Air 2 Night shoots - First try

[RicardoCarneiro]

I am a big fan of Long Exposure.

These pictures are from the Dublin city centre over River Liffey. A bit frustrated with the noise, etc but I can't compare my Long Exposure pics with my Canon 5D MK 3 / 24-70mm F2.8 II with a Drone flying over a windy place.

Next time will try an ND FILTER and new adjustments.

Enjoy

 

[Phantomrain.org]

What is the reasoning for the long exposure with so much light working for you ?

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain , Capture the Storm.

 

[Pixeldawg]

I am a big fan of Long Exposure.

These pictures are from the Dublin city centre over River Liffey. A bit frustrated with the noise, etc but I can't compare my Long Exposure pics with my Canon 5D MK 3 / 24-70mm F2.8 II with a Drone flying over a windy place.

Next time will try an ND FILTER and new adjustments.

Enjoy

Greetings from China. First, I really love the 2nd image here. Great symmetry for the river, beautiful color and sky. Excellent work. Using a ND filter won't help your situation. This is because an ND filter is used to cut down the amount of light available, which is mostly for video because you want a slower shutter speed to give a better quality image as far as the actual video goes. Higher shutter speeds can be problematic, depending on what you are recording in video. In still images, like yours, it isn't as necessary and really, what you want to be able to do is really just the opposite. Use and decrease the ISO to 100, so that the noise becomes much less of an issue. Having less ND in front of the lens will allow you to accomplish this. The other part that I would highly recommend is that you shoot in RAW and process the image in Photoshop. Within Photoshop, there is the RAW converter and it allows you to do independent adjustments to highlights, shadows, blacks and whites. Beyond this, it is really crazy at all of the adjustments you can make to noise, colors and even vignettes to make the image pop more. RAW is also the very highest image quality you can get and it is literally only what the actual sensor records and does not include color spaces, compression and other things that a JPEG file contains (and can not be removed, regardless of your post prowess to hide them!) So, shoot RAW, lose the ND filter and shoot the 2nd image again and work with it in Photoshop Post. If you don't have photoshop, many libraries do and some universities who open labs to the public will as well. Give it a try and good luck!

BTW, I shot this image last week using the above. I am including the ''before post'' and '' after post'' to give you an idea of just how good RAW works. Ping me if you have questions, happy to help! These are the exact same image. Preprocessed RAW file and finished image.

 

[Phantomrain.org]

Greetings from China. First, I really love the 2nd image here. Great symmetry for the river, beautiful color and sky. Excellent work. Using a ND filter won't help your situation. This is because an ND filter is used to cut down the amount of light available, which is mostly for video because you want a slower shutter speed to give a better quality image as far as the actual video goes. Higher shutter speeds can be problematic, depending on what you are recording in video. In still images, like yours, it isn't as necessary and really, what you want to be able to do is really just the opposite. Use and decrease the ISO to 100, so that the noise becomes much less of an issue. Having less ND in front of the lens will allow you to accomplish this. The other part that I would highly recommend is that you shoot in RAW and process the image in Photoshop. Within Photoshop, there is the RAW converter and it allows you to do independent adjustments to highlights, shadows, blacks and whites. Beyond this, it is really crazy at all of the adjustments you can make to noise, colors and even vignettes to make the image pop more. RAW is also the very highest image quality you can get and it is literally only what the actual sensor records and does not include color spaces, compression and other things that a JPEG file contains (and can not be removed, regardless of your post prowess to hide them!) So, shoot RAW, lose the ND filter and shoot the 2nd image again and work with it in Photoshop Post. If you don't have photoshop, many libraries do and some universities who open labs to the public will as well. Give it a try and good luck!

BTW, I shot this image last week using the above. I am including the ''before post'' and '' after post'' to give you an idea of just how good RAW works. Ping me if you have questions, happy to help! These are the exact same image. Preprocessed RAW file and finished image.

Your pictures are to small to see any of the Resolution ,, but this was a great explanation even for me. Lol
I did send you a PM about the Rain and rescue package but I am not sure you got it.

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain and Capture the storm.

 

[Pixeldawg]

Your pictures are to small to see any of the Resolution ,, but this was a great explanation even for me. Lol
I did send you a PM about the Rain and rescue package but I am not sure you got it.

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain and Capture the storm.

If you click on them, you can see the entire image. And apologies, my wife came down from Shanghai from her work, and when she is here, I give her all of my attention because it is not every day that I get to see her. I AM interested though and while I am here, will ask you if this works with the gimble having full movement and for video? Send examples if you have them!

 

[Phantomrain.org]

If you click on them, you can see the entire image. And apologies, my wife came down from Shanghai from her work, and when she is here, I give her all of my attention because it is not every day that I get to see her. I AM interested though and while I am here, will ask you if this works with the gimble having full movement and for video? Send examples if you have them!

Your images do open but there very small, 4 x 3 inches at most on my widescreen not enough to see any details of the pictures.

