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Night Footage is BAD!!!

quite pleased with stills from air2s at twilight/night

InJtIwX.jpg
 
I hate to bring up this part of Drone history but just go back to the M2P when it came out. There was no end to the attempt to disparage both the technology and quality of it's video and stills. Nearly 3 years later - we (should) know better.
 
taken an hour before sunrise this monday morning with the Air2s in relatively calm air.
Auto mode, single shot. Camera selected iso 1280 and 1/4 sec.
slightly cropped, toned and sharpened dng file in lightroom.
final dimensions 5400x3600 px.
could hardly have done much better with my dslr on a tripod.

gfmInwS.jpg
 
That is incorrect. An aperture of f 2.8 *can* result in less depth of field, but out-of-focus effects are visible only if the lens's DOF is less than that presented by the subject.

Nearly all objects in an aerial are near as darn to infinity focus. DOF plays no part unless the subject has components closer than a hundred feet or so. This is especially true with relatively small sensors like the 2S.

"a large area out of focus" does not "cause much noise." It might make it more visible, but it doesn't cause more noise.

Important point, thanks for the input. Really, at f/2.8 with an image sensor that small the reasonable DOF will likely be much closer than a hundred feet, more like five feet or even less. So, unless you are flying in real close to inspect a bridge it's highly unlikely that at any more likely distance anything would be out of reasonable focus. Additionally, operating at a wider aperture like f/2.8 pretty much eliminates diffraction as a limiting factor. With my earlier drone, the P4P which did have a variable aperture I usually set the aperture at f/4 to f/5.6 to avoid diffraction limiting.

In this video from a few years ago using the P4P at f/5.6 it would be hard to complain about detail level.



Brian
 
Important point, thanks for the input. Really, at f/2.8 with an image sensor that small the reasonable DOF will likely be much closer than a hundred feet, more like five feet or even less. So, unless you are flying in real close to inspect a bridge it's highly unlikely that at any more likely distance anything would be out of reasonable focus. Additionally, operating at a wider aperture like f/2.8 pretty much eliminates diffraction as a limiting factor. With my earlier drone, the P4P which did have a variable aperture I usually set the aperture at f/4 to f/5.6 to avoid diffraction limiting.

In this video from a few years ago using the P4P at f/5.6 it would be hard to complain about detail level.



Brian
A2C9C08F-92C7-4D40-8AF1-605D3FA0A169.jpeg
I like my night shots just fine.
 

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