Welcome, Autel Pilots!
Join our free Autel drone community today!
Join Us

Need Expert Advice - Night Video

DaveMH

Well-Known Member
Joined
Oct 20, 2020
Messages
98
Reaction score
59
Location
Central FL, USA
I am planning to do a video of the Christmas lights in our community.
I'd like it to be as clear & sharp as possible.
I'm using an EVO II Pro, by the way.
I did a test flight last night and noticed auto focus can't handle the lighting changes.
My settings were, LOG, F2.8, 1/30 & ISO 800.
Colors were just ok.

SO, what are the experts doing/using for settings?
If I manual focus with changes in depth of field, the focus is bound to very.

Plan to shoot close in with pull backs and slow pans.
Low and slow!

I'm using Power Director 365 V20 for my editing & a LUT's.

Thanks, for any help/advice
Dave
 
I am planning to do a video of the Christmas lights in our community.
I'd like it to be as clear & sharp as possible.
I'm using an EVO II Pro, by the way.
I did a test flight last night and noticed auto focus can't handle the lighting changes.
My settings were, LOG, F2.8, 1/30 & ISO 800.
Colors were just ok.

SO, what are the experts doing/using for settings?
If I manual focus with changes in depth of field, the focus is bound to very.

Plan to shoot close in with pull backs and slow pans.
Low and slow!

I'm using Power Director 365 V20 for my editing & a LUT's.

Thanks, for any help/advice
Dave

I've never had a problem with focusing for night videos but it is because I don't get the drone very close to anything especially at night. When the drone is far enough away from the subject even at F2.8 it eventually achieves infinity focus at which point AF doesn't have to do anything.

I would imagine there is no good answer for focusing at night since no camera does great with AF the less light there is. I honestly haven't used anything but AF with any drone, but if I were in your situation I would see if the EVO has hybrid AF like the rest of my cameras. Hybrid AF sounds like your best bet for this scenario.

With Hybrid AF enabled, you switch to MF but tap to focus still works, this means that you first align the drone with the subject, tap to AF then the AF switches back to MF until you tap the screen again. The Autel app leaves much to be desired so I would not be surprised if it is missing this functionality or if it does have it it probably does not work very well. I have never switched from AF so I don't even know if it has it.

But lets pretend that it does have hybrid AF and tap to focus works properly; I would then try to keep the subject within the focal plane by keeping the same distance between the camera and the subject. To do this I would stick to movements where the camera can move without breaking the focal plane; so orbit left/right, truck left/right, crane up/down, crane up/down + tilt up/down, etc. I would stay away from dolly in/out. If you do want a dolly in/out look then I would proceed very slowly and only use the few seconds where the target is in focus. There are many creative ways to work around focusing limitations.

To improve the colors of the lights you could try switching from Daylight WB to a WB of 3600K, 3600K is what I use for fireworks and it could be appropriate for Christmas lights. You can read more about my WB decisions for drones here. I will admit that I know nothing about Power Director or how good/bad it is at editing LOG footage so your colors may be due to the NLE.

Personally, when I want to work with detail shots for Christmas lights, I much prefer to use handheld cameras instead and only use the drone to show the big picture. Below is a sample video. I think this was shot with the Mavic Pro but I may have used the P4.



 
Last edited:
I've never had a problem with focusing for night videos but it is because I don't get the drone very close to anything especially at night. When the drone is far enough away from the subject even at F2.8 it eventually achieves infinity focus at which point AF doesn't have to do anything.

I would imagine there is no good answer for focusing at night since no camera does great with AF the less light there is. I honestly haven't used anything but AF with any drone, but if I were in your situation I would see if the EVO has hybrid AF like the rest of my cameras. Hybrid AF sounds like your best bet for this scenario.

With Hybrid AF enabled, you switch to MF but tap to focus still works, this means that you first align the drone with the subject, tap to AF then the AF switches back to MF until you tap the screen again. The Autel app leaves much to be desired so I would not be surprised if it is missing this functionality or if it does have it it probably does not work very well. I have never switched from AF so I don't even know if it has it.