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain and Land on the Water.

 

[RicardoCarneiro]

What is the reasoning for the long exposure with so much light working for you ?

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain , Capture the Sto

What is the reasoning for the long exposure with so much light working for you ?

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain , Capture the Storm.

Just

What is the reasoning for the long exposure with so much light working for you ?

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain , Capture the Storm.

Do we need a reason to play and test a new toy?
Just discovering what this little toy can do for me.

Cheers.

 

[Pixeldawg]

Just

Do we need a reason to play and test a new toy?
Just discovering what this little toy can do for me.

Cheers.

of course not! But, the original poster was asking a specific question, and if your are going to use the camera's features, use them to the best of the camera's abilities. Low ISO on RAW is generally the way to go regarding this. But, if you are shooting during bright sunlight, most drone cameras will only reach F11 as a maximum aperture, because any smaller and you would begin to have issues with diffraction, Basically, what happens is that the aperture opening becomes so small that the light does not transmit through it correctly and the image actually loses sharpness. Opening the aperture too much can damage the sensor, so shooting toward bright sunlight requires the use of a NDP (Neutral Density/Polarizer) filter. So, you would generally want to protect the lens by limiting the light hitting the sensor, but not stopping the lens down to the maximum (smallest) aperture. Another more artistic reason would be if you were (again) shooting in sunlight and let's say wanted to photograph a roadway and exclude the moving cars from the image. A strong ND filter (a 16 or 32) can cause a long enough exposure to basically remove the cars from the shot without using photoshop.

 

[RicardoCarneiro]

of course not! But, the original poster was asking a specific question, and if your are going to use the camera's features, use them to the best of the camera's abilities. Low ISO on RAW is generally the way to go regarding this. But, if you are shooting during bright sunlight, most drone cameras will only reach F11 as a maximum aperture, because any smaller and you would begin to have issues with diffraction, Basically, what happens is that the aperture opening becomes so small that the light does not transmit through it correctly and the image actually loses sharpness. Opening the aperture too much can damage the sensor, so shooting toward bright sunlight requires the use of a NDP (Neutral Density/Polarizer) filter. So, you would generally want to protect the lens by limiting the light hitting the sensor, but not stopping the lens down to the maximum (smallest) aperture. Another more artistic reason would be if you were (again) shooting in sunlight and let's say wanted to photograph a roadway and exclude the moving cars from the image. A strong ND filter (a 16 or 32) can cause a long enough exposure to basically remove the cars from the shot without using photoshop.

As I said before, still a newbie in this new world. Need to learn a lot first to reach out to what exactly I am looking for. Thanks for your comments.

Cheers.

 

[Jagerbomb52]

Judging from your signature you are using the Air 2. Not much you can do with that small sensor for night photos. I have the Air 2S with 1" sensor and you still get noise in night time photos and video somewhat. For photos I will use a 3rd party program called Topaz DeNoise AI.
It is made to deal with noise and does a pretty good job. You have to be careful not to set the settings to high or you start to lose detail and the photo will look to smooth.
Here is a example of what it did for your second photo. If you look closely at the sky it has improved a lot.

 

[RicardoCarneiro]

Judging from your signature you are using the Air 2. Not much you can do with that small sensor for night photos. I have the Air 2S with 1" sensor and you still get noise in night time photos and video somewhat. For photos I will use a 3rd party program called Topaz DeNoise AI.
It is made to deal with noise and does a pretty good job. You have to be careful not to set the settings to high or you start to lose detail and the photo will look to smooth.
Here is a example of what it did for your second photo. If you look closely at the sky it has improved a lot.

Thanks, Agustine,

I used Topaz DeNoise many years ago and I could see that it made a good difference in my photo.

I will consider using this software for my Night Photos but first will try some results with Luminar AI Denoise because I already have this one.

Cheers.

 

[Jagerbomb52]

Thanks, Agustine,

I used Topaz DeNoise many years ago and I could see that it made a good difference in my photo.

I will consider using this software for my Night Photos.

Cheers.

They have made many improvements to the program over the years. The latest version seems to be their best yet.

 

[tlswift58]

I am a big fan of Long Exposure.

These pictures are from the Dublin city centre over River Liffey. A bit frustrated with the noise, etc but I can't compare my Long Exposure pics with my Canon 5D MK 3 / 24-70mm F2.8 II with a Drone flying over a windy place.

Next time will try an ND FILTER and new adjustments.

Enjoy

Night shots with an Air2 typically has way too much grain due to higher ISO's. I've not done a longe exposure with the drone

As I said before, still a newbie in this new world. Need to learn a lot first to reach out to what exactly I am looking for. Thanks for your comments.

Cheers.

Playing / testing for what works is the whole basis for photography and doing it with a drone is no different. No issues with any of that to get the picture YOU WANT. It may not be the picture WE LIKE, but if you ask for critiques - then you will always get some that don't fit your narrative. Happens with DSLRS and drones.

