Mavic 4 - Golden Hour (Mist Filter 1/4, Freewell)

Mountains · Sep 21, 2025

Tried the Freewell 1/4 mist filter for the first time during golden hour.
To be honest, I can’t really tell the difference... it looks about the same as shooting without it.
Maybe the 1/8 would work better, or maybe no filter at all.

AeroJ · Sep 21, 2025

Interesting footage. Is the mist filter supposed to add mist, or make it so you can see through it better !?

Apart from that one shot with all the noise in it the quality is decent, but certainly while the sun is low the overall impression is that the result is too dark, and we lose a lot of detail in the ground. I appreciate it's very difficult light to film in, but TBH I expected an M4P to do a bit better with low light !

As the sun comes up things get much better as the light gets more even and into a range the camera likes better.

Mountains · Sep 21, 2025

AeroJ said:
Interesting footage. Is the mist filter supposed to add mist, or make it so you can see through it better !?

Apart from that one shot with all the noise in it the quality is decent, but certainly while the sun is low the overall impression is that the result is too dark, and we lose a lot of detail in the ground. I appreciate it's very difficult light to film in, but TBH I expected an M4P to do a bit better with low light !

As the sun comes up things get much better as the light gets more even and into a range the camera likes better.

The mist filter doesn’t actually add mist, it’s more about softening the highlights and blooming the light a bit, giving that dreamy, cinematic look.
It’s definitely not meant to improve visibility or cut through haze.

Part of this was filmed in low light and part during golden hour, which isn’t the best scenario for this filter.
On top of that, I locked the ISO at 400 for consistency, which naturally brought in a bit more noise in the shadows.
The M4P handles light well (Supposedly it handles low-light shots better in D-Log M, but I haven’t tried it yet. I shoot only in D-Log.), but the mist filter combined with fixed ISO400 makes the darker parts feel heavier and sometimes exaggerates noise.

As the sun got higher everything balanced out much better, like you noticed.
Next time I’ll also run a test without the filter, just for comparison.