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Insane noise level at ISO 100. What am I doing wrong?

WilliamsDrone

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Hey guys,

just bought the mavic 2 pro before I went on vacation and thought I nailed some great shots. But then I was shocked about the noise level in the pictures at bright day light with ISO 100. What happened?

Settings:

F/2.8
1/240 sec.
ISO 100
ND 16 POL Filter

Thankful for any advice regarding settings!
 

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just bought the mavic 2 pro before I went on vacation and thought I nailed some great shots. But then I was shocked about the noise level in the pictures at bright day light with ISO 100. What happened?
F/2.8
1/240 sec.
ISO 100
ND 16 POL Filter
Your filter isn't helping.
Quite the opposite .. it's cutting 94% of the light, leaving you with just 6% of the light to work with.
Any particular reason you'd want to do that?
 
Youre using a filter thats completely unnesseary and hugely reducing light transmission to the sensor.
You're also creating deep dark shadow areas in the image where noise tends to manifest more.
You're also not saying if you're using jpg or raw and what post-processing if any is done.
The left hand .jpg to me looks fine. The right hang image looks like a crop and may have been processed.

But really, for stills, you do NOT want an ND filter. You want as much light as possible getting to that sensor.
 
Thanks for all the answers. This was the JPEG version, but the raw doesn't look much better, just slightly. I didn't edit the pictures yet. The smaller picture is a cut out from the original JPEG looked at at 100%.

Because I was also filming, I needed the filter to get the 1/50 at 25fps and 100 ISO. But obvisously I should have taken it of to take the stills I guess?! Never "mixed" filming and taking photos before, so I wasn't aware the filter is doing so much damage to the pictures taken by the Mavic. I have never experienced that noise phenomenon with pl filters on my DSLRs lenses.
 
I wasn't aware the filter is doing so much damage to the pictures taken by the Mavic. I have never experienced that noise phenomenon with pl filters on my DSLRs lenses.
Perhaps you've been using normal polarising filters on your SLR rather than an ND16 Pol.
Just holding it up to your eye should give you an idea of how little light it lets through.
 
But if to little light goes through the filter, shouldn't it be darker in general? Is the filter really causing the noise-effect? I never heard about filters triggering a noise effect when the picture gets enough light in general. Read also this article and a lot of people in that one saying the filter shouldn't have a bad effect on still pictures.


Besides of course making it darker, but if you can reverse that by putting the aperture to let's say F/2.8, the filter shouldn't be responsible for the noise effect, right?
 
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But if to little light goes through the filter, shouldn't it be darker in general? Is the filter really causing the noise-effect? I never heard about filters triggering a noise effect when the picture gets enough light in general. Read also this article and a lot of people in that one saying the filter shouldn't have a bad effect on still pictures.


Besides of course making it darker, but if you can reverse that by putting the aperture to let's say F/2.8, the filter shouldn't be responsible for the noise effect, right?
The photo was shot at f2.8 but that doesn't change the fact that he only had 1/16th of the light he should have. (probably significantly less since the polarising function could have cut the light by another 2 stops which would only allow 1.5% to get through .
 
The polarising effect is also making dark areas darker and noise hides in the shadows.
 
The photo was shot at f2.8 but that doesn't change the fact that he only had 1/16th of the light he should have. (probably significantly less since the polarising function could have cut the light by another 2 stops which would only allow 1.5% to get through .

That's true, but would only matter if it caused the ISO setting to increase or if the original image were very underexposed, which doesn't look to be the case. To me this looks more like JPEG artifacts rather than sensor noise.
 
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That's true, but would only matter if it caused the ISO setting to increase or if the original image were very underexposed, which doesn't look to be the case. To me this looks more like JPEG artifacts rather than sensor noise.

That's what I mean, why should the filter matter if I still get enough light to keep the EV at around 0 at ISO 100? It's true, the RAW looks better, but still pretty noisy?!

This picture is a screenshot of the unedited RAW at 100%.
 

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That's what I mean, why should the filter matter if I still get enough light to keep the EV at around 0 at ISO 100? It's true, the RAW looks better, but still pretty noisy?!

This picture is a screenshot of the unedited RAW at 100%.

It may have started life as a RAW image but your screenshot is a JPEG, which rather defeats the purpose.
 
Also is the video from the phone/tablet or the bird itself. My tablet records at a lower resolution (do to age of tablet) at HD and not the 4K that my Mavic does?
 
This picture is a screenshot of the unedited RAW at 100%.
RAW is made for editing, an unedited RAW is neutral and pointless. Perfectly normal to see what you do.

If you shoot RAW you need to get to work and play with the noise reduction and other settings to get something good/that pleases you. Otherwise shoot JPG and let the camera do it for you.
 
Hm, I do a lot of "normal" photography in RAW and I never experienced so much noise in an unedited RAW. At bright daylight in a normal exposed picture with ISO 100 there shouldn't be so much noise, never saw that with my Canon DSLR. I still think it's very weird. I'll will play around a little more with different settings and see what happens. I'm defintely hooked after this vacation.

Thanks a lot for all of your advice!
 
The polarising effect is also making dark areas darker and noise hides in the shadows.
Hm, I do a lot of "normal" photography in RAW and I never experienced so much noise in an unedited RAW. At bright daylight in a normal exposed picture with ISO 100 there shouldn't be so much noise, never saw that with my Canon DSLR. I still think it's very weird. I'll will play around a little more with different settings and see what happens. I'm defintely hooked after this vacation.

Thanks a lot for all of your advice!

A DSLR is going to exhibit substantially less noise. The mavic 2 sensor is tiny in comparison.

The shadow noise to me doesnt look out of the ordinary especially due to the polariser making the shadows far deeper.
 

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