It does take a good amount of trial and error with both DSLR's and drones when shooting in manual mode and you get many different effects changing the parameters of the different items - ISO / shutter speed / etc. Only way to get that picture you want is to test, test, and more tests. Or in the drone case - shoot a pic, change a parameter, shoot again, change a parameter, shoot a pic - noting the changes to see which one works for YOU.

Don't let critiques turn you off - simply see what the person is saying - and if it doesn't align with what YOU want to achieve - discard it and move on. We all fly differently and want different things from what we shoot and video. Many very good long time photographers on here that can help you in that.

 

[RicardoCarneiro]

Night shots with an Air2 typically has way too much grain due to higher ISO's. I've not done a longe exposure with the drone

Playing / testing for what works is the whole basis for photography and doing it with a drone is no different. No issues with any of that to get the picture YOU WANT. It may not be the picture WE LIKE, but if you ask for critiques - then you will always get some that don't fit your narrative. Happens with DSLRS and drones.

It does take a good amount of trial and error with both DSLR's and drones when shooting in manual mode and you get many different effects changing the parameters of the different items - ISO / shutter speed / etc. Only way to get that picture you want is to test, test, and more tests. Or in the drone case - shoot a pic, change a parameter, shoot again, change a parameter, shoot a pic - noting the changes to see which one works for YOU.

Don't let critiques turn you off - simply see what the person is saying - and if it doesn't align with what YOU want to achieve - discard it and move on. We all fly differently and want different things from what we shoot and video. Many very good long time photographers on here that can help you in that.

Thanks for the message.

Cheers.

 

[Pixeldawg]

Judging from your signature you are using the Air 2. Not much you can do with that small sensor for night photos. I have the Air 2S with 1" sensor and you still get noise in night time photos and video somewhat. For photos I will use a 3rd party program called Topaz DeNoise AI.
It is made to deal with noise and does a pretty good job. You have to be careful not to set the settings to high or you start to lose detail and the photo will look to smooth.
Here is a example of what it did for your second photo. If you look closely at the sky it has improved a lot.

Honestly, if you are shooting at 100 ISO and you're having noise issues at night, it is most likely your exposure. Not sure about your drone model, but may be good to use a bracket of exposures if you can. On the M2P, you can bracket up to 5 images per shot. Sometimes, working with a combination as an HDR image also assists with this. Generally, if you see excessive noise, it is due to under exposure in a digital image. If it is a very dark scene, I generally increase the amount of light hitting the sensor by a full stop.

 

[Pixeldawg]

Night shots with an Air2 typically has way too much grain due to higher ISO's. I've not done a longe exposure with the drone

Playing / testing for what works is the whole basis for photography and doing it with a drone is no different. No issues with any of that to get the picture YOU WANT. It may not be the picture WE LIKE, but if you ask for critiques - then you will always get some that don't fit your narrative. Happens with DSLRS and drones.

In my photography classes, I always tell my students that most people take critiques the wrong way and are quite thin skinned about them. You have to look at them as a learning experience. I have worked for 40 years as a photojournalist for many newspapers, including the New York Times Company and magazines like the old Popular Photography & Imaging Magazine. I am "well qualified" at what I do, but I still love when people critique my work, even from beginners, you can ALWAYS learn something from a critique. And while there may not be agreement, it is always meant in a spirit of helping the person to improve their image making. Just my 2 pennies.

Cordially,

Mark

 

[RicardoCarneiro]

Greetings from China. First, I really love the 2nd image here. Great symmetry for the river, beautiful color and sky. Excellent work. Using a ND filter won't help your situation. This is because an ND filter is used to cut down the amount of light available, which is mostly for video because you want a slower shutter speed to give a better quality image as far as the actual video goes. Higher shutter speeds can be problematic, depending on what you are recording in video. In still images, like yours, it isn't as necessary and really, what you want to be able to do is really just the opposite. Use and decrease the ISO to 100, so that the noise becomes much less of an issue. Having less ND in front of the lens will allow you to accomplish this. The other part that I would highly recommend is that you shoot in RAW and process the image in Photoshop. Within Photoshop, there is the RAW converter and it allows you to do independent adjustments to highlights, shadows, blacks and whites. Beyond this, it is really crazy at all of the adjustments you can make to noise, colors and even vignettes to make the image pop more. RAW is also the very highest image quality you can get and it is literally only what the actual sensor records and does not include color spaces, compression and other things that a JPEG file contains (and can not be removed, regardless of your post prowess to hide them!) So, shoot RAW, lose the ND filter and shoot the 2nd image again and work with it in Photoshop Post. If you don't have photoshop, many libraries do and some universities who open labs to the public will as well. Give it a try and good luck!

BTW, I shot this image last week using the above. I am including the ''before post'' and '' after post'' to give you an idea of just how good RAW works. Ping me if you have questions, happy to help! These are the exact same image. Preprocessed RAW file and finished image.

Many thanks Pixeldawg