the importance of manual exposure

akdrone · Oct 17, 2023

I'm doing another little Alaskan short and this is a little excerpt that gave me pause and made me glad I use manual exposure by default. This would have looked very different if Auto Exposure had been used...

LoudThunder · Oct 17, 2023

Is that a Beaver Den? YouTube noted that you posted it just an hour ago, is it a new video, as in "It's that cold already here in the Great North..."

akdrone · Oct 17, 2023

LoudThunder said:
Is that a Beaver Den? YouTube noted that you posted it just an hour ago, is it a new video, as in "It's that cold already here in the Great North..."

Yep..yep...beaver den...shot the vid just yesterday. I also just posted the video that this was an excerpt from...Yeah...it has started to get chilly...been out snow blowing the driveway a few times... and now I know what the LT on youtube meant LOL.

Hands Down · Oct 17, 2023

Hard to believe that water is frozen solid already! Just getting into the peak of fall colors here in Ohio. Neat video!

LoudThunder · Oct 18, 2023

akdrone said:
now I know what the LT on youtube meant LOL.

That Avatar and my User Name on my Google account was my Cat, Barney, the original "Loud Thunder." He had very loud flatulence, hence the reference… He's passed now, by still part of my life and lives on with in my Google account…

But I digress, what you wrote about Manual Exposure verses Auto Exposure is spot on…

I look forward to more of your winter wonderland videos of your Great North…

Meta4 · Oct 18, 2023

akdrone said:
I'm doing another little Alaskan short and this is a little excerpt that gave me pause and made me glad I use manual exposure by default. This would have looked very different if Auto Exposure had been used...

Why do you think manual exposure was important?

landmark orbiter · Oct 18, 2023

Meta4 said:
Why do you think manual exposure was important?

Probably would have under-exposed as he came round into the sun.

akdrone · Oct 18, 2023

Meta4 said:
Why do you think manual exposure was important?

In auto exposure the camera tries to maintain an over all level of light. As the camera moves around such that the sun enters the picture, in order for the total amount of light to remain about the same the beaver lodge would have become much, much darker then as the sun moved out of the picture it would have lightened up. There are times when auto exposure is really quite useful when you are moving from shadows to non shadows you really must either adjust manually or allow auto exposure to compensate - or plan your shots better... In any case, had it been left on auto at about the 15sec point the beaver lodge would have been very dark.

akdrone · Oct 18, 2023

The other thing I'd mention is cameras want to create an 18% grey. They don't know you are shooting snow. In an average scene with sky and ground it's about 18% grey if you ignore the colors so cameras tend to look for that. Granted some are much more sophisticated but that's the general rule. If you use auto exposure on an area that is bright snow it will come out too dark. Although you can lighten it in post it's much better to expose it properly. You can auto expose and increase the exposure or you can do it manually but in either case when snow is the main attraction you have to increase the exposure, which is admittedly somewhat counter intuitive.

Meta4 · Oct 18, 2023

akdrone said:
In auto exposure the camera tries to maintain an over all level of light. As the camera moves around such that the sun enters the picture, in order for the total amount of light to remain about the same the beaver lodge would have become much, much darker then as the sun moved out of the picture it would have lightened up. There are times when auto exposure is really quite useful when you are moving from shadows to non shadows you really must either adjust manually or allow auto exposure to compensate - or plan your shots better... In any case, had it been left on auto at about the 15sec point the beaver lodge would have been very dark.

So you were manually changing the exposure to suit the changing light levels as the drone circled?

LoudThunder · Oct 18, 2023

Meta4 said:
So you were manually changing the exposure to suit the changing light levels as the drone circled?

No, I do not think he changed the setting at all once he had it dialed in. Since the Beaver Den was centered in the photo, the light coming off the den was not all that different for sll sides, but if you notice, the background with the sun starts to get over exposed as the view shifts.

Meta4 · Oct 18, 2023

LoudThunder said:
No, I do not think he changed the setting at all once he had it dialed in. Since the Beaver Den was centered in the photo, the light coming off the den was not all that different for sll sides, but if you notice, the background with the sun starts to get over exposed as the view shifts.

That's exactly what I'm thinking.
So I'm wondering why he's suggesting that manual exposure is so important.

