Air 2 Testing ND filters and manual exposure.

Rick448 · Apr 17, 2021

A few snaps from the field behind our house, I must make sure we don't have washing out next time!!

PANO0001-2-Pano.jpg by Rick Phillips, on Flickr

DJI_0036.jpg by Rick Phillips, on Flickr

DJI_0048-HDR.jpg by Rick Phillips, on Flickr

Meta4 · Apr 17, 2021

Rick448 said:
A few snaps from the field behind our house, I must make sure we don't have washing out next time!!

What are you testing?
Unless you are needing to reduce the light getting to the sensor to reduce the shutter speed, there is no reason to use ND filters for drone stills.
ND filters don't do anything to improve the look of your stills.

Rick448 · Apr 18, 2021

Meta4 said:
What are you testing?
Unless you are needing to reduce the light getting to the sensor to reduce the shutter speed, there is no reason to use ND filters for drone stills.
ND filters don't do anything to improve the look of your stills.

I was doing it to test the video at 30fps to use 1/60 for shutter speed, but as it was on there I took some stills too.

I suppose my title was misleading in the way it appears I have achieved something in these by using ND filters, which in these examples is not the case, but not to say it couldn't be in another situation if I wanted to add some movement in some stills.

I am fairly new to drones, but not photography in general. I am mainly messing about with settings at the moment to try and add something different to the shots. My initial thoughts are that manual is the way to go, and most of the quickshot options are pretty gimmicky. I do like the panorama options though, but only when merged in LR as the auto jpeg shots don't seem to look very good.

This is the video I shot, and as I say, it was only a quick test to see how the ND filter worked to get the correct SS.

Here are a couple of edits to the raw files shots as stills.

51121248241_97c191d86c_o copy by Rick Phillips, on Flickr

51122037245_d42e49bd3d_o by Rick Phillips, on Flickr

tlswift58 · Apr 18, 2021

Some people like ND's (including me) and some don't - thus they poo-poo them. A personal choice and if you think they work for you better - then use them. If ND filters did not work - then why would so many people buy / use them in both the drone / DSLR world.

Those pre-ND (or before became popular) photographers world have figured out ways to reduce light / exposure using settings they have honed over years - so they don't have a need for them - most of the time.

Dbez1 · Apr 18, 2021

Stills: Most drones have a fixed aperture which DSLR’s do not. I could see, in extreme cases, where a ND could help get you in the “sweet” part of your lens if you want a specific effect or to “drag” your shutter for waterfalls etc, but these are very specific uses and usually for more advanced photographers.
Video: I won’t go into detail about ratios since they have been thoroughly covered on this forum, but I see video as the primary use of ND filters for a great percentage of drone pilots here. JMO??‍

hiflyer201 · Apr 18, 2021

I've screwed up a few times by thinking I was going to improve video's with ND filters and then had less that stellar results with once in a lifetime still shots in the evening. The stills would have been better with more light and a faster shutter and I blew it by using a video setup.

Meta4 · Apr 19, 2021

tlswift58 said:
Some people like ND's (including me) and some don't - thus they poo-poo them. A personal choice and if you think they work for you better - then use them. If ND filters did not work - then why would so many people buy / use them in both the drone / DSLR world.

Of course ND filters work.
What they do is to reduce the amount of light getting through to the sensor.
But they do nothing at all to change or improve the look of your image.
If you want to reduce the light to force a longer shutter speed than otherwise possible, ND filters are the appropiate technique.
But if you think that ND filters somehow improve the look of your photos, you are fooling yourself and some simple testing would prove it.

Karlewski · Apr 19, 2021

I think the effect you may be expecting from an ND filter is actually what you can often achieve with a CP filter, polarizing filter. . . . Lately, I have just been leaving the ND 8 with polarizer on my Air 2 to get the nice saturation, cut the glare CP benefits AND the ND definitely helps lower the shutter speed. I should be more picky about using just the right ND I guess but, like has been said many times here. It only helps with motion blur and unless I'm literal skimming stuff, under about 30 from the ground or trees and whipping by, you don't get much blur even with the correct shutter speed. . . .