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Lite + night shot

dinesh75

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Hello all, I got a new lite plus and am testing it out. I tried to take pictures when it was low light and selected the "Night" mode. So the ISO was cranked up and the aperture is set to 2.8. All good. However, the shutter speed was 1 second!

Is there a way to get faster shutter speeds, except to go into manual mode? Also, in which mode does the "moonlight" algorithm kick in?

P.S I recall having seen something called super Night mode, but I don't see it anymore. Is there something in the settings I need to enable? What is it anyway?
 
>Is there a way to get faster shutter speeds, except to go into manual mode?

Based on what little I know of your situation, I think you must go in to manual (pro) mode. Once you do, try upping the aperture to F5.6. That should still get crisp photos and it will increase the shutter speed. Are you shooting very close up to your subject?

Moonlight algorithm (I'm not 95% sure on this) will kick in during low-light even in normal "shoot" mode...ie: when not in any of the night modes, it will still kick in in low light. I get super looking photos/video if I shoot in low light (not nearly dark, I get best results from lite+ when there is at least some light in the shot.).....when using normal shoot mode. I get "mixed" results when I shoot in night mode. The whites can get super blown out if I don't then adjust the exposure by tapping an area of the screen, which will adjust the exposure a little.

Super night mode - I will test that tonight, but i remember that is available in non-pro mode for video only. Again, I will go try it, but I remember there's something that will cause super night mode to not be available. I know you have to start by switching to Night mode, then there are 3 sub-settings "within" night mode, and "super night" is one of the options. When I first got the drone I tried getting used to super night mode but I could never get anything decent out of it. Extremely blown out photo and video - completely unusable. The whites in super night mode look awful. Nothing in post production could fix it. That's just my experience.

Here are two night pics I did with Lite+. The first is night mode ("standard" night, not super night). The second photo is just straight up "auto" - no settings changed whatsoever. The second has less noise and the whites are not nearly blown out. That's why I think at night, even auto settings, the intelligent moonlight algorithm does kick in. If I did the second photo with my trusty DJI Air 2s in auto mode, it would look no where near as good.
 

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Thank you. For the pictures, can you also tell me the settings that the camera picked (ISO, F stop, and shutter speed). I am curious to know what they were, especially the shutter speed. The pictures look quite sharp.
 
Photo 1
aperture: 2.97 (f/2.8)
exposure time (shutter): 1/4
iso: 1080

Photo 2
aperture: 2.97 (f/2.8)
exposure time (shutter): .2427
iso: 886

Something else to be aware of, shooting in normal mode vs. night mode changes the resolution.
  • Shoot Mode shoots in 5472 x 3076
  • Night Mode (standard) 5472 x 3648

Lastly, you mentioned the sharpness. That's one common knock on the camera in the Lite+ I have seen in youtube reviews....the pics come out too sharp. It's recommended to reduce the sharpness in post. Never thought I'd hear the day that a camera takes pictures too sharp. LOL.
 
Thank you. Those are really odd numbers! I have never seen ISO values of 1080 and 886!

hmm, regarding sharpness, I wonder if the camera does some sharpening. Do you shoot JPEGs only? or are those processed RAW files?
 
I know. Those numbers are odd. Check the ones you have shot. I'm sure they are similar. Those pics were jpg only. I have shot RAW - but honestly, I haven't gotten that much better results. On my DJI drones, I've shot raw (DNG) and only gotten slightly better results in post. That's likely because I'm not very good in post processing.

You should go out tonight and do a test.... line up a shot and from the exact same location and camera angle, shoot:
[1] one photo in completely auto mode. No adjustments.
[2] one photo in "standard" night
[3] one photo in "super" night mode.

I'm going to try that tonight - just to see the settings and the results. I've yet to *really* see anyone have definitive suggestions on how to best do low-light with this model of drone. Maybe even suggestions on how people have done post with RAW shots on the Lite+.

I'm mostly into photos....not too interested in video when it comes to night shots.
 

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