Time Wasting Whales

[MS Coast]

I hear you. I'm not sure if you shoot stills with a high end camera? It's not good technique to have your histogram jammed either to the left or the right cos there's no data there. Maybe I'll just have to knock back my expectation a bit that the dynamic range of the MP3 could match that of something like the Sony A1. If I had shot a still of your boat i would have exposed for the white boat and pull up detail in the water after.

The Whale Sharks and the divers were the subject. The boat was incidental.

 

[Dale D]

I have a couple of video questions i'm hoping people can help me with in order to improve my very ordinary whale videography.
I upgraded from an Air2s to a MP3 in order to get better quality. Currently i'm struggling with

1. Blown highlights in video footage. I'm in D-Log and MP4 and use manual settings ( like i do exclusively in my stills camera). I just cant find a happy medium between water and water erupting even at -3 exp.value.
2. Is it my imagination or is the x7 zoom really unstable? It seems to accentuate any little movement of the drone.
3. Is it my imagination or is the resolution better at the x3 zoom? Better to crop in in post then?
4. How tight do you set your pitch and yaw? I just cant find smooth and tight-ish settings and wonder if it's the x7 zoom or the wind or both?
5. Do the video settings change between normal and sport or are they generic across those settings? i'm choosing to shoot as high a quality and best frame rate possible so translate to decent footage.
6. i'm still an IMovie lover after 25yrs - is this to my detriment?

Happy to hear any technical information you have and here is 2.5 mins of a pair of Time Wasting Whales today off Sydney with all it's flaws. Many thanks.


Time Wasting Whales

I wish I knew the answer to your question! In so many instances in my videos, there is such a high dynamic range between bright skies and dark foregrounds, that I have to decide on which to expose. Unlike still photography where I can bracket, or use masking tools, and burn and dodge, my video software does not allow for that.


Dale

 

[SethB]

No LUTS. I know what they are but dont have them in any program - Imovie doesnt ( that i know of) . The best result I got was in IMovie was to lower the exposure in post and then pull up the shadows.

IMO it’s a little early to blame the camera or the high dynamic range of the scene.

Log formats don’t always perform acceptably without use of a LUT in editing and grading. Seemingly blown highlights are one of the indicators that the clips aren’t being adequately decoded. Often the color grading tools in an editor are not enough to get that dynamic range you wanted out of a log clip.

On the other hand, it’s easy to overexpose in log, too.

I don’t *know* that you have more available in your highlights. I do know that you haven’t done due diligence in using tools designed for grading log.

I’ve been there personally with my early experiences with editing/grading drone footage. That’s what I needed to do. I am recently retired from decades of professional video work and teaching college courses in digital media production, including drone videography.

 

[Dale D]

IMO it’s a little early to blame the camera or the high dynamic range of the scene.

Log formats don’t always perform acceptably without use of a LUT in editing and grading. Seemingly blown highlights are one of the indicators that the clips aren’t being adequately decoded. Often the color grading tools in an editor are not enough to get that dynamic range you wanted out of a log clip.

On the other hand, it’s easy to overexpose in log, too.

I don’t *know* that you have more available in your highlights. I do know that you haven’t done due diligence in using tools designed for grading log.

I’ve been there personally with my early experiences with editing/grading drone footage. That’s what I needed to do. I am recently retired from decades of professional video work and teaching college courses in digital media production, including drone videography.

I have already commented but this post nudged me to think more about it....what about trying to expose for the highlights (white water) using the histogram, and then bring up the shadows in post?

Dale

 

[SethB]

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Spin down Software | Transcoders to find DJI’s own LUTs for converting D-Log to REC709. Sorry I don’t know iMovie, you’d need an extension to load LUTs, or preferably start learning a new editor like DaVinci Resolve that has built in color management including the ability to use DJI’s and other LUTs.

The whale footage is spectacular. iMovie isn’t up to it.

 

[RobinM]

Maybe?
For $7500 you get a Sony A1 with 50 MP full frame sensor.
For $3000 you get a capable drone and three cameras.
The two telephoto cameras have tiny sensors.
How is the value of those tiny cameras going to compare the value of your Sony ??
It's not realistic to expect the dynamic range of the small sensors to be a match for your A1.

btw .. there's a link to a toy drone where you listed your A1 above.

Please dont Mansplain me, I'm quite aware of the differences - my dayjob is that of a Sony Advocate for stills.The difference is in my academic expectations of the end result and really, all i came here for was some education about to make my whale videography better. I see a lot of whale images in my community on a daily basis with excellent dynamic range and I'm trying to work out with my limited time to use a drone how I can improve.

