Can someone explain this effect?!? Atmospheric phenomenon? Natural occurrence?

[Chefinthesky]

While practicing my takeoff videos I captured a very cool natural lighting effect - it's around :15 to :17 seconds in the top video - it has to be some sort of reflection/refraction - but I don't know the proper term for it and I would LOVE to learn how to recreate it. I practice flights etc. in the back of my subdivision, in part because of the beautiful sunsets. I'm pretty sure I just got lucky and the conditions were right - but if I could predictably recreate that effect, well just wow. It's in the last video.


https://www.chefinthesky.com/portfolio

 

[BobW55]

Are you talking about the lens flare you get when look at or near the sun? I see it at about 0:15 to 0:25 in your video.
A polarizing filter can help eliminate it. But to create it, just look at/towards the sun. I have tried many a time to film a sunset, only to have the sun flare mess it up for me. For you I think you caught it just right to where you had a nice effect without washing out the entire video.
Good job.

 

[Eagle's Eye Video]

@Chefinthesky quick question... do you regularly takeoff from the roof of your car?

 

[Chefinthesky]

**** yeah, it's fun! I just make certain the foam feet on the landing gear are clean. I think if I try a few test flights and gauge the rate of ascent vs the camera angle I might be able to recreate the lighting effect. Every sunset would be different of course, but it would be a nice trick to pull out of my hat when i'm videoing a house for a realtor.

 

[Eagle's Eye Video]

You may want to re-evaluate that... if you do a search on the forum for "typhoon h compass" you will find several posts about issues with the compass... in proximity with objects containing a lot of iron or steel.

 

[Chefinthesky]

Hmm well noted. I have about 100 takeoffs from there already in the H alone, but one bad one is too many. I recently did a shoot for a mid high rise downtown to capture a rooftop party - launched from the roof of my car facing the building with obstacle avoidance on and the stick toward the building - the H shot up as straight and fast as an arrow and panned down to the crowd as it flew up since I didn't want to fly over people. The video turned out very cool, unluckily the client wants it to stay proprietary since they kinda paid for it... If I want to do the same affect I can invest in a large mirror piece instead of the roof of my car.

 

[LuvMyTJ]

As far as taking off from your roof. Probably OK. I have a friend who made a video for the nay-sayers who said you can't do it. He shows about a half dozen takeoffs from the bed of his truck. Now he does have issues if he used the hood, of course, there is a solid chunk of a V-8 engine under there too. So it seems some metal is OK, heavy iron or steel not so much. I have issues flying under iron girder canal bridges. I attribute it to the overall mass of thick iron.

I watched your video. I saw some lens flare and a blown out/overexposed sunset. Are you using auto settings? If so, try manual settings. Also, while not their primary purpose, ND filters can help too. Here is a short clip of a sunset last week at Sylvan Beach in New York (straight from the camera, no post editing, M2P). I used a 16ND filter.

View media item 33

 

[dirkclod]

Think TJ talking about this.

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[Chefinthesky]

Totally random comment... but the quality of that audio clip is awesome.

 

[Rubik]

While practicing my takeoff videos I captured a very cool natural lighting effect - it's around :15 to :17 seconds in the top video - it has to be some sort of reflection/refraction - but I don't know the proper term for it and I would LOVE to learn how to recreate it. I practice flights etc. in the back of my subdivision, in part because of the beautiful sunsets. I'm pretty sure I just got lucky and the conditions were right - but if I could predictably recreate that effect, well just wow.


https://www.chefinthesky.com/just-for-fun

The only effect I see at the top of the 1st (38s) video around :15 to :17 is the color banding sweeping across the scene. That would be due to the limited number of color gradations that this camera can capture. Is that what you are referring to? That would generally be considered an undesirable effect.
However, I really like the effect of taking off from a mirrored surface looking down! It's interesting to hear that sheet metal doesn't mess up the compass.