My M2P giving me false exposure readout! Need help!!

[kirstinriga]

Hello,

My drone is going crazy... Basically, what is happening is set the exposure correctly depending on the light of the day, using PolarPro filters if needed but my drone is giving me inaccurate exposure.

For example, today I turned the drone on, put a 16 stop filter on because I am in Australia and it is extremely light outside. It was midday and the footage looked like I tried to take it in almost pitch black... During midday and with a 16 stop filter! Then I tried other filters on. I put on the original Hasselblad filter the drone comes with and the majority of the footage was blown out, which makes sense and should have been a correct readout. After that I tried an 8 stop filter and again the footage was very dark. Then, out of curiosity, I tried the original Hasselblad filter yet again and the footage was almost correctly exposed. Just a tad too dark.

So that means the filters are working fine. I called DJI as well and they advised to reset camera settings, which I did and it did not help. Has anyone experienced something like this?

Regards!

 

[Meta4]

For example, today I turned the drone on, put a 16 stop filter on because I am in Australia and it is extremely light outside. It was midday and the footage looked like I tried to take it in almost pitch black... During midday and with a 16 stop filter! Then I tried other filters on. I put on the original Hasselblad filter the drone comes with and the majority of the footage was blown out, which makes sense and should have been a correct readout. After that I tried an 8 stop filter and again the footage was very dark. Then, out of curiosity, I tried the original Hasselblad filter yet again and the footage was almost correctly exposed. Just a tad too dark.

I'm guessing that you mean ND16 and ND8 filters rather than 16 stop and 8 stop filters which would make anything look like midnight in a coal mine.
You don't give enough detail to be able to tell what settings you are using and work out what might be wrong.
But if the camera is exposing properly without your filters, it should also expose properly with them on.

Can you post a screenshot from your phone/tablet to show your settings?

 

[kirstinriga]

I'm guessing that you mean ND16 and ND8 filters rather than 16 stop and 8 stop filters which would make anything look like midnight in a coal mine.
You don't give enough detail to be able to tell what settings you are using and work out what might be wrong.
But if the camera is exposing properly without your filters, it should also expose properly with them on.

Can you post a screenshot from your phone/tablet to show your settings?

Oh yes, I meant ND16 and ND8. The problem is it exposed correctly once with the Hasselblad and in about 5 minutes it gave me an incorrect readout even though I used the same filter so it doesn't matter what filter it has on. I'll attach a few photos. Same settings. In the first photos I used the Hasselblad filter and I think it gave me a correct exposure readout but it was a bit overexposed so I put on ND4 and you can see it is wayyy too dark when it shouldn't be.

I have been flying this drone for a year now so I know something is not right here.

 

[Meta4]

Oh yes, I meant ND16 and ND8. The problem is it exposed correctly once with the Hasselblad and in about 5 minutes it gave me an incorrect readout even though I used the same filter so it doesn't matter what filter it has on. I'll attach a few photos. Same settings. In the first photos I used the Hasselblad filter and I think it gave me a correct exposure readout but it was a bit overexposed so I put on ND4 and you can see it is wayyy too dark when it shouldn't be.

I have been flying this drone for a year now so I know something is not right here.

In the two dark examples of your screen shots, the camera's metering knows that the shot is going to be underexposed.
You can see that where it's showing EV -3.0 in the camera data line of the first example and next to the histogram in the second.
Your manual settings are the problem in those.
F4 at 1/60th 100 ISO and the filter is always going to be underexposed in that light.

If you set the manual settings appropriately or used auto exposure, the exposure would be fine, filter or not.

 

[kirstinriga]

The problem does not lay in my settings. In that scenario ND4 should have worked. As you can see from the photos the foreground is completely crushed and it shouldn't be. It was still very light outside. I can tell you exactly that the problem here is not how I have exposed the shot.
Here's why, as I mentioned before, if I would put on let's say an ND4 filter and get a whatever readout then after turning the drone on and off it would give me another readout. And that is within 1 minute, without the drone moving a centimeter. Same light, same settings, same everything and it would still give me another exposure.

 

[Meta4]

The problem does not lay in my settings.

Do a little testing without the manual settings.
Try auto exposure and see if that makes any difference.
That would show if the settings are the problem.

 

[SkyeHigh]

In the two dark examples of your screen shots, the camera's metering knows that the shot is going to be underexposed.
You can see that where it's showing EV -3.0 in the camera data line of the first example and next to the histogram in the second.
Your manual settings are the problem in those.
F4 at 1/60th 100 ISO and the filter is always going to be underexposed in that light.

If you set the manual settings appropriately or used auto exposure, the exposure would be fine, filter or not.

I did see something very similar with my M2P last year while in Northern Western Australia but in my case the camera was way over exposing. It was in auto mode with an ND4 filter. I switched from auto to manual and back and the exposure corrected. It did this several days in a row and each time switching to manual and back to auto corrected exposure. Since then I’ve only used aperture priority and have had no problems since.

The shots in my situation were in extreme bright light on a white sand beach and turquoise sea. If anything the camera should have under exposed. Thinking further back I also had the same issue when shooting stills of some painted silos. Predominantly white and in bright light the camera metering should have caused under exposure but I got the opposite and switched to manual. Didn’t think too much about it at the time.

I doubt very much the ND filters are the cause, certainly not in my case, but there could be a metering problem still.

 

[Electromen]

If you can post the original camera files, jpeg or RAW would be best, I'll look at the MetaData and tell you what I find.
I'll need several shots to compare and please give details on each like which ND filter was used.

 

[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

Also, keep an eye on the histogram. Switch to auto and look at the histogram, then switch back to your manual settings and see how the histogram now compares.

Chris

 

[boblui]

It seems that you have been checking the image brightness of the live video feed only. Have you check the recorded footage ?

 

[brett8883]

Oh yes, I meant ND16 and ND8. The problem is it exposed correctly once with the Hasselblad and in about 5 minutes it gave me an incorrect readout even though I used the same filter so it doesn't matter what filter it has on. I'll attach a few photos. Same settings. In the first photos I used the Hasselblad filter and I think it gave me a correct exposure readout but it was a bit overexposed so I put on ND4 and you can see it is wayyy too dark when it shouldn't be.

I have been flying this drone for a year now so I know something is not right here.

It looks to me like it is metering the shots correctly. In the first one you have a very bright background that is clipping the whites and it’s reading +.7. In the next one the scene is very dark and it’s reading -3.

The issue is DJI only has evaluative metering in manual exposure mode which takes the whole frame into account. This will give you ok results most of the time but will give you terrible results some of the time. On high dynamic range scenes like you are showing is when it doesn’t work well.

On a SLR handheld camera you would be able to switch to spot or center weighted metering for instances like this but there is no option for that with DJI. You can use those modes in Auto, A, or S mode but not Manual.

In this situation you would use the histogram and by looking at the live feed to estimate the exposure. In scenes like the first photo you show there may not be a “proper” exposure. You will have some areas of the frame that are clipped no matter what. It takes experience to know what the best exposure is for your creative vision.