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- Apr 2, 2015
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I'm confused. Is that your video, or an example of what you are trying to achieve in respect to not blowing out whites? Because it looks good to me.
ND64? I didn't know you could get anything greater than an ND32 for the Phantoms!
My take on the basics: when you put on an ND filter, it will reduce the shutter speed, but increase the aperture on automatic to compensate. So you haven't used the ND filter to change the general end-result exposure so much as changed the shutter speed and aperture. In other words, you can still get blown-out highlights.
Tip: Blown out highlights means RBG values == (max, max, max) == all white, with no highlight details.
So what I try to see if I could do is this:
Caveat: this is mostly from a still-photographer point of view, but I believe that the general philosophy applies in video processing as well. If I'm wrong, please chastise and correct me accordingly so I can learn as well.
- Regardless of what ND filter you use (if any), I would use the exposure compensation dial to reduce exposure. Before shooting, point it at the brightest point (sun or snow reflections) and adjust until the whites are not blown-out. The P3 has a setting you can turn on that shows blown-out highlights as diagonal lines to make this simple. The downside is that it reduces the shadow details, so step #2 is a hard requirement for this procedure to be successful.
- Then in post-processing, look for a shadow recovery option. Not all video apps have this. This allows you to bring up the exposure of just the shadows, providing more detail, without adjusting the exposure for the highlights. It is basically collapsing the dynamic range of the frame.
Note: not all dark shadows are bad. It's okay for some of them to not have detail. It depends on the contrast your shot needs. It's also tru that not all highlight blow-outs are bad, meaning that the shadow details are more important for some shots than the highlight details.
ND filter notes: people use these for lower shutter speed in video because they desire the cinematic look that it gives with ISO and frame rate (longer discussions held elsewhere). That aspect of using an ND filter has less to do with general exposure, or in other words, adjusting exposure to reduce blown-out highlights.
ND filters have even less to do with still photography from a drone (not a still camera on a tripod) unless you have very specific needs and are not shooting in automatic exposure mode.
Chris
Beautiful video DA!Stuggling with the blown out whites... any suggestions?
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