Long exposure

[alexanderguelph]

I flew the Mavic last night in 25mph winds in sport mode and she performed admirably. This was a two second exposure ISO 600 if I remember correctly. I was astonished at the clarity despite the incredible gusts.

What settings do you use for night shooting?

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[Roc Rat]

Great shots..impressive color and clarity for a 2 second exposure in windy conditions.

 

[borislip]

Whats the secret here? I've been just trying to shoot at max ISO (1600), raw, about 1/3 second or so, flying in "tripod mode", without much wind, yet getting nowhere near those results. This is an example of such a shot, after a quick and dirty LR processing:

View media item 430

 

[borislip]

I should definitely try at dusk... on lower ISO... and fly closer to the city... but i am kinda afraid someone is going to follow me to the landing point and kick my ***, badly

 

[alexanderguelph]

Whats the secret here? I've been just trying to shoot at max ISO (1600), raw, about 1/3 second or so, flying in "tripod mode", without much wind, yet getting nowhere near those results. This is an example of such a shot, after a quick and dirty LR processing:

View media item 430

Your photo didn't show up! Try uploading it again. There's no secret, I think it's simply that I was shooting with a lower ISO and longer exposure (6x longer). My goal is always to get the ISO as low as possible. The live view makes it easy to fiddle with the controls on manual. Low winds and tripod should let you get substantially better photos than mine above. The trickiest thing with night photography in my SLR experience is the focus. I flipped the controls over to manual focus and did my best to eyeball the closest focal range. One trick is to get as close as your eye can see and then take several shots shifting the focus in and out from that point. Later you can select the best photo.


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[borislip]

Your photo didn't show up! Try uploading it again. There's no secret, I think it's simply that I was shooting with a lower ISO and longer exposure (6x longer). My goal is always to get the ISO as low as possible. The live view makes it easy to fiddle with the controls on manual. Low winds and tripod should let you get substantially better photos than mine above. The trickiest thing with night photography in my SLR experience is the focus. I flipped the controls over to manual focus and did my best to eyeball the closest focal range. One trick is to get as close as your eye can see and then take several shots shifting the focus in and out from that point. Later you can select the best photo.


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So you say the reason my pic looks blurry isn't a motion blur, but simply a failure to properly focus? I've never tried to take a Mavic pic with manual focus, i guess i should try & enable the focus highlighting (don't remember the name in the menus, but i've seen the option somewhere in there) and try setting it more or less "hyperfocal". Kinda makes me wonder why doesn't the firmware continuously try to stat hyperfocal by default, trying to keep everything in focus as best as it could, unless one actually taps to focus or goes manual... but i guess thats not up to us to decide :-(

NOTE: I can see my own picture just fine here, even when viewing the thread from an "incognito" browser window, not loged in.

 

[No1much]

[Amazing photos]

Those are beautiful. I love the 2-second exposure shots of roads. Those are so fun to do, with the artistic light smears and contrast of light and dark. My settings are almost exactly the same as yours- I never go above 400 ISO if I can help it, though. Something a photography guru told me once, so I've been a lazy boy and stuck with that advice without really looking into it.

 

[alexanderguelph]

So you say the reason my pic looks blurry isn't a motion blur, but simply a failure to properly focus? I've never tried to take a Mavic pic with manual focus, i guess i should try & enable the focus highlighting (don't remember the name in the menus, but i've seen the option somewhere in there) and try setting it more or less "hyperfocal". Kinda makes me wonder why doesn't the firmware continuously try to stat hyperfocal by default, trying to keep everything in focus as best as it could, unless one actually taps to focus or goes manual... but i guess thats not up to us to decide :-(

NOTE: I can see my own picture just fine here, even when viewing the thread from an "incognito" browser window, not loged in.

I'm just guessing. I honestly couldn't get the Mavic to focus nicely in that light. My Cannon 6D with a professional series lens can't focus in that kind of light either. If you tap the little focus icon on the screen it cycles through a few different modes, one being autofocus, and a slider appears on the right just beside the gimbal indicator. I haven't read up on the focus options yet. For the most part, the tap-autofocus has worked really effectively in day shooting. I have one of my C buttons set to centre autofocus (the other is set to toggle the LEDs on and off). I don't know what the default focus setting is on mine but it doesn't ever focus unless I tell it to.


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[borislip]

I'm just guessing. I honestly couldn't get the Mavic to focus nicely in that light. My Cannon 6D with a professional series lens can't focus in that kind of light either. If you tap the little focus icon on the screen it cycles through a few different modes, one being autofocus, and a slider appears on the right just beside the gimbal indicator. I haven't read up on the focus options yet. For the most part, the tap-autofocus has worked really effectively in day shooting. I have one of my C buttons set to centre autofocus (the other is set to toggle the LEDs on and off). I don't know what the default focus setting is on mine but it doesn't ever focus unless I tell it to

I don't own a DSLR, simply because i think i'll barely take it with me, making it rather pointless. My LX7 (a relatively high end pocket camera) have no problem focusing in this kind of light and produces very nice long exposure (low ISO, F2.8) results, while Mavic doesn't really seem to indicate when it fails to focus, so, yes, i may have been out of focus indeed, and i didn't really think about it. I've seen the manual focus option on the DJI GO app, just never attempted to actually shoot using it. One of the C buttons has been configured to the center-autofocus for me by default, i guess thats a popular use of one of those buttons. I've tried to configure the other to switch between a tripod and a normal flying, but couldn't find a way to do so.

