How can I resolve my whites getting totally blown out?

[Ripper7620]

I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but irregardless of using ND filters, and always having my camera set to sunny, my whites are always totally blown out. The rest of the color spectrum is on point, but my whites are a total mess, please help. Thank you in advance.

 

[Plawa]

that's a result of the sensor having a very limited dynamic range.. drop EV compensation down by 0.3 or 0.7, enable highlight warning, keep an eye on your histogram and try your best to keep things somehow balanced.. it's not a large format camera with 14 stops of dynamic range so don't expect miracles.

 

[Ripper7620]

that's a result of the sensor having a very limited dynamic range.. drop EV compensation down by 0.3 or 0.7, enable highlight warning, keep an eye on your histogram and try your best to keep things somehow balanced.. it's not a large format camera with 14 stops of dynamic range so don't expect miracles.

Thank you for the reply, I don't use the over exposure warning, because it's more of a distraction while flying than I can cope with. Is there a way to change the EV setting without changing the shutter speed? I use the histogram religiously, and it's giving me a good reading, the rest of the colors are great, except the whites, those **** whites...I'm spoiled from being able to adjust the apature on my Phantom 4 Pro, and the Mavic is giving me fits. I'm getting better in Premiere Pro at finding ways to correct the whites, without screwing up the rest of the color spectrum. I have a DN32-PL & ND64-PL from polar Pro on the way, I'm hoping this will help.

 

[Plawa]

The ND will help to some degree but you're still not solving the dynamic range issue, you just move it up a couple stops.

It's easier to save underexposed footage (although it will get very noisy very quick) than to recover highlights once they have been blown out.. then you simply don't have any data to work with, it's pure white.

 

[Lake_Flyer]

At least you should work with D-Log. That way you still have some control left in post. 'Sunny' is just a general preset for bright conditions, better to have the camera on manual and set the white balance temp yourself, so the real whites are just as white as you see them with your naked eye, and leave it at that during the flight.

 

[4wd]

Assuming it's the Pro, D-Log definitely helps, with cinelike and art mode skies are often irretrievable.
ND filters won't make any difference, they affect the whole scene equally.
You can adjust to underexpose slightly but (the Pro) does not do well with underexposure.
Reducing the contrast setting would also help a little, it depends a lot on how sophisticated is your editing.
With the more serious software you can adjust levels etc much like a still image in Photoshop.

 

[Ripper7620]

At least you should work with D-Log. That way you still have some control left in post. 'Sunny' is just a general preset for bright conditions, better to have the camera on manual and set the white balance temp yourself, so the real whites are just as white as you see them with your naked eye, and leave it at that during the flight.

Thank you for the reply, I'm currently working in D-log, and the colors after post pro are great. I'll give manually setting the white balance a try, as it's the next logical step.

 

[Ripper7620]

Assuming it's the Pro, D-Log definitely helps, with cinelike and art mode skies are often irretrievable.
ND filters won't make any difference, they affect the whole scene equally.
You can adjust to underexpose slightly but (the Pro) does not do well with underexposure.
Reducing the contrast setting would also help a little, it depends a lot on how sophisticated is your editing.
With the more serious software you can adjust levels etc much like a still image in Photoshop.

Thank you for the reply, I'm using D-log, and Premiere Pro for editing, and am slowly learning how to compensate. As mentioned above, the obvious thing to do, is to manually adjust my white balance.

 

[gnirtS]

ND filter will do nothing at all for blown out whites on an otherwise exposed image - the problem is due entirely to the poor dynamic range of the camera (ie its a cheap, poor quality camera). It simply cant handle huge ranges of brightness.

If its a big issue, under expose slightly and shoot D-log to correct in post.

 

[Ripper7620]

ND filter will do nothing at all for blown out whites on an otherwise exposed image - the problem is due entirely to the poor dynamic range of the camera (ie its a cheap, poor quality camera). It simply cant handle huge ranges of brightness.

If its a big issue, under expose slightly and shoot D-log to correct in post.

Thank you for the reply, I'm shooting in D-log, keeping my ISO @100, and am slowly learning tricks in post production to compensate. However, the main problem is that anything I lower in post to compensate is helping with the whites, but destroying the rest of the color spectrum. I agree the camera could be much better, and I'm spoiled from having the Phantom 4 pro at my disposal. I really want to save up for an Inspire 2, after the new Inspire comes out and hopefully the price of the 2 will drop. I would definetly take out some full coverage insurance if I get the Inspire 2, that's just too much to have invested in case of a disaster.