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night photography tap to focus not working at all!

RedDevils88

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Jun 3, 2017
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as the title suggests, i have been trying to do some night shots (pitch black) but i had an extremely difficult time to do tap to focus. the camera just won't focus onto any subject even with the most light, i then found out that the tap to focus (auto focus) is worthless at night . i restarted the camera mid air and the picture came out perfectly focused. is this a common thing or something is wrong with my tap to focus? i have attached some photos where i got really bad focus and some with good ones. please let me know what have i done wrong. thank you!
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I've experienced the same, but never attempted to restart the camera as a workaround, using manual focus instead.
 
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The sensor is too small to pull in enough light to take decent night shots.
 
If your camera is working properly you can increase your ISO so that your subject comes into view then focus. Once you obtain a focus you are happy with reduce your ISO and start shooting...

Happy Flying - Lt. Shanks
 
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But he didn't film at night. Just edited to pretend he did.
I know...but I'm thankful for the video.. I suppose that's what the experts who hopefully know the limitations of mavic use to obtain great "night" footage. After watching this I would not waste a bunch of time trying to get the same results in pitch dark...
 
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As a side note coming from a photography background these conditions are no where near "pitch black". The Mavic can pickup most of the artificial light in his images with the right settings and practice... Just Saying - Lt. Shanks
 
I noticed the "lock gimbal during capture" setting doesn't seem to work. You can move it during a long exposure shot creating streaks.
 
How did you "restart the camera mid air" ?
Switching from pal to ntsc or vice versa forced the camera to restart. Not a proper way but the focus works right after the restart. And if I would accidently tap on the screen to focus. The images becomes blurry again and I won't be able to lock onto any subject.

Weirdly, the tap to focus worked the night before.
 
Maybe, just maybe, you have an AFC setting turned on, causing it to try and focus continuously. Just a speculation, but worth checking.
 
Have to note that the AFC on Mavic is absolutely terrible, it doesn't do focus tracking, but runs the entire focus scan again when it thinks it lost the focus.
 
Maybe, just maybe, you have an AFC setting turned on, causing it to try and focus continuously. Just a speculation, but worth checking.

It was on and I turned it off but tap to focus didn't really focus very well either.

Yes I agree that afc is not working well on the mavic
 
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