Please help : How do you achieve clear twilight and night footage?

Pacesetter · Nov 14, 2019

Hi

I'm trying to get some clean and clear twilight / night footage of buildings / cityscapes using my Mavic 2 Pro.

I see people getting beautiful sharp footage with vibrant bright colors but mine is flat and dull with noise.

The best I achieved was with the following video settings while still a little ambient light before full nightfall:

4k, 24 fps
800 iso
1/50 shutter speed
H.265
D-Log-M

I'm guessing I might need to get a better video editor and LUTs as I currently use Shotcut. Davinci doesn't work on my computer.

Perhaps Premier Pro will help?

But even so, better to get it as best as possible in camera.

Any advice or tutorials is much appreciated.

Thanks,
Steve

PS01 · Nov 15, 2019

I'm following this thread because I've got the exact same problem. M2P isn't as great as I thought it would be. Night photos are also very noisy. I don't like the night video either.

Meta4 · Nov 15, 2019

PS01 said:
I'm following this thread because I've got the exact same problem. M2P isn't as great as I thought it would be. Night photos are also very noisy. I don't like the night video either.

Night photos are very noisy?
They are if you let the ISO setting go high.
Try locking it down to 100 or 200 and it should be just fine.
If you are shooting mostly static scenes, you can have shutter speeds down at 1/15th or lower.
Don't be afraid to go to 1/4th or even more.
The camera is good with low light - not no light so make sure your subjects are lit and avoid large black areas in the image.
The camera can't do anything with large black areas.
Shooting while there is still a little colour in the sky is a good idea too.

WithTheBirds · Nov 15, 2019

Your camera settings, with the exception or ISO, don't help much without knowing more about the scene you are trying to film. For example, night scenes of cityscapes often benefit from increasing the exposure to the point that the brightest lights blow out (the will look white over exposed so don't appear unnatural), this may reduce the noise in the darker areas.

You haven't shared you aperture setting, wide open will be your best option.

It might be best for you to share a sample of your footage so people have a better idea how to assist you.

Pacesetter · Nov 16, 2019

WithTheBirds said:
Your camera settings, with the exception or ISO, don't help much without knowing more about the scene you are trying to film. For example, night scenes of cityscapes often benefit from increasing the exposure to the point that the brightest lights blow out (the will look white over exposed so don't appear unnatural), this may reduce the noise in the darker areas.

You haven't shared you aperture setting, wide open will be your best option.

It might be best for you to share a sample of your footage so people have a better idea how to assist you.

Yep had the aperture opened to f.2.8 for each video. This is one of the vids recorded during very low light. It actually doesn't look as noisy on YouTube. What does it look like to you?

Settings were:

4k,
29.97 fps
f2.8
800 iso
1/50 shutter speed
H.264

I actually thought I had the frame rate set to 24 fps not 29.97 fps. So I guess I could try that, given shutter speed was 1/50.

The video is set to private on YouTube so please let me know if you can view it at link above.

On another note, I had way better success with my first hyperlapse video.

WithTheBirds · Nov 16, 2019

Pacesetter said:
Yep had the aperture opened to f.2.8 for each video. This is one of the vids recorded during very low light. It actually doesn't look as noisy on YouTube. What does it look like to you?

Settings were:

4k,
29.97 fps
f2.8
800 iso
1/50 shutter speed
H.264

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I actually thought I had the frame rate set to 24 fps not 29.97 fps. So I guess I could try that, given shutter speed was 1/50.

The video is set to private on YuoTube so please let me know if you can view it at link above.

On another note, I had way better success with my first hyperlapse video.

It doesn’t open. That’s ok.

Pacesetter · Nov 16, 2019

I set to public again so hopefully should open.

Macive2Pro · Feb 27, 2023

What did I set wrong in this footage?
Drone: Mavic 2 Pro
ISO: 100
Aperture: 4
Shutter: 1/60
Video Size: 2.7k 2688x1512
FPS: 60
White Balance: Sunny
Style: Standard 0 0 0
Color: Dlog-M
Encoding: H.265