Who says Mavic can't do low light?

snoopdrone · Dec 14, 2017

lightbg said:
I wanted to see how the Mavic does in low light/nighttime, so I shot my neighborhood right after the first snowfall. Almost lost the ship while dodging the utility wires, but I like the end result.

nice

davidewarner · Dec 16, 2017

Great job Robert! I had a similar experience last weekend where I was trying to get a downtown street for an intro to a film I wanted to do. Took me two nights because of the cold and wind conditions, but was worth it for the five second intro I got (folks - the rest of the video was all shot with an iPhone 8 Plus - no Mavic footage). The Mavic did a great job in low light conditions.

Christmas in Little Falls

Donrs · Dec 16, 2017

HeavensAbove said:
I used auto out of the box settings for this. No post edit just, fired it straight to YT. Just got to remember “no sudden movements”, keep it smooth. Twilight definitely a great time to fly and get some amazing footage.

That was beautiful!

Robert Mitchell · Dec 16, 2017

davidewarner said:
Great job Robert! I had a similar experience last weekend where I was trying to get a downtown street for an intro to a film I wanted to do. Took me two nights because of the cold and wind conditions, but was worth it for the five second intro I got (folks - the rest of the video was all shot with an iPhone 8 Plus - no Mavic footage). The Mavic did a great job in low light conditions.

Christmas in Little Falls

Nice intro indeed, and great little flick Btw!

HeavensAbove · Dec 16, 2017

Donrs said:
That was beautiful!

Thank you.

tedten · Dec 16, 2017

Robert Mitchell said:
I don't generally post my own work, but as an example and inspiration of the (sometimes debated) Mavic capabilities. Use this sensor wisely and it'll do good things for you:

Love it

Bintryin · Dec 16, 2017

Robert Mitchell said:
I don't generally post my own work, but as an example and inspiration of the (sometimes debated) Mavic capabilities. Use this sensor wisely and it'll do good things for you:

Fantastic love this

KDog · Dec 16, 2017

This is great footage, but I’m going to be ‘that guy’ by proposing that this isn’t actually technically low-light shooting, but it’s a relative term I guess. The fact is that in this film, you actually have half decent and pretty even/flat lighting from ambient and artificial sources. There are two elements to low-light performance IMO: the first is of course ISO, and sensor size is directly linked to how high you can useably go. The second is dynamic range, which in practical terms is how much detail you can see in dark sections when you have bright sections in the frame, which the Mavic is actually pretty bad at. Now I’m not going to suggest that we should expect great low-light performance from such a portable aircraft, but I’d still say the Mavic only does low-light below-average at best. That said, if you understand the limitations and constraints of this sensor and use it accordingly, you can push to the edge of its operating envelope and get some really nice footage like this! Well done.

Cut.Aussie · Dec 16, 2017

davidewarner said:
Great job Robert! I had a similar experience last weekend where I was trying to get a downtown street for an intro to a film I wanted to do. Took me two nights because of the cold and wind conditions, but was worth it for the five second intro I got (folks - the rest of the video was all shot with an iPhone 8 Plus - no Mavic footage). The Mavic did a great job in low light conditions.

Christmas in Little Falls

Nice video. I’m so glad I no longer live where it snows

Roamer105 · Dec 16, 2017

Robert Mitchell said:
puts it at +1, I'm pretty sur

Robert Mitchell said:
No, landscape puts it at +1, I'm pretty sure.

Landscape = +1,+1, 0

Roamer105 · Dec 16, 2017

Looks like you added some softening maybe even noise reduction? What NLE did you use to produce it?

hoggdoc · Dec 16, 2017

Robert Mitchell said:
I don't generally post my own work, but as an example and inspiration of the (sometimes debated) Mavic capabilities. Use this sensor wisely and it'll do good things for you:

Very nice, the Mavic system is amazing....

nmd351 · Dec 16, 2017

What FPS is that? Seems very fluid. It's just that it looks, imo, like something closer to 60 rather than 30.

jmitteco · Dec 16, 2017

Robert Mitchell said:
I don't generally post my own work, but as an example and inspiration of the (sometimes debated) Mavic capabilities. Use this sensor wisely and it'll do good things for you:

Not so bad for video but AEB for still photos really blows in low light with the Mavic.
Instead of changing the shutter speed between exposures, it changes the ISO between exposures which degrades the image & gives you 5 images with 5 different ISOs.
I believe it starts doing this at Shutter Speed set at 1/4 & below.
Really wish DJI would remedy this.

Robert Mitchell · Dec 16, 2017

jmitteco said:
Not so bad for video but AEB for still photos really blows in low light with the Mavic.
Instead of changing the shutter speed between exposures, it changes the ISO between exposures which degrades the image & gives you 5 images with 5 different ISOs.
I believe it starts doing this at Shutter Speed set at 1/4 & below.
Really wish DJI would remedy this.

Yeah, this is not the best solution.

When shooting stills I just shoot a good .dng and push and pull it in LR or PS.

Robert Mitchell · Dec 16, 2017

nmd351 said:
What FPS is that? Seems very fluid. It's just that it looks, imo, like something closer to 60 rather than 30.

No its 30.

Because of the lower light the shutter speed is slowed way down. I think it started out at 1/80 and then was all the way down to 1/30 before I finished. This gives the same effect as using a ND.

Robert Mitchell · Dec 16, 2017

Roamer105 said:
Looks like you added some softening maybe even noise reduction? What NLE did you use to produce it?

Actually, no noise reduction is needed at ISO 400, or lower. I never shoot higher than 400, for anything going public.

I always use Premiere Elements.

Robert Mitchell · Dec 16, 2017

KDog said:
This is great footage, but I’m going to be ‘that guy’ by proposing that this isn’t actually technically low-light shooting, but it’s a relative term I guess. The fact is that in this film, you actually have half decent and pretty even/flat lighting from ambient and artificial sources. There are two elements to low-light performance IMO: the first is of course ISO, and sensor size is directly linked to how high you can useably go. The second is dynamic range, which in practical terms is how much detail you can see in dark sections when you have bright sections in the frame, which the Mavic is actually pretty bad at. Now I’m not going to suggest that we should expect great low-light performance from such a portable aircraft, but I’d still say the Mavic only does low-light below-average at best. That said, if you understand the limitations and constraints of this sensor and use it accordingly, you can push to the edge of its operating envelope and get some really nice footage like this! Well done.

Agree completely. But you also gotta admit this is what many consider "low light" and struggle to produce good results with.

This said, the need for true "low light" photography isn't what most are looking for. The vast majority of scenery is fairly well lit, either by natural skylight, or artificial light, especially within the "civil twilight" window we are technically allowed to fly anyway. As for dynamic range, I've been a photographer long enough to know, you can get away with sacrificing some shadow detail if you are including enough interesting mid and high exposure details, to keep it interesting.

You need to know your equipment's limitations, and work within them. When you do, you can make good imagery with just about anything.