Night photography with Mavic 2 Enterprise Dual

[RonB]

Hello fellow Mavic operators,

My 1st post on here.
I purchased a Mavic Air for personal use last month, loving it.
I work on offshore platform in South China Sea six months of the year.
This hitch, management bought us a Mavic 2 Enterprise Dual Drone; flys well takes good pics and video.
I have taken some night pics, but having some issues.
I need some assistance form the photography gurus on here.
If I fly in fairly close to where the light fill up the shot, the camera does a pretty good job of capturing the lights without being too bright.
If I pull out to capture the entire drilling platform and associated production platform, the drilling rigs light become too bright.
I am using the auto function on the camera.
Another question....if I start adjusting the manual camera settings while in flight....will I see the changes in real time on my cell phone screen...or have to wait until I download the pics to see the results?
I will attach 2 pics, one further away with the lights too bright, another up close of those same lights, they look better.
Note: I had to compress the full size photos to get them to load on website.
I will appreciate any photography tips you can give.

 

[brett8883]

Hello fellow Mavic operators,

My 1st post on here.
I purchased a Mavic Air for personal use last month, loving it.
I work on offshore platform in South China Sea six months of the year.
This hitch, management bought us a Mavic 2 Enterprise Dual Drone; flys well takes good pics and video.
I have taken some night pics, but having some issues.
I need some assistance form the photography gurus on here.
If I fly in fairly close to where the light fill up the shot, the camera does a pretty good job of capturing the lights without being too bright.
If I pull out to capture the entire drilling platform and associated production platform, the drilling rigs light become too bright.
I am using the auto function on the camera.
Another question....if I start adjusting the manual camera settings while in flight....will I see the changes in real time on my cell phone screen...or have to wait until I download the pics to see the results?
I will attach 2 pics, one further away with the lights too bright, another up close of those same lights, they look better.
Note: I had to compress the full size photos to get them to load on website.
I will appreciate any photography tips you can give.


View attachment 81223View attachment 81225

Best to teach how the auto function works. It will average the amount of light from the entire frame to calculate the exposure value.

So in your second photo the amount of black background is small compared the the bright rig, therefore, when it averages the amount of light in the frame it sets the exposure correctly for the the bright lights.

In your first photo there’s is much more black so when it averages the brightness to calculate the exposure value the amount of black is much greater. To adjust the auto exposure function increases the exposure so that it “averages out” the black.

Several ways to fix. Probably the easiest is to use the spot metering tool.

Secret Spot-Meter in the DJIGo4 App - DJI Aerial Photography Academy

Hidden within the DJIGo4 app there is a under utilized spot-meter tool. This tool will help you create accurate exposures and powerful HDR images.

djiphotoacademy.com

Spot metering uses only a small part of the frame to calculate the exposure value. In your case you would tap on the rig so that it was properly exposed.

Yes you will see the exposure change as you adjust the exposure manually

 

[RonB]

Thanks for the information and the link.
I'll do some reading.

 

[Kilrah]

Just turn exposure compensation down to keep the highlights in control.

 

[THE CYBORG]

Have you tried HDR – Bracketing multiple photos.

 

[RonB]

Thanks all for the considered responses.
I used the spot meter setting that brett8883 mentioned.
The pictures from my last night flight were greatly improved over the straight Auto setting.
I will also attempt some of the other suggestions when I get the chance.
Sounds like I will need some photo editing software to use the HDR bracketing.
More reading and research...

Thanks again.

 

[macfawlty]

Generically speaking, 'Bracketing' is simply taking pics at different shutter speeds so you can either pic the one with the most manageable exposure to edit in Lightroom, or composite them together in Photoshop (more complicated).

My recommendation would be to simply take 5 or 6 images at different exposures of the same composition so you have a lot to choose from. Also, different compositions, distance, angles, etc. More photos to select from, the better. It costs nothing.

Also...

There are two modes referred to in this thread. HDR and AEB. I typically never use HDR mode, which does the 3-image selection and processing in-camera. The Auto-Exposure Bracketing will take 3 images at intervals of 0.7 EV (exposure value). You can choose any one of the 3 images to color grade in Lightroom. Keep in mind that blown highlights are impossible to recover, whereas there's much greater latitude in lifting the shadows. Since there's so much contrast in your night photo, you don't have to worry as much about noise as you can just bring down the black point. 0.7 isn't a wide variance, so I'd bracket the AEB to ensure I had full coverage.

The Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop combo is $10/month through the Adobe Creative Cloud. Unlimited regular updates. Lightroom will be your primary tool for post-processing. It has way more controls than Photoshop for photo editing. Once you get the hang of Lightroom, consider the full compliment of Adobe software (including Premiere for video editing) for $60/month. The BEST value in software on the planet. Dozens of professional apps.

 

[Proffy]

Wowch!