Talon360 · Oct 18, 2023

akdrone said:
The other thing I'd mention is cameras want to create an 18% grey. They don't know you are shooting snow. In an average scene with sky and ground it's about 18% grey if you ignore the colors so cameras tend to look for that. Granted some are much more sophisticated but that's the general rule. If you use auto exposure on an area that is bright snow it will come out too dark. Although you can lighten it in post it's much better to expose it properly. You can auto expose and increase the exposure or you can do it manually but in either case when snow is the main attraction you have to increase the exposure, which is admittedly somewhat counter intuitive.

Fantastic insight, thank you for sharing and for the explanation!

LoudThunder · Oct 18, 2023

Meta4 said:
That's exactly what I'm thinking.
So I'm wondering why he's suggesting that manual exposure is so important.

No, I may not have made my point clear. If AKDrone had left the setting in Auto Exposure, the camera would have tried to compensate for the whole image, Beaver Den, the ice, the snow, the sky, the sun, etc… and as his drone flew around the den, the back side of the den would have become very dark as the camera compensated for the bright sun and sky.

I think AKDrone flew around the Den several times getting the setting just right; too much light and he would have lost detail and too little light and the photo would have been dark… By selecting Manual Exposure to get the den at the proper exposure there was very little variation in the primary image, the Den.

I know when I'm flying around and the I'm in Auto Exposure and I head in the direction of the sun, everything else starts getting dark as the camera compensates for the increased light.

Meta4 · Oct 19, 2023

The sun is behind clouds.
The light is diffusing through the overcast and there are no shadows.
The shot would have worked just as well with auto exposure.
That the subject stayed in acceptable exposure while he orbited shows this.

LoudThunder · Oct 19, 2023

Meta4 said:
The shot would have worked just as well with auto exposure.

This discussion is starting to remind me of a scene from the TV Show, "The Big Bang Theory" starting at 0:25 seconds and running to 0:35 Seconds, in this excerpt… L

L . . .

Meta4 · Oct 19, 2023

LoudThunder said:
This discussion is starting to remind me of a scene from the TV Show, "The Big Bang Theory" starting at 0:25 seconds and running to 0:35 Seconds, in this excerpt… L L . . .

I think so too.
The light is soft and the sun is weak.
It doesn't matter which side of the subject the camera is.
It's not like there's hard, directional lighting with shadows and glare.

It's more a case of the importance of working with good lighting conditions.

akdrone · Oct 19, 2023

LoudThunder said:
No, I may not have made my point clear. If AKDrone had left the setting in Auto Exposure, the camera would have tried to compensate for the whole image, Beaver Den, the ice, the snow, the sky, the sun, etc… and as his drone flew around the den, the back side of the den would have become very dark as the camera compensated for the bright sun and sky.

I think AKDrone flew around the Den several times getting the setting just right; too much light and he would have lost detail and too little light and the photo would have been dark… By selecting Manual Exposure to get the den at the proper exposure there was very little variation in the primary image, the Den.

I know when I'm flying around and the I'm in Auto Exposure and I head in the direction of the sun, everything else starts getting dark as the camera compensates for the increased light.

Thanks for the thought but no...I had it set correctly even as I approached the beaver den and it was once around

...maybe I did make a second lap but it was all preset for filming in that area.

akdrone · Oct 19, 2023

Meta4 said:
The sun is behind clouds.
The light is diffusing through the overcast and there are no shadows.
The shot would have worked just as well with auto exposure.
That the subject stayed in acceptable exposure while he orbited shows this.

If you say so...but...try it sometime with auto exposure...

MS Coast · Oct 19, 2023

akdrone said:
If you say so...but...try it sometime with auto exposure...

If you use auto exposure and set the exposure bias up a stop or two, you should get a pretty good result, as you suggested in post #9.

The key point is that if you have large areas of white in the scene, auto exposure is going to underexpose the shot.

Curious. Are they beaver dens or beaver lodges in Alaska? I'm told that snowmobiles are snow machines there. I've always been interested in local nomenclature differences. There's a fish on the Gulf Coast that's formally a Cobia, but a Ling in some places and Lemonfish in others.