MAVIC AIR long exposure photography - ND1000 or 2000?

[Doit2it]

Surely you will either get a bit of movement from even the lightest wind, slight drift when hovering, even a bit of motor vibration.
Suppose it's worth a go.

The gimbal keeps the camera pretty steady. I was doing 8 second evening exposures of lightning and they came out pretty good.

 

[Deleted member 94047]

Wow! Those are awesome!

 

[SXViper03]

The gimbal keeps the camera pretty steady. I was doing 8 second evening exposures of lightning and they came out pretty good.View attachment 78794View attachment 78795

Did you use a filter on this shot? If so was it the ND1000?

 

[ix9]

Anyone try doing longer than 8 seconds?

 

[Meta4]

Anyone try doing longer than 8 seconds?

That would be difficult since 8 sec is the slowest shutter speed for all DJI cameras.

 

[Jon 007]

I have seen enough pictures of waterfalls and such taken with ND1000 filters to convince me that I just gotta get one. And lo and behold, there is even a ND2000 filter for the MAVIC AIR. Any one tried either of these on the AIR? Which one would you recommend that I get. And the MAVIC AIR is not exactly a tripod, so how well does it handle long exposure photography? Questions, questions, questions.

The Mavic Air has a tripod mode

 

[Jon 007]

I would have thought a tripod is a necessity for long exposure photography.

Cant see it working out well using a drone but I could be wrong.

Mavic air has a tripod mode

 

[Meta4]

The Mavic Air has a tripod mode

Tripod mode is confusingly misnamed.
It does not hold the drone more steadily than any other mode.
It simply slows the speed and joystick sensitivity to make for slower, more precisely controlled flight in close quarters.
It's nothing like using a tripod in regular photography and won't be useful in long exposure photography.

 

[BPlol]

Anything more than 1 second and the odds is that you will have blurry pictures. What I do for long exposures is a sequence of 1 sec.exposures, then stacking all in Photoshop.



And this Frankenstein one is a combination of manual panorama and a batch of 1 sec exposures:



Long exposures usually heats the sensor, so you will have lots of hot pixels to deal with It in post processing. The same thing happens with my dSLRs, It is just the nature of the beast.

 

[pommy]

I've been using a Freewell ND1000 in bright sunshine (Air 2S) and it's been "ok". Depending on the position of the sun/camera angle, I've been able to go to 2" but mostly 1" is the right speed.

I'm now thinking of getting the ND2000 as I can't get the longer, dreamy shots I've seen other people get (believe me, I've tried).

Question: If you use an ND1000 to allow a longer shutter speed in the day, why would you use one at night if light is scarce anyway? Is there any purpose? Confused?

Here's some I made earlier


View attachment 134096

 

[Meta4]

I've been using a Freewell ND1000 in bright sunshine (Air 2S) and it's been "ok". Depending on the position of the sun/camera angle, I've been able to go to 2" but mostly 1" is the right speed.

I'm now thinking of getting the ND2000 as I can't get the longer, dreamy shots I've seen other people get (believe me, I've tried).

The ND filter will only allow half the amount of light through that the ND 1000 does.
If you can't get steady shots past 2 seconds with the ND1000, using the ND 2000 and the same ISO setting, those shots would be a stop underexposed.

Question: If you use an ND1000 to allow a longer shutter speed in the day, why would you use one at night if light is scarce anyway? Is there any purpose? Confused?

The ND1000 only allows 1/1000th of the light through.
In daylight there's a lot of light and you can just get by on 1/1000th + a long shutter speed.
When it's already dark, cutting 99.9% of the light doesn't leave much to form an image unless your subject is very well lit.

Just my opinion, but the whole slow shutter speed thing is overdone by some drone photographers.
It's fine when there's a real purpose, like showing speed or motion, but to just slow a wave enough to make it a little blurred doesn't really add anything to the resulting image.
If you want that dreamy look, it's better to use a real camera on a solid tripod and shoot 20 second exposures than trying with a drone.

 

[pommy]

The ND filter will only allow half the amount of light through that the ND 1000 does.
If you can't get steady shots past 2 seconds with the ND1000, using the ND 2000 and the same ISO setting, those shots would be a stop underexposed.

The ND1000 only allows 1/1000th of the light through.
In daylight there's a lot of light and you can just get by on 1/1000th + a long shutter speed.
When it's already dark, cutting 99.9% of the light doesn't leave much to form an image unless your subject is very well lit.

Just my opinion, but the whole slow shutter speed thing is overdone by some drone photographers.
It's fine when there's a real purpose, like showing speed or motion, but to just slow a wave enough to make it a little blurred doesn't really add anything to the resulting image.
If you want that dreamy look, it's better to use a real camera on a solid tripod and shoot 20 second exposures than trying with a drone.

Well that was a perfect explanation. Thank you!