The default focus on Mavic is a disaster, i don't know what it focuses on, but it doesn't seems to be anything present in the frame.

 

[alexanderguelph]

Just tried another. This is a 1 second exposure, at ISO 400 in crazy winds hovering in sport mode.

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[borislip]

Did some more attempts, got a somewhat better result. Its really hard to manually focus on the touch screen, and the terrible DJI GO4 does nothing to make it easier. It's edge detector highlights are barely visible on a dark preview, it doesn't zoom to 1:1 on the point of focus as many cameras with a live view do, and it's on-screen focus control is driving me nuts. Couldn't find any way to assign the focus to the E/V wheel, and really see no reason why wouldn't it be possible.

The bottom line is, the image quality can be quite descent, although, it doesn't get any near a DSLR or a high end pocket, it's noisy, and it requires manual focusing and a lot of luck.

The pic below is 0.5 sec, ISO 400, with massive noise reduction applied, but still looks kinda nice for something i took from a flying machine dangling in the wind.
Again, i do admit, this is NOT straight out of the bird, this is DNG+meddling in LR.

Just in case someone is interested to see how the dng looks straight out of the bird - i am attaching it as well.

Something i've just noticed on the DNG (by accidentally opening it in FastStone) is outrageously high amount of dead/hot pixels. They aren't visible in LR, but i guess there is some section in the DNG that is supposed to tell the software where they are, which FastStone likely ignores, so they are visible there.

 

[borislip]

Also, seems like it doesn't really matter what mode you are in. Tripod, normal, sport - made no difference for still photos whatsoever.

 

[borislip]

One more... i hope i can do better, but even those results are rather impressive... and i hope FAA doesn't look here ;-)

 

[alexanderguelph]

One more... i hope i can do better, but even those results are rather impressive... and i hope FAA doesn't look here ;-)
View attachment 7480

Nice work! I was being lazy and shooting in JPG. Also, I think the rules are essentially the same here in England but I'm living in a tiny little town right now, so I do t think anyone's the bother. Besides, I toggle the front LED's off just so I don't have paranoid people thinking they are being spied on. I toggle them back on for landing.


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[borislip]

I am in a rather populated area, the big city on the horizon you see on the last photo is actually the New York City. If you look at the sectional charts, i am right at the edge of the Teterboro controlled airspace (class D), and if i'd cross the Hudson i'd be in the LGA's controlled airspace. In general, its not like the flight here isn't allowed, but according to FAA i am expected to talk to Teterboro before i fly, which i don't, nor know how to (other than buying a VHF transceiver and taking to them on one of their frequencies). There is also a sh*tload of heliports in the 5 miles radius, which are a kind of a gray area. And its generally NOT allowed to fly a drone at night (more than 30 minutes after sunset).

So FAA-laws-speaking, i am an bad boy here. But realistically speaking, there is a hill, with high-raisers (you can see one on the 2nds pic from the end), between me and Teterboro, so 400 feet AGL at my coordinates would translate to "kamikaze flight into a building" a few hundred feets from me in the general airport direction, meaning only an insane suicidal manned plane pilot would be with me at 400 feet AGL over my head. Helicopters activity, while very high during the day, is very minimal (usually none) in the evening, and they are slow and audible enough for me to yield to them. As for "not flying at nigh", i take it at about the same contexts as speed limits on the highway ;-)

Again, i hope FAA doesn't read those forums, or reads them and couldn't care less

 

[CrossQuads]

I have got some decent night shots.

 

[Crenshaw]

Something i've just noticed on the DNG (by accidentally opening it in FastStone) is outrageously high amount of dead/hot pixels. They aren't visible in LR, but i guess there is some section in the DNG that is supposed to tell the software where they are, which FastStone likely ignores, so they are visible there.

I've had a couple of night shots absolutely riddled with hot pixels. I, however, could see them in LR- are you using a preset or something that takes care of them? I've been having to manual spot remove them on images that I'd like to keep.

And I fully sympathize about the noise- even at 100 ISO. Luckily adding a bunch of noise reduction in LR doesn't take away too much from the image usually.

 

[borislip]

I've had a couple of night shots absolutely riddled with hot pixels. I, however, could see them in LR- are you using a preset or something that takes care of them? I've been having to manual spot remove them on images that I'd like to keep...

Really? All i did is loading the pics into LR, did nothing special. Here is an example of LR export of a pic, with all basic sliders reset, and all processing stuff (details, tone curve, HSL, etc etc) switches off, along with the same export from FastStone, at full res. It DOES look like LR did, indeed, apply some corrections (note the slightly different export resolution, as well as some visible lens/vignetting correction, too), but i did absolutely no action in order for it to do so, so i guess some meta info is stored inside the dng and used by LR to know what to do.

 

[Crenshaw]

Interesting! I wonder why mine are retaining the hot pixels? I remember lightroom doing some of that minor initial tweaking with my p3p, but I must need to mess with something to fix the images from the Mavic. Hmmm...

 

[borislip]

Interesting! I wonder why mine are retaining the hot pixels? I remember lightroom doing some of that minor initial tweaking with my p3p, but I must need to mess with something to fix the images from the Mavic. Hmmm...

A different LR version? Mine is 6.1.1 (according to EXIF in the pic, can't look at the actual LR, i am AFK now). A diffident "camera raw" version installed?