M2P - Night Photos of Local Courthouse - 1" Sensor Makes All the Difference

[Superdaddy]

I'm no photographer and I don't have a discernible eye, but the photos from the M2P in difficult lighting situations seem amazing. Between this, my post yesterday about Active Track improvements and the relative quiet of the M2P, I really couldn't be happier with the dang thing.


I'm open to your thoughts, criticisms and how I could have improved shot.

 

[JMF]

Nice shots !!

 

[james_mav]

Very cool pictures. They'd look good in a picture frame in your house.

 

[Kilrah]

how I could have improved shot.

Better white balance, manual settings for lower ISO and longer exposure, and nice processing from RAW.

 

[Superdaddy]

Thanks. As I recall, I used manual settings, but I may have not used the correct settings.

ISO was dialed down to 100 so I think that that left me with shutter speed and aperature to play with.

I need to learn more about it all, Including editing raw.

YouTube, here I come.

 

[Spy_Corfu]

waiting for mine also in the next few days.
You can set the aperture manually now down to f2.8 which was not possible with the first mavic, which i have now.
For the old mavic, for night shots i set the iso to 100 manually like you did but now you have the aperture options.

 

[gnirtS]

Well the mavic was a fixed f/2.2 and the mavic 2 goes to f/2.8 widest so the v1 gave you 1/3 extra of a stop of light.

Im seeing a fair bit of noise in those images though for ISO100. Im guessing its noting LR cant address with some noise reduction.
If it focuses at night its a help - my mavic 1 would never do it.

 

[Kilrah]

EXIF shows ISO 500 for the first pic and 400 for the 2nd hence my comment. Also says it was in normal program mode so not in manual, he was adjusting exposure compensation (to -2.3 and -1.7 EV) and not the actual settings.

Shutter speed is 1/15, but with stationary subjects and little to no wind you could typically do 1 or 2 sec exposures without issue on the MP, should be pretty similar here.
Since there are highlights where the lights shine on the building you want to expose so as not to blow that too much, then brighten the shadows when processing the RAW (and that's why you want lowest possible ISO so you keep noise down when doing so).

 

[gnirtS]

Useful i dont have EXIF viewer handy. 400/500 thats a fairly acceptable noise rate.

Edit:- just looked at EXIF. Manual -2/3 exposure and 1/15th shutter.

If its not too windy you could increase that shutterspeed a fair bit to pull the ISO down further.

Was the underexposure to sort out the highlights or an accident?

 

[Superdaddy]

So I took a bunch of photos and some were taken with automatic exposure and some were manual. Apparently, the EXIF indicates I was wrong as to the photos posted.

Either way, to answer the question, as to those I did use manual settings, my goal was to avoid over exposure from the bright lights, especially below the dome without using higher ISO's.

I really appreciate the comments. I'm very interested in learning about exposing for night time shots with the M2P (really all shots but day shots seem to leave more room for error). My attempts with the MA and the original MP to get a decent shot produced such poor results, I just stopped trying.

Looks like the best way is to just get up early, go back, and continuously play with the manual settings until I start getting a feel for it.

 

[shotes]

For stills I would use a higher ISO to get a higher shutter speed. Generally better sharpness is more important than less noise. Noise should not be judged from pixel peeking, but rather from viewing the image at the size and resolution it will be used. Noise in a back sky is easy to remove in post processing.

The second image would probably look better if you framed the shot to make the corner of the building vertical. When shooting building from a lower height the image sensor should usually be vertical to the ground unless the photographer desires an unusual effect.

Reddish/yellowish lights as seen in these pics make for high noise night shots. They are deficient in blue/green. Blue and green need to be greatly boosted when shooting low quality lights resulting in more noise. While the camera has a single ISO setting, the camera actually boosts each RGB channel separately to achieve the set white balance.