I'm a new PS3 owner and loving it so far. My resulting video is sometimes too dark or washed out or there is some flicker in it depending how the drone is positioned to the sun, etc.. So I've been researching some about filters and how they might be able to help, but I'm not so obsessed with getting things perfect that I'll change filters for specific conditions. What I'm curious about is whether there is a consensus around what most people use as their "go to" filter most of the time. Something tells me that might be an ND filter, but I'm not entirely sure. Do you have one filter that you find you use most of the time? If so, please share.
If you don't want to fight with the minutia, you are going to have to accept less than adequate video quality - it's just a function of video. There are a couple of easy things to do that will make it better:
1) Get a basic filter set and read up on how to use them. They aren't hard. Don't memorize which one to use, just start the bird, point the camera at something similar to what you will be shooting, and stick a filter in front of the lens. Look for a shutter speed of 1/30-1/100.
2) GO SLOW. The automatic exposure on the P3's work but it takes SECONDS to settle. If you are flying around, panning and twisting you are probably going too fast so exposure will vary widely - which is very jarring visually and a PITA to fix in post. This is a flying camera, not a quad racer.
3) Learn some minimal post processing. Like cutting away boring stuff and stuff that is poorly exposed / framed. Which will be the majority of your image. I can take literally hours of images to get a 2-3 minute video. IMHO, YouTube should somehow force people to make at least three delete edits in their video before it can be uploaded. Cutting digital video is absolutely trivial and goes a long way to making your images more palatable to the rest of the world. You don't need to get all warm and cozy to a high end editor although that will, again, do more for your video than pretty much anything. DaVinci Resolve is free and quite good. But even Quicktime supports trimming.
4) On rainy days, look at other videos and get a feel for what works (short cuts, total clip length of a couple of minutes max unless you have a clear and compelling story line) and what doesn't (Videos that show takeoff from grass, an indeterminable view of something nominally pretty, a couple of orbits and Going Home).
5) Don't shoot into the sun. Or if you must, point the camera down - below 45 degrees. Wide angles hate the sun. Unless you are going for some artsy effect, turn the quad around.
6) Have fun, don't sweat it. Whatever you do, when you look back at what you thought was great a year ago, you will be horrified that you let anybody else see it.
