Hey, I shot this in raw and have attempted to grade the footage and sharpen. Can I have some constructive criticism please. I havent got ND filters yet so the exposure was all over the place. Ive been pretty bummed out reading this forum over the past view days with criticism of the camera and wondering if I have made the right choice.
Anyway opinions please - is this decent footage?
The short answer to your question about whether or not your footage is decent is
YES it’s very decent, in fact I think it’s really good. Individually, you have some great shots there; and as a whole, it’s pretty good as it stands.
Some things I really liked:
- The sharpness throughout the video
[It wasn’t overly sharp, but at the same time you can clearly make out almost everything in the frame without it feeling “artificial”]
- For the most part the exposure was pretty dead on(as far as individual clips go)
[Nothing looked overexposed, and only 1 or 2 clips had some crushed blacks within the frame]
- The scene looked very natural and true to color
[The saturation and contrast seemed to be on point, with only a few variations here and there]
Some things that were good, but could maybe use a little polishing up:
"Minor differences between clips"
- Exposure [As you already stated the overall exposure was a little spotty throughout the video, but even without an ND filter, you can usually rely on shutter speed to help close the “exposure gap” among different shots. Also, in post you may be able to fine tune these subtle variations and match exposure by adding some whites, blacks, shadows, mids, etc...]
- Contrast [Again, this was pretty good throughout the video; however I did notice that some of the higher elevation shots looked a little washed out (which is something you can’t really avoid unfortunately). But to compensate, you could try increasing the contrast for these shots which will help blend everything together.]
- Color matching [This is a tough one, but trying to match the color (as well as matching the light source “a.k.a. the sun”) can go a long way to adding fluidity and continuity to your video. The basic answer to color matching this type of footage is to add some reds/oranges to cloudy shots, and then add in some blue tones to sunny shots, but that can only get you so far. To really sell this effect, it helps to try and film all your shots at the same time of day (or at least with the sun facing the same direction within the shots). This can take quite some time to do, but again it will add a lot of “production value” to your overall video if done right.]
A few tips to help your footage really pop, and stand out from the crowd: (unrelated to color correcting/grading)
- Try filming shots that are closer to ground level
[Over the years basically everyone has seen some sort of footage from a helicopter, whether it’s in a movie or on the news or somewhere else, but either way our brains have become used to seeing wide open aerial shots. What really peaks our interest is seeing footage that we know a helicopter can’t get, a.k.a. flying your drone at low altitudes or even flying it through/or under something.]
*Obviously take extreme caution if you decide to do this, as you don’t want anything to happen to your $1,300 investment.
- Try maneuvering your Typhoon H in different ways to get unique shots
[Everyone knows the basic fly forward and camera pan, but to add some depth to your footage, try mixing things up a little bit. This can be as simple as flying backwards with the camera revealing something in the shot, or raising/lowering altitude with the camera pointed in a strange, yet unique way. Another great thing to utilize is curved cable cam, as you can independently move the camera to get cool looking shots that otherwise would be hard to get.]
- Utilize “Golden Hour” to get shots that have great contrast and complexity
[Golden Hour refers to the hour’s right after sunrise and right before sunset, which give you the greatest amount of contrast within a shot while still providing soft light that shapes around a particular subject. This is very useful when you want to make an otherwise mediocre shot look more interesting.]
*You had a really good example of using the sun to project contrast into the shot at 3:41 in your video