fixed and change only the aperture from say f 2,8 all the way up to say f 5,6 ?
I have some trouble taking photos of a building which is really dark with a sky which is really bright because of shadows from mountain and trees behind..
i took many raw photos but whatever post processing i used with adobe Lr it was terrible, have to try AEB.
have attached a sample photo of the subject .. any suggestions on iso, speed and aperture range settings?DJI_0135.jpg
 
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for AEB if you take say 5 photos would you keep the ISO and speed fixed and change only the aperture from say f 2,8 all the way up to say f 5,6 ?
no the aperture wont change, its the shutter speed that changes in aeb, i shoot aeb all the time on my mav 1 and my cameras and this is how it works
 
no the aperture wont change, its the shutter speed that changes in aeb, i shoot aeb all the time on my mav 1 and my cameras and this is how it works

Sorry didn’t know, I would think you go from the darkest photo to the lightest part of the photo until they show ok with a couple of in between photos and then merge them all together.
Not sure how AEB works but I could also take manually several photos as long as the mavic remains at the exact place and then merge them all together in Lr .. like HDR.
 
looking at various forums i see that with AEB only the exposure varies, speed and iso almost always stays the same.
 
no the aperture wont change, its the shutter speed that changes in aeb, i shoot aeb all the time on my mav 1
Well obviously since the Mavic Pro has a fixed aperture. The 2 Pro has an adjustable one so there it may or may not vary, but you can't say without experience.
Normally it shouldn't, but we all know DJI...
 
looking at various forums i see that with AEB only the exposure varies, speed and iso almost always stays the same.
yes and to adjust the exposre u adjust the shutter speed, dji has aeb in the mav1 and all thier other aircraft with no aperture, this is how it works, if u adjusted the aperture u would get different focus points as well and thats not how aeb works, if it took a photo at 2.8 to f5.6 there would be different focus points and that would be focus stacking, which my camera does but drones dont, its for macro photograpghy
 
Not quite. The M2 has a small sensor so even wide open objects over 3.5m away are all at infinity focus so it wouldnt be focus stacking or affect the focus.
But yes, bracketing generally adjusts the shutter speed.
 
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in any case i tried it yesterday taking raw photos using AEB and then merged them on adobe Lr and did some manual adjustment .. the result was amazing! tried it before with HDR but nowhere near as good.. with raw you can change everything.
And with this camera now the mavic 2 is really good.
DJI_0480-HDR.jpg
 
Well obviously since the Mavic Pro has a fixed aperture. The 2 Pro has an adjustable one so there it may or may not vary, but you can't say without experience.
Normally it shouldn't, but we all know DJI...

AEB programs *never* vary ISO or aperture. Just shutter. Changing ISO would alter the noise level and changing then aperture would alter the depth of field (focal plane). Both would ruin your ability to stack them cleanly in post.
 
for AEB if you take say 5 photos would you keep the ISO and speed fixed and change only the aperture from say f 2,8 all the way up to say f 5,6 ?
I have some trouble taking photos of a building which is really dark with a sky which is really bright because of shadows from mountain and trees behind..
i took many raw photos but whatever post processing i used with adobe Lr it was terrible, have to try AEB.
have attached a sample photo of the subject .. any suggestions on iso, speed and aperture range settings?View attachment 47990
I always use the “graduated filter” in Lightroom to fix my sky’s. Do all your processing/editing to have your foreground as you want it. At this stage your sky will prob be blown out. Just pull down the graduated filter and now bring it back to how you want it to look.
 
I've been using Canon DSLR for a long time and the 5D Mark IV since it came out.
I was astonished by the gain of dynamic range that came with it.

Having the M2P for 4 weeks now, I early switched to AEB and 5 exposures just to be sure, to get all the range I need.
Suprisingly, the M2P with its sensor and the Hasselblad camera is doing quite well and the need to blend multiple exposures to limit blown-out sky and too dark foreground are minimal. Most of the situations with soft and warm light are likely to be captured with a single exposure and tweaking the lights/shadows in post without problems. It's a personal proof that the "rules" of photography apply no matter if you are on land/sea/air. ;)

I really like the performance of the camera so far ...

download_20190614_095959.jpg
 
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Its significantly better than the Mavic 1 dynamic range wise (You'd hope so!) but it does struggle with bright sky with white cloud etc or sunsets with that sort of sky condition.
Usually 5 AEB is enough to get the range needed but sometimes it needs to be manually shot with more steps.
You need to do it a lot less than the M1 though.
 
Sorry for the necropost, but...

AEB is achieved by varying shutter speed (how long the shutter is open) between shots.

It cannot be done with ISO because that would alter the noise between shots.

It cannot be done with aperture because that would alter the depth of field between shots.

Or think of it this way. EV means Exposure Value. To expose your film is to open the shutter, allowing light to strike the film/sensor. The value (strength) of that exposure is controlled by how long you continue to expose the film/sensor. The "E" in AEB tells you it is the exposure that is being changed between shots.
 
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Actually its *usually* done with shutter speed but isnt always.

Yes different ISO will produce different noise but if you're struggling with light levels,using shutter speed will yield different amounts of motion blur if things are moving in the image and this is much harder to deal with in post than noise.

On the mavic you can also get away with using aperture. The M2P sensor is small. Because of that you have no real depth of field variation at all for subjects more than about 3m away (which is pretty much all of them). The downside of this method is you only really get 2 full stops of usable aperture before diffraction starts to eat sharpness below f/5.6 or so.
 
Exposure ≠ Aperture ≠ ISO. All of those things can change how much light you capture, but only changing shutter speed is Exposure Bracketing.

Sure, you can take a series of photos with different ISO settings (and everything else the same), and each will vary in brightness, and you can call it bracketing, but it isn't EB and neither is changing aperture.

The only time you would use exposure bracketing with moving objects is if you specifically WANT motion blur. It can be quite interesting an effect.

But "bracketing" means there will be multiple shots taken, thus time will go by, thus any method you use will have issues with moving objects.

In any case, unless I'm entirely mistaken, this is all moot. AEB on the DJI drones uses shutter speed to alter EV by steps of ± 0.7.
 
Yes it is exposure bracketing - you're bracketing a series of exposures. What factors you change are entirely up to you.
Taking a series of shots at different exposures is bracketing. You can change aperture, shutter speed or iso to do this. In certain situations you'll alter the iso or aperture, other times you wont. Its still bracketing.

It is *significantly* easier to blend in post processing sharp non blurred objects than blurred ones. And lots of scenes having moving objects in them, especially from the air. Cars,trees,water.

The AEB on the drones are severely limited almost to the point of being useless. They only allow shutterspeed changing but also will only do a tiny 0.7EV step which even with a 5 shot series often comes in substantially under whats needed to capture the full range of a scene. So most of the scenes with a high dynamic range need to be bracketed manually.
 
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