But lets pretend that it does have hybrid AF and tap to focus works properly; I would then try to keep the subject within the focal plane by keeping the same distance between the camera and the subject. To do this I would stick to movements where the camera can move without breaking the focal plane; so orbit left/right, truck left/right, crane up/down, crane up/down + tilt up/down, etc. I would stay away from dolly in/out. If you do want a dolly in/out look then I would proceed very slowly and only use the few seconds where the target is in focus. There are many creative ways to work around focusing limitations.

To improve the colors of the lights you could try switching from Daylight WB to a WB of 3600K, 3600K is what I use for fireworks and it could be appropriate for Christmas lights. You can read more about my WB decisions for drones here. I will admit that I know nothing about Power Director or how good/bad it is at editing LOG footage so your colors may be due to the NLE.

Personally, when I want to work with detail shots for Christmas lights, I much prefer to use handheld cameras instead and only use the drone to show the big picture. Below is a sample video. I think this was shot with the Mavic Pro but I may have used the P4.



WOW, thanks for the great reply. I have followed some of your posts.
Just tried another test flight using MF, but as with auto, focus varies based on distance.
Thanks again
 
What the previous commenter said on autofocus is spot on, so nothing to add there.

Looking at your settings, some of the blur may be motion blur from your very long shutter speed. As a general rule, your shutter speed should be 1/(framerate x2). So if you're shooting in 4k 30fps, your shutter speed, no matter the lighting conditions, should be 60 fps.

I would try bumping up your ISO to 1600 and lowering the shutter speed to see if that helps, in addition to the autofocus recommendations above.

Also, everything I've read says to not shoot LOG at night. It will only make noise way worse without providing much benefit. You will definitely still have noise at 1600, so consider noise mitigation in post. I use Magic Bullet's Denoiser to control that and sharpen footage, but it's pricey and slows down editing a lot.

I shoot professionally for a landscape lighting designer and can tell you first hand that shooting in low light is about the hardest thing you can do with a drone. It just takes practice, so keep it up!
 
tagging in because I hope to have my drone in hand before New Years eve. The fireworks in Naples, Italy is insane and I think it would be cool to film it from above. I will have a chance to practice because it seems a nightly occurrence for the past 2 years in my neighborhood.
 
Regarding auto focus, one trick is find something that is stable with auto focus, then select that, switch to mf and lock it in.

As to other settings, fwiw, here's an example shooting with the 6K camera set to 4K 30fps 2.8 1/30 log hdr wb daylight very low iso neutral style, and minimal color correct/grade (e.g. just resolve auto) export at 1K.
 
  • Like
Reactions: lugin and Andrew01
I am planning to do a video of the Christmas lights in our community.
I'd like it to be as clear & sharp as possible.
I'm using an EVO II Pro, by the way.
I did a test flight last night and noticed auto focus can't handle the lighting changes.
My settings were, LOG, F2.8, 1/30 & ISO 800.
Colors were just ok.

SO, what are the experts doing/using for settings?
If I manual focus with changes in depth of field, the focus is bound to very.

Plan to shoot close in with pull backs and slow pans.
Low and slow!

I'm using Power Director 365 V20 for my editing & a LUT's.

Thanks, for any help/advice
Dave
Go with HDR+LOG profile... ISO 400 max.
F2.8, 25 FPS if you are in Europe and Auto SS as HDR to be Enabled (will set itself at 1/25SS).
Enable HDR, put the LOG profile, ISO 400 and you will have a boost of over 200% of light in scene, without abusing ISO.
You get noise? YES!
Is noise removable? YES! Because is a pattern from sensor and not over-processed noise, is easy to be removed with any you want (Neat, Topaz, CC Denoiser, Resolve internal denoiser, Premiere VR denoiser....).
Only after you denoise it, save it, then the new file can be edited as you like. For optimal results at output of denoised file you can use DNXHR HQX 10 bit...will make a huge file at output, but will be looseless and will be edited very fast as will not need decoding, just encoding at end.
After you edit it, decide if you need HDR or just REC709 and output it as you like.
All discussions related to this mode is here:
 
  • Like
Reactions: gschulzuio

Latest threads

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
11,228
Messages
102,655
Members
9,818
Latest member
redwingaerials