DJI Mavic, Air and Mini Drones
Friendly, Helpful & Knowledgeable Community
Join Us Now

Overexposure

rbhamilton

Well-Known Member
Joined
Dec 15, 2016
Messages
74
Reactions
67
Age
64
So a week ago or so I posted some washed out video and asked "WHY?!?!" I had everything set to Auto but got some bad vid. Well turns out... the Mavic can't easily handle some scenes, especially ones over water. It's Auto mode was probably designed by the same people who made Tesla's Auto Driving mode - usually good - but sometimes it drives into a well painted mural on a brick wall.

When I asked for help here I got a few replies. Enough to set me on a quest for a solid answer. But nobody seemed to have a simple step by step with pics and red circles and arrows. So... today I sat down at my desk, did a few screen shots of what I've learned and here they are. If you know this (you all probably do) please feel free to skip.

So first off... my overexposed video. Ick.

over1.jpg

Now how to fix... turn on the exposure warning.

1) In the DJI App go into settings.

Pic2.jpg

2) Turn on Overexposure Warning

pic3.jpg

3) Now you will see anything overexposed (like my desk lamp) is marked with zebra stripes.

By the way, these stripes freaked me out when I first saw them. Figured my drone was broken or something. Nope. They are totally normal. That's how DJI warns you an area is overexposed.

Pic4.jpg

4) To easily adjust the exposure rotate the right metal dial on your remote until the Zebra stripes are gone.


pic5.jpg

Warning - if you adjust one area so it's not over exposed, another area might be too dark. So you need to adjust your ISO or a bunch of other things that are way beyond the scope of this quick post. But for a quick and dirty fix this may help somebody. I know it would have helped me.
 

Attachments

  • pic3.jpg
    pic3.jpg
    99.4 KB · Views: 19
  • Pic4.jpg
    Pic4.jpg
    136.1 KB · Views: 18
ISO should be kept as low as possible. Different scenes will require different adjustments and that is part of the learning process. One thing to try would be to pick what exposure setting you think is correct and lock that in. Otherwise you will see the exposure changing as you move through your scenes based on the lighting variations as you turn towards or away from a light source.
 
The histogram is your best choice for setting exposure. Zebra only picks up over exposure on the bright side. Histogram shows exposure errors on both the light and dark side.

You should use the histogram to center the exposure between the black and white points, and make aesthetic adjustments in post.

Note that there will be scenes where the histogram will clip on either the high side or low side. This is from the dynamic range of what you are trying to photograph. There is no solution to that, other than a new drone with a better sensor.

For still pix, you can use a cumbersome workaround by taking several pictures with different exposures, and create a composite picture from the entire series using hdr processing software. For video, this is not practical.
 
  • Like
Reactions: dannybgoode
I wouldn't think HDR even possible with video. Well, maybe possible if the HDR processing can work at least 3x faster than frame rate.
 
The histogram is your best choice for setting exposure. Zebra only picks up over exposure on the bright side. Histogram shows exposure errors on both the light and dark side.

You should use the histogram to center the exposure between the black and white points, and make aesthetic adjustments in post.

Note that there will be scenes where the histogram will clip on either the high side or low side. This is from the dynamic range of what you are trying to photograph. There is no solution to that, other than a new drone with a better sensor.

For still pix, you can use a cumbersome workaround by taking several pictures with different exposures, and create a composite picture from the entire series using hdr processing software. For video, this is not practical.
Agreed that the histogram is most useful but the zebra stripes are an easy way to pick what if any highlights you wish to let overexpose.Of course at that point you get what you get in the shadows but doesn't require you to look at histogram and the choose by looking at screen view.Not better but quicker.
 
Possible it would be.

Practical not so much.

Using Litchi, you could fly multiple missions with different exposures for each mission. You could then save the matching frames from all missions, and perform hdr on each frame group. The resulting merged frames could then be recombined into a movie with a true hdr image stream.

By creating a script, much of the tedious work could be automated.

The easiest solution is a new drone with the 1 inch sensor which does have greater dynamic range, although not as much as a good Canon or Nikon, which, by the way, don’t handle all the broad dynamic range conditions that occur in landscapes.
 
I had the same problem, ruined most of my videos. Mind you, this was after the last firmware update. So in future ALWAYS check your setting after an update.
 
Lycus Tech Mavic Air 3 Case

DJI Drone Deals

New Threads

Forum statistics

Threads
130,599
Messages
1,554,259
Members
159,605
Latest member
petravka