CAMERA : How Much Light Does It Need ??

Action cameras are very limited.

To capture low light, you need to keep the shutter open and keep it very still.
People use tripods to capture low light and have shutters that remain on for more than 2 seconds. If you move during this time, the image blurs.

This is very hard to achieve on something that is moving all the time.

The best you can do is 1080p @ 24 fps (lower fps = lower shutter speeds, therefore let more light in) @100 iso to minimise grain. If worst, use soft setting. Try and do fly overs and minimise tilt and panning in the video. You can also post edit and add motion blur to minimise the FPS tearing.

Your next best is GPRO 4 Hero Black.

I hope DJI releases a firmware update to improve the quality. Its turning me off.
 
The FC200 is a not a bad camera but neither is that good to be honest.
A couple of days after buying mine I took it back to the retailer and asked if I had a faulty camera because of the amount of noise I was getting.
It wasn't, but the camera does have its limits Ive discovered and once you understand them good results are possible.

The camera does struggle with shadows and the mark of a good camera is how much tonal range it can capture.
You have to choose carefully which exposure mode you set the camera to which is going to depend somewhat on the light conditions you fly in.

I always shoot at 100 iso.
I also cant stand the fisheye effect so usually have the camera pointed parallel to the horizon or just under so any slight fisheye effect is reasonably easy to correct in post.
When the camera is in this position I use average metering because half the frame is the sky so it works out ok.

Bright conditions are best I think but it may be worthwhile dialing down the exposure by a stop to help get the detail in the shadows. in other words don't worry to much if the sky is slightly burnt out because you can recover this in post.

Also shoot Raw because it give you more latitude in post to bring the shadows back.
My workflow for images is to use lightroom to adjust exposure and levels and concentrate on the landmass so this looks right. I then use a grad filter to dial back the exposure on the sky.
Once happy I run it through DEfine 2 which is an excellent noise reduction add on for lightroom.
I've printed some images at A3+ and the noise is barley visible.

Thing to do is experiment with different settings and see what works for you.
I have some images on flikr using this technique.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/redeye00/

All the best
Mark C
 

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