What are the best settings for stills.

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Having taken a number still with p2v I still feel I little disappointed with the quality of the images, alot are blurry, grainy and poorley exposed. I am very keen photographer at its fairly easy to get correct in my dslr and photoshop.

So what can I do to improve the images.

Any suggests would be most helpful.

Thanks
 
When shooting in daylight drop the EV by 1-2 units, this will help keep your highlights from washing out. Use as little detail enhancement (sharpness) as possible (do that in your favorite image editor) you can experiment with Standard & Soft. Your camera may want to change color temperature depending upon what it's seeing; set White Balance to Sunny so it doesn't change during pans & tilts. For example, snow may turn blue at sunset when in AWB. Use a slow ISO and shoot several exposures at a time to minimize grain and get a good sharp shot.

iDrone
 
I have been getting good results shooting hard and then using photoshop to reduce the noise. Also attaching a polarizer reduces haze by a good margin. So much so that i feel polarizing filters are a must for AP when you have the skyline exsposed. Average metering and spot metering have been almost useless for me, try the center average and see if you get more consistant exsposures.

Reducing the noise in photoshop to much is bad for print so a little noise is ok, you dont want it to look like a painting unless thats the effect you want. Sometimes this effect for an AP image is pretty cool.

About the hard setting, i first started trying this based on file size, the hard images were always larger. More information has gotta be a good thing, and photoshop seems like it does a better job at noise reduction than the algorithm on the FC200.

Composition is always something to think about, this is where we have a huge advantage over full scale AP. Say your shooting a large farm or something. Instead have just going up really high and getting the property in frame on one shot. Try to move around, maybe take a shot from a tree top, so the bottom of the image is a nicely exposed tree top etc. Look for natural lines that lead into your subject we can change positions in the sky so fast it would be a waste not to search around for natrual s curves and lines.
 

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[Thanks for the advice is something to try. I have been getting mixed results some images are good and some are just rubbish, was not sure if it was to do with settings etc.

birddogg - that image is great how are you attaching the polarizing filter.

here one of mine.
 

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Were going out to shoot at a park today, completly open shade right now. Were gonna leave the polarizer on but might not need it today.

Its attached very carefully with electrical tape at this point, centered well and slightly raised from the fc200 lens, its causing vignetting at the edges but is removed during applying the lens profile so i havnt adjusted it. It might be wise to buy larger filters though and use step rings once we get the filter adapter.

Your pictures look nice, its hard to expose correctly for skyline, grauduated ND filters might come in handy if you dont mind bisecting the image with the skyline assuming you can get the horizon strait. Also in windy conditions its often possible to position the P2V in a way the horizon is still strait.

Lens correction's help as well but seem to cause some blurring in the corners but overall worth it, esp if you plan on croping anyways.Daylight pictures are always going to look better with the sun behind the lens, if possible always try to expose for the sky then maybe go up a stop if you think it needs it. Underexposed ground detail can sometimes be recovered in editing but blown sky's cant.
 
I was going to ask this very question of all our resident pro/gifted amateur photographers. I'm not a pro (I don't even count as an ungifted amateur I suspect), and I'm not a post-processing wizard either (basic GIMP skills). So those in the know, can you just clarify my thoughts/questions regarding the most appropriate starting point stills settings for getting the best out of the camera for everyday use:

ISO - manually set to 100;
White balance - manually set as appropriate for conditions;
Exposure metering - centre, average or spot? Recommendations?
Exposure compensation - minus 1.0 as a start point unless it's a very bright day or sun will be in/near frame then -2.0. Is that right?
Sharpness - For general use, worth changing to hard, or leave standard? Any consensus?

Thanks in advance for confirming my (lack of) understanding.

Once the lens filter kit becomes available I'll need to bend your ears about those, too - but I like the results of using a filter that were posted earlier. Still, knowing DJI that might be a fair while... ;)
 
If some images are sharp, and other blurry - then I'd suggest this is the random luck you get when shooting from a vibrating platform moving around in the wind. This isn't a tripod.

For best results, I usually set the camera to take a burst of 3 or 5 pictures, rather than just one. Usually 1 or 2 of them turn out sharper than the others - depending on wind, movement, etc.
 

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