Videos too dark with manual exposure

[xMoex]

Hi,

the Mavic is my first drone, so I tried to look up some good settings for it.

I'm using 4k (3840 × 2160) 25p, D-Cinelike (+1/-1/-1) and - when using manual exposure - 100 iso and 1/50 shutterspeed.
But the videos are way too dark when I have the settings like that. You can barely see anything.

The EV (if that's what it's called?) is at -2.0, so that might explain the dark picture/video, but as you can't change it in manual mode, it stays this dark if I don't change iso or shutterspeed. But in some example videos with the same settings it wasn't that dark at all.

The brightness is alright, when I set it to auto, but I'd like to change it myself to get into the functions.


What am I doing wrong, is there any way to fix it?

Would be great to get some help. Sorry if some things might be hard to understand, but English isn't my first language.

Best regards.

 

[Robert Mitchell]

First of all your EV needs to be 0 for a "normal" scene, even in manual.

Yes you will need to increase your ISO, or lower your shutter speed in the settings, until you achieve this.

You can lower the shutter speed down to the FPS you are using, example 1/30 for 4K 30fps, at which point you start increasing ISO to get the necessary exposure.

I'll also assume you're not using ND filters, since you didn't mention them.

 

[Johnmcl7]

EV compensation is a setting which is applied to auto/semi-auto modes to adjust the auto-exposure, in manual mode since you're in control of all the parameters it's showing it thinks you're two stops underexposed which is why it's so dark. You need to either increase your iso setting or reduce your shutter speed to recover those two stops.

John

 

[Plawa]

erm.. that's the whole point of manual, it will not do the work for you, it's just telling you what the settings you use (ISO/shutter) give you in terms of exposure (-2.0EV or darker).

From the figures I assume you are indoors, a sunny day will give you EV 0 at ISO 100 and maybe 1/1000s exposure. Adjust your ISO up or your shutter speed down and watch the EV value change and the image brighten

 

[xMoex]

Ah, I get it!
I'll give that a try tomorrow and play around with ISO and shutter speed.

@Robert Mitchell , that's right, I'm not using ND filters.

@Plawa right assumption, I tried that indoors, even though it was pretty bright in here. Not even sure if I already tried it outside or if I kept using auto after I failed with manual. Have to try that.

Thanks for the fast responds.

 

[tracer bullet]

@Plawa I tried that indoors, even though it was pretty bright in here.

"Bright" is relative. What seems bright indoors is still not very bright compared to being outside. There's a chance something is wrong with your Mavic but odds are there's simply just not enough light.

Slower shutter speed =more time to let in light. Higher ISO = higher sensitivity (less light is needed but the downside is grain / noise in the image). You can also simply try to add more light - this is why photographers use flashes.

 

[Plawa]

Since you're somewhat new to this (I once again assume , I wouldn't bother with manual exposure unless you really need to. Set you White Balance to a fixed value (e.g. Sunny) as you don't want that to change during a single shot or even between shots in the same location but I generally let the drone figure out the exposure and only adjust the EV value if I need to, e.g. when a part of the image is blown out - learn how to read a histogram to help you with that.

 

[xMoex]

@tracer bullet yeah, I guess it's way brighter outside on a sunny day.

@Plawa Maximum assumption power reached. Sounds good and might even be the better idea. It's hard enough to manage the flying itself right now (in terms of getting good shots) so it wouldn't hurt to not bother about the manual exposure. The White Balance is already on a fixed value.

As you guys already did a great job to help me understand my first problem: Are the other settings that I mentioned in the main post alright? Seems like some people prefer D-Log, others D-Cinelike so I guess I'm fine with that?
I'm recording in 4k even though I'd like to scale (?) the video to 1080p in post to avoid the pixel binning of the Mavic. Does that make sense or am I doing some idiotic stuff and just wasting SD card storage?

Thanks again for your fast responds, really helps a lot.

 

[4wd]

You would be as well to ignore the 'expert' cinematic advice about shutter speeds and leave it on Auto with EV between Zero and +1
Exposure varies a great deal as you move about and keeping it near where you want manually is going to result in a lot of discarded footage.

 

[sonof40]

You would be as well to ignore the 'expert' cinematic advice about shutter speeds and leave it on Auto with EV between Zero and +1
Exposure varies a great deal as you move about and keeping it near where you want manually is going to result in a lot of discarded footage.

This forum needs a "SuperLike" button.