Phantom 4 Pro and horizon/sky pictures

RDavidson02 · Mar 28, 2018

I had a Phantom 4 Pro that took great horizon pictures. Now that I’ve upgraded to a Phantom 4 Pro, any horizon pictures I take are overpowered by the sky and the ground looks dark. The picture I’ve attached is an example. Shooting in Auto at 100 iso with an ND8 filter. Any ideas how to correct this?

ravedog · Mar 28, 2018

Shoot raw and develop the image in post. You can pull a lot more out of the image.

Meta4 · Mar 28, 2018

RDavidson02 said:
I had a Phantom 4 Pro that took great horizon pictures. Now that I’ve upgraded to a Phantom 4 Pro, any horizon pictures I take are overpowered by the sky and the ground looks dark.

If you shoot an image with a large area of bright sky and a smaller area of dark foreground, the camera exposure metering has a problem dealing with the difference in brightness from the two major elemants.
Left to make the decision itself, the camera will expose for an average of the scene which will be unsatisfactory all round.
Some solutions could be to either:

Expose for what you want to be the subject rather than the average of the whole frame.
Bring up shadow detail and/or reduce highlights in your post processing
Compose for a more evenly lit scene

RDavidson02 said:
The picture I’ve attached is an example. Shooting in Auto at 100 iso with an ND8 filter. Any ideas how to correct this?

Is there any particular reason you were using the ND filter?
In stills photography, all it will do is lower the light level and force you to have a slower shutter speed.
Unless you want to shoot with a slower shutter speed, there's no reason to be using an ND filter in stills photography from a drone.

RDavidson02 · Mar 28, 2018

Meta4 said:
If you shoot an image with a large area of bright sky and a smaller area of dark foreground, the camera exposure metering has a problem dealing with the difference in brightness from the two major elemants.
Left to make the decision itself, the camera will expose for an average of the scene which will be unsatisfactory all round.
Some solutions could be to either:

Expose for what you want to be the subject rather than the average of the whole frame.

Bring up shadow detail and/or reduce highlights in your post processing

Compose for a more evenly lit scene

Is there any particular reason you were using the ND filter?
In stills photography, all it will do is lower the light level and force you to have a slower shutter speed.
Unless you want to shoot with a slower shutter speed, there's no reason to be using an ND filter in stills photography from a drone.

I’ll try removing the filter and shoot again. Should I use the filter for video?

Meta4 · Mar 28, 2018

RDavidson02 said:
I’ll try removing the filter and shoot again. Should I use the filter for video?

Some people like to use the ND filter to get a slower shutter speed and get a small amount of motion blur for video.
It's not essential and many don't use it at all.
But it's useless for stills unless you have a particular reason for wanting to slow the shutter speed down (and that would be quite unusual).

bsartist · Mar 28, 2018

Meta4 said:
If you shoot an image with a large area of bright sky and a smaller area of dark foreground, the camera exposure metering has a problem dealing with the difference in brightness from the two major elemants.
Left to make the decision itself, the camera will expose for an average of the scene which will be unsatisfactory all round.
Some solutions could be to either:

Expose for what you want to be the subject rather than the average of the whole frame.

Bring up shadow detail and/or reduce highlights in your post processing

Compose for a more evenly lit scene

Is there any particular reason you were using the ND filter?
In stills photography, all it will do is lower the light level and force you to have a slower shutter speed.
Unless you want to shoot with a slower shutter speed, there's no reason to be using an ND filter in stills photography from a drone.

Another option is to take three or five AEB shots and then combine them with software that can do HDR rendering. I use photoshop.

For a picture like that one with a clear demarcation between light and dark you may only need to layer two versions over each other and then mask out the top or bottom half. In other words take two exposures: one exposed for the sky, the other for the ground. Then layer them in photoshop (for example) and of the one with the overexposed sky is on top then paint a mask on the sky to let the sky from the layer below show through.

ravedog · Mar 28, 2018

I’m a. It confused. You state that you had a P4P and now have upgraded to a P4P. Did I miss something?

RDavidson02 · Mar 28, 2018

Meta4 said:
Some people like to use the ND filter to get a slower shutter speed and get a small amount of motion blur for video.
It's not essential and many don't use it at all.
But it's useless for stills unless you have a particular reason for wanting to slow the shutter speed down (and that would be quite unusual).

Thanks for the help. Appreciate it.