 

[RobinM]

Download Center - DJI

Learn more about DJI products with specs, tutorial guides, and user manuals. Download the DJI app to capture and share beautiful content.

www.dji.com

Spin down Software | Transcoders to find DJI’s own LUTs for converting D-Log to REC709. Sorry I don’t know iMovie, you’d need an extension to load LUTs, or preferably start learning a new editor like DaVinci Resolve that has built in color management including the ability to use DJI’s and other LUTs.

The whale footage is spectacular. iMovie isn’t up to it.

View attachment 177572

Wonderful, thanks for the direction and info - thanks Seth.

 

[RobinM]

I have already commented but this post nudged me to think more about it....what about trying to expose for the highlights (white water) using the histogram, and then bring up the shadows in post?

Dale

Yes I think so, and to do this I'll probably have to ditch Imovie ( sob) and move to a much more capable and current program.

 

[MS Coast]

Please dont Mansplain me, I'm quite aware of the differences - my dayjob is that of a Sony Advocate for stills.The difference is in my academic expectations of the end result and really, all i came here for was some education about to make my whale videography better. I see a lot of whale images in my community on a daily basis with excellent dynamic range and I'm trying to work out with my limited time to use a drone how I can improve.

Are the photos you're seeing with better dynamic range being shot with drones? Can you post or link to some examples?

 

[Dale D]

Yes I think so, and to do this I'll probably have to ditch Imovie ( sob) and move to a much more capable and current program.

Not to belabor the point but I use a reliable video editor (Adobe Premiere Pro) and their color grading does not the ability to deal with such high dynamic ranges. I cannot comment on other video editing programs.

Dale

 

[Capt KO]

Can't help with photography but enjoyed the whales, reminded me of kids playing in the pool but instead they're playing in the air.

 

[Meta4]

Please dont Mansplain me, I'm quite aware of the differences

Sorry you took offence, but how was I supposed to take it when you said ...
Maybe I'll just have to knock back my expectation a bit that the dynamic range of the MP3 could match that of something like the Sony A1 ?

I'm trying to work out with my limited time to use a drone how I can improve.

I deal with this issue every week photographing ships at sea.
With bright sun, you will always have trouble with blown out highlights.
My best advice was in my first response.
You can completely avoid the problem by shooting on overcast days.

 

[SethB]

Not to belabor the point but I use a reliable video editor (Adobe Premiere Pro) and their color grading does not the ability to deal with such high dynamic ranges. I cannot comment on other video editing programs.

Dale

You should be able to pull in DJI’s LUT as a starting point - Premiere ProCC has this function. It’s a little obscure - in the Color Workspace the Lumetri panel has entries in the pulldown at the top. One of them is to load a LUT you have anywhere on your computer.

Here’s one tutorial, there are many others:

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(Note that D-LogM is just one of the DJI Log formats, there’s also D-Log. Use the right LUT for the settings you made on the camera!)

Note that once you have a look you like there are a couple ways to apply color in Premiere that are often missed:
You can create a new Adjustment Layer, load it on an upper video track, and apply a LUT and/or grade to it. Edge trim it to cover as much of your timeline as you want. Any clips on lower tracks below the Adjustment Layer will have that look.

You can create a preset in the Lumetri panel. It will appear in a bin, drag it to any clips you want to have that look.

You can Copy | Paste Attributes from one clip to another, or to several clips. Read the Paste Attributes dialog box carefully and uncheck the Attributes you don’t want pasted.

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Many people are not familiar with both raw photo formats and log video formats. They are vastly different, though the editing tools are similar. NOT identical!

A raw photo is sensor data. It has the equivalent of about 14bit color per channel. It’s not really 14bit. Color grade it in a photo editor that takes the camera manufacturer’s raw format and have one of the best color grading experiences available. So cool. Lots to learn!

A jpg photo from the camera has been “processed” to 8bit color with some default settings in the camera. It too can be graded in post, but some things are not possible. One example is sky - it’s typically a smooth gradation of color values that take quite a bit of data to represent accurately. “Banding” of the sky can easily occur when color grading, a common problem with jpg.

Almost all video recordings are also 8bit (some 10bit or more, raw is rare and very expensive). Clips have been processed to 8bit in the camera, and the grading challenges are similar to a jpg photo.

Log formats IN VIDEO (not stills) attempt to preserve dynamic range by compressing the raw sensor data during processing, attempting to bring whites into light gray, and blacks into dark gray. This is now in a log color space, which is *not* linear at all, which is where a LUT comes in. A LUT is just a map of values for conversion to another color space, most often REC709, the most common 8bit color space. Kinda like a jpg in still photography.

To repeat what I wrote several posts ago, a common mapping error with Log footage is that light grays and whites are smooshed together more tightly than grading can unsmoosh them. LUTs decode and remap these values into something more linear which an editor can better handle. This *may* be what the OP is experiencing, it looks like broad blown highlights.

Or… if you can create custom color *curves* in your favorite editor you might unsmoosh manually…? No LUT… Haven’t tried that!