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Flying EVO 1 at night

Alec

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Does anyone shoot at night with their EVO? If so what settings do you use to get the best pics. So far most of my shots have been unusable.
 
I don't fly at night, but keeping the shutter as slow as possible, so the drone can capture as much light will yield the best results.
 
My 2 cents... I fly my XSP right at dusk, and even past that point until there’s no more reflective light in the clouds. Settings? It varies.... I always start with full auto, to see what the results look like on the iPad screen. If I can see excessive noise, I futz with manual settings until I think it’s as good as it will get, or I give up. Obviously, take off all filters, and fly as slowly and smoothly as you can. You’ll always get some noise, but unless it’s REALLY dark, it should be acceptable.

If you’re flying over a bright artificially lit scene, it’s a different ball game, and a little easier. You expose for the lit scene, and let the surroundings fall where they fall.

In both instances, the key is to not blow-out the highlights trying to get some shadow detail. You usually must pick one or the other — until consumer drone camera sensors get much better dynamic range...
 
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Untitled_Panorama-1.jpg
From last night, 3 images merged into one. Yea, there's noise, it's the best the XSP can do it very low light. The video looks OK, the movement kinda masks some, but not all, of the noise...
 
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According to FAA rules in the USA, I'm not allowed to fly a hobby drone at night. It might be possible with special licensing and/or one-time permission, but ordinary hobbyists like me can't fly after sundown. Frankly, the EVO 1 camera is does not have a useful nighttime lens, and without a thermal IR camera, there isn't much to see at night anyway.
 
According to FAA rules in the USA, I'm not allowed to fly a hobby drone at night. It might be possible with special licensing and/or one-time permission, but ordinary hobbyists like me can't fly after sundown. Frankly, the EVO 1 camera is does not have a useful nighttime lens, and without a thermal IR camera, there isn't much to see at night anyway.
Covered this in another string (don't recall of the top of my head what the name was to search on). Net, net is that we determined after several of us called into our local FSDO's - the majority concluded that you can legally fly as a "hobbiest" at night if using proper collision avoidance lighting on the drone (can be seen 3 miles away) in class G airspace without needing further approval or waivers. You would need a waiver if flying under part 107. All other normal rules of daylight flights would still apply at night.
 
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According to FAA rules in the USA, I'm not allowed to fly a hobby drone at night. It might be possible with special licensing and/or one-time permission, but ordinary hobbyists like me can't fly after sundown. Frankly, the EVO 1 camera is does not have a useful nighttime lens, and without a thermal IR camera, there isn't much to see at night anyway.
Covered in the string titled "Clarification on flying?" Skip ahead to page 3 and 4 in the string.
 
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According to FAA rules in the USA, I'm not allowed to fly a hobby drone at night. It might be possible with special licensing and/or one-time permission, but ordinary hobbyists like me can't fly after sundown. Frankly, the EVO 1 camera is does not have a useful nighttime lens, and without a thermal IR camera, there isn't much to see at night anyway.
Please cite your source for that. There is no such rule, in fact if you look at Ken Heron's video on the subject, quite the contrary, according to two FAA letters he has.

 
I've actually had some decent results with night photography on the EVO. The sensor is fairly noisy, so contrary to what you might otherwise think, keep the ISO as low as possible and go as long as you can on the Shutter speed. I find that anything over, IIRC, 1 sec becomes unusable due to platform stability, but when I did so, there was a mild breeze, your mileage may vary.
 

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