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World's largest living Christmas Tree.

hactick

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My town hosts the largest living Christmas Tree every year. This is my first night flight. I fiddled with the settings the whole time and still never got everything setup for night pics and video. Any suggestions on settings for the Mavic 2 zoom would be appreciated!
 
Camera settings isn't that different from other cameras just because it's attached to a drone ... for night shots maximize the light intake by opening the aperture to the maximum, set a slower shutter speed but here try to avoid longer times then 1,5-2 sec due to the drone movements, other wise the pics will be blurry. If Aperture is on the widest & shutter to 2 sec. but still under exposed, rise the iso up to were you get a correct exposure to your liking. Then snap away ... take several pics on the same motif, probably you have to throw away nearly all of them due to blurriness but perhaps you get lucky & can keep a few.

The same applies for video except for 2 differences ... 1. try to keep your shutter double the frame rate (24 fps --> 1/48 sec.) for a more natural motion blur if you fly below approx. 30 meters ... on higher altitudes this doesn't matter. 2. you can't (shouldn't) use a shutter speed slower then your frame rate, meaning 24 fps --> slowest 1/24 sec.
 
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Camera settings isn't that different from other cameras just because it's attached to a drone ... for night shots maximize the light intake by opening the aperture to the maximum, set a slower shutter speed but here try to avoid longer times then 1,5-2 sec due to the drone movements, other wise the pics will be blurry. If Aperture is on the widest & shutter to 2 sec. but still under exposed, rise the iso up to were you get a correct exposure to your liking. Then snap away ... take several pics on the same motif, probably you have to throw away nearly all of them due to blurriness but perhaps you get lucky & can keep a few.

The same applies for video except for 2 differences ... 1. try to keep your shutter double the frame rate (24 fps --> 1/48 sec.) for a more natural motion blur if you fly below approx. 30 meters ... on higher altitudes this doesn't matter. 2. you can't (shouldn't) use a shutter speed slower then your frame rate, meaning 24 fps --> slowest 1/24 sec.
On the video at night : do you get a lot of noise in the blacks? The best I could come up with was 24 FPS at shutter speed 1/24. And iso at 800.
 
On the video at night : do you get a lot of noise in the blacks? The best I could come up with was 24 FPS at shutter speed 1/24. And iso at 800.
Can't really say as I have the Mavic Air so I'm not familiar with how noisy the Mavic 2 zoom are. At least you have an adjustable aperture which i don't have. Keep in mind that when you film with shutter equal the fps as you suggest, pan and pitch the gimbal overly smooth & slow to keep the motion blur down. Also keep up the distance & altitude to your target as that makes the motion blur lesser on target.
 
Xmas spirit! :)
 
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Can't really say as I have the Mavic Air so I'm not familiar with how noisy the Mavic 2 zoom are. At least you have an adjustable aperture which i don't have. Keep in mind that when you film with shutter equal the fps as you suggest, pan and pitch the gimbal overly smooth & slow to keep the motion blur down. Also keep up the distance & altitude to your target as that makes the motion blur lesser on target.
Sadly, no adjustable aperture on the zoom either... An often overlooked difference between the zoom and the pro2 that I wish I would've understood better before I purchased...
 
Sadly, no adjustable aperture on the zoom either... An often overlooked difference between the zoom and the pro2 that I wish I would've understood better before I purchased...
Well ... ok, didn't know that. But anyhow for night shots it's only the largest aperture that counts, but good with adjustable to shut light out during the day though to perhaps avoid ND-filters.
But the zoom then perhaps have a higher aperture value on the longer focal length ..? If so ... zoom out to get hold of the smallest aperture value for max. light in for night shoots.
 
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