Camera settings, what iso do you use?

[Kwaka Pants]

What settings do you use, and why?
I see a lot of footage on here and youtube etc, in poorly lit situations, yet still good footage.
My attempts so far end up grainy and washed out.
What's the secret?

 

[dg8882]

I am by no means an expert on photography or shooting videos but here is what i use.
I have my white balance on custom and set to full. I had many washed out pictures until i played with this and found i get the amount of color I like with white balance all the way up.
I set my ISO as low as it can go if i'm shooting on a sunny day. If its rather cloudy or i'm taking pictures in shadows, i might turn my ISO up a bit.
I usually take multiple pictures of the same thing while varying the shutter speed each time. Since i can't see my phone screen too well on a bright day, I have multiple exposures to see on my computer and can pick out my favorite. Since you can't really do this with a video, I would just suggest picking the best exposure you can based on what you see on your device. Investing in a higher quality video processing software can allow you to get the desired results if the drone can't get it.
I don't use any color corrections. If I am not happy, I use Adobe Lightroom to make some fine adjustments to colors in pictures.

All this is for daytime shots, I haven't done any evening or night flights lately so I don't have any recommendations for that.

Here is a shot using the above settings.

 

[With The Birds]

Shoot the lowest ISO you can get away with, detail and saturation is reduced with increasing ISO regardless of the scene illumination.

For video this will be as low as you can go while staying at or above double the frame rate for shutter speed.

For stills, hovering in low wind you can go out to three seconds exposure time with a good number of keepers (subject of course to whether you have moving elements in the scene and motion blur would be undesirable).

The lower the ISO you can achieve the better.

 

[Kwaka Pants]

Thanks for taking the time to reply guys, all good info.
I just thought I'd seen a post one day where someone said they set it at 100 and leave it there regardless, but can't find it now to check it out. Aware from experience and using slr cameras donkeys years ago that the the detail is much better with lower settings, but wan't sure just how that translates to video etc. Not had opportunity to try any long exposure stuff yet, but looking forward to getting the chance.

 

[Sinisalo]

After a lot of trial and error I have found a secret to less noise in night time shots. If you use the LRenfuse plugin to combine 5 AEB shots the software will actually combine all the information from each shot to effectively increase the dynamic range and lessen noise.

My workflow goes like this:
I shoot in 5 shot AEB with default settings for landscape shots or shots with no chance of ghosting with iso 100 or 200 max.
Then I move the files to my computer and run them through the DJI DNG cleaner.
After that I import them into Lightroom and use the auto stack by capture time feature to sort through all the AEB shots.
The. I use the LR Enfuse plugin to combine the shots and if there is ghosting then I just use the default Lightroom HDR combining method.
Then I export the file to Photoshop and use the google nik color effects pro plugin to make adjustments to color and contrast. I then make any final adjustments to the photo using photoshop and then the final step before saving is to convert the color space to sRGB (from pro RGB)

Then I save a copy of the tiff file using zip compression (don't discard layers or you won't be able to change some things later) then I also save a copy as jpeg for uploading and that is it.

The Google nik plugin is free now, and the LR Enfuse plugin is very cheap but 100% worth it. The Google nik plugin "define 2" also works very well for reducing noise automatically ( you sacrifice only a very slight reduction in edge sharpness) sometimes it is well worth the trade off to save a photo with lots of shadow noise or just lots of noise period.


Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots

 

[With The Birds]

After a lot of trial and error I have found a secret to less noise in night time shots. If you use the LRenfuse plugin to combine 5 AEB shots the software will actually combine all the information from each shot to effectively increase the dynamic range and lessen noise.

My workflow goes like this:
I shoot in 5 shot AEB with default settings for landscape shots or shots with no chance of ghosting with iso 100 or 200 max.
Then I move the files to my computer and run them through the DJI DNG cleaner.
After that I import them into Lightroom and use the auto stack by capture time feature to sort through all the AEB shots.
The. I use the LR Enfuse plugin to combine the shots and if there is ghosting then I just use the default Lightroom HDR combining method.
Then I export the file to Photoshop and use the google nik color effects pro plugin to make adjustments to color and contrast. I then make any final adjustments to the photo using photoshop and then the final step before saving is to convert the color space to sRGB (from pro RGB)

Then I save a copy of the tiff file using zip compression (don't discard layers or you won't be able to change some things later) then I also save a copy as jpeg for uploading and that is it.

The Google nik plugin is free now, and the LR Enfuse plugin is very cheap but 100% worth it. The Google nik plugin "define 2" also works very well for reducing noise automatically ( you sacrifice only a very slight reduction in edge sharpness) sometimes it is well worth the trade off to save a photo with lots of shadow noise or just lots of noise period.


Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots

You will get even better results with multiple frames at EV0 with a stack, align and median blend in photoshop.

 

[Sinisalo]

You will get even better results with multiple frames at EV0 with a stack, align and median blend in photoshop.

THANKS! I cannot wait to try it out! If it is faster than LR Enfuse and gives better results, then this will be incredibly beneficial to me. I will still use LR Enfuse when doing macro work when I need to do focus stacking but for drone photos this seems promising.

I love how easy it is to share information nowadays.

 

[With The Birds]

THANKS! I cannot wait to try it out! If it is faster than LR Enfuse and gives better results, then this will be incredibly beneficial to me. I will still use LR Enfuse when doing macro work when I need to do focus stacking but for drone photos this seems promising.

I love how easy it is to share information nowadays.

The advantage with the median blend is that the sensor performance is common in all frames so random noise will be removed more efficiently. underezpised frames have the most significant noise issues, particularity in the shadow areas as you may have noticed.

 

[With The Birds]

One thing I didn't mention. Enable your histogram in DJI Go and expose to the right. In instances where light is limited and going out to three seconds exposure time your EV is towards the centre or left of the histogram your are better to increase your ISO. While this might seem counter intuitive if you test you will find that the artifacts (principally sensor noise) introduced by increasing the ISO a stop of two are significantly less objectionable than those attributed to underexposure.

 

[Kwaka Pants]

Whooooosh!
That was the noise all the info made as it flew right over the top of my head lol.
Seriously, thank you all, I shall work on it.
But only when I remember to put the memory card in the P3, unlike today, doh!