Air 2s Random Clips off the Air 2S I got last week

karlblessing · May 15, 2022

Picked up a DJI Air 2S last week, a few clips from when I was getting familiarized with it, and also playing with the extra room to work with on 5.4K footage (ie: dolly zoom overuse).

Upgraded from a Mini 2 (previously that being a Mini 1). I fly manually 99% of the time and it's been a little while since I haven't flown much over the winter. Still getting a feel for it then will tweak the pitch/yaw a little like I did with the Mini 2. Also doing some very low altitude testing of its obstacle avoidance to get a feel for it "personal bubble" as it were but still primarily moving around close surfaces by visual observation though that overlay showing detected obstacles is kind of neat. Like the Mini and Mini 2, their downward infrared sensor still really does not like to get closer than 6~8 feet from water surface, seems to want to immediately drop in altitude, few close calls in that first clip.

Last clip was ISO 1600 (seems you can set at best 800 in HLG, but once you're recording, 1600 seems to be selectable somehow).

Once I feel a bit more comfortable with it, going to revisit some places and plan out some cohesive shots.

The full length of the first clip can be seen here (a previous edit done last week), may still be processing for a little bit as this one I exported at 4k.

Drone attempts to suddenly drop over water at 1:40, 1:45, and 2:15, I'm guessing even with the infrared sensors it seems to have a hard time figuring out the water surface so thinks its being forced to land. Drone would not move forward at 0:15 due to obstacle avoidance detecting the branch above at 10 feet and the slight raise in surface behind it. Had to pan over to a different opening that would be a bit more cluttered with smaller branches.

Saladshooter · May 15, 2022

Is your footage all in HLG?..... your colors look extremely natural. Shooting in Normal mode is overly green at times and hard to rebalance.

Exposure is just a touch too high in some of the clips, retaining detail but not as pleasing to view.

karlblessing · May 15, 2022

Saladshooter said:
Is your footage all in HLG?..... your colors look extremely natural. Shooting in Normal mode is overly green at times and hard to rebalance.

Exposure is just a touch too high in some of the clips, retaining detail but not as pleasing to view.

Yes it's all HLG and graded in Davinci Resolve to a Rec.709 timeline, though some white balance is a little off in some of the early shots I did like with the large bridge where the scene was leaning a bit green.

I didn't use auto-WB on the drone, just picked the closest kelvin, ideally if I had a grey card I would take a couple second recording with the drone of it in the scene, and then go fly so that I can match more closely in post if my guestimate wasn't already on the mark. The only thing I may have left "auto" on was the ISO as a form of exposure compensation.

And yes, especially in the first couple clips, the idea was ETTR (exposure to the right) , but even clipped highlights can't be salvaged by HLG.

Saladshooter · May 15, 2022

karlblessing said:
I didn't use auto-WB on the drone, just picked the closest kelvin, ideally if I had a grey card I would take a couple second recording with the drone of it in the scene, and then go fly so that I can match more closely in post if my guestimate wasn't already on the mark. The only thing I may have left "auto" on was the ISO as a form of exposure compensation.

I sometimes use a color card.... however you can also click on auto WB for a second then turn it back off and it will retain the setting. This is useful because the lighting at a particular height, direction or moment in time can be quite different than when set on the ground. Mostly I do like you do and just set it the best I can ahead of time, but sometimes the light shifts drasticly while in flight and it helps to use this method to recover.