Zero issues this past week out shooting bergs and coastal waters, except I set my white balance on the berg and it gets washed out in some shots. What am I doing wrong here?
Icebergs and coast line in Twillingate, Newfoundland
- Thread starter Niblett
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Set you camera shutter speed to 800 or 1000 bright sunny days, 640 500 partly cloudy days. I don't use auto mode for camera.
Hey can u send that iceberg over here to Florida.
Oh I also noted that you camera is slightly tilted, have you check the rubber grommets attached to your gimbal. They may not be attached correctly, my wasn't
Hey can u send that iceberg over here to Florida.
Oh I also noted that you camera is slightly tilted, have you check the rubber grommets attached to your gimbal. They may not be attached correctly, my wasn't
Checked the gimbal, no issues. I believe the last calibration was done on an uneven surface now that I think about it. However it could also have been the wind at the time also. Thanks @Marnix Verschraegen I do need to get filters it seems.
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I also purchased filters about a month ago. I found out if you use the filters and keep it in auto mode the camera is going to adjust for the discrepancies from the filter. I experienced more white out. So that being said I manually use the camera for settings. I'm sure you know that already, and you can adjust the settings while you fly.
Yes, and instead of taking the time to set that part up i rushed into flying, then spent way too long in a hover before first warning. It's my own doing for sure.
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ND filters during normal day light (1 hour after sunrise, 1 hour before sunset) will help to smooth out moving water such as ocean that you and I seem to typically fly over. During sunrise and sunset I will remove the ND filters as I want the additional exposure to give me better signal/noise ratio to not create as much noise in the captured frames; you have no noise, so this is not an issue - use ND if you have them.
In the overcast scenes, the exposure is appears very good.
In the sunlight shots over the iceberg, they are over exposed washing the highlights out. I would surmise from watching the video you are using auto-exposure which takes in the scene and sees mostly darker areas like the water around the iceberg and shadows in the iceberg and will adjust to make those a neutral grey by adding more light which will overexpose the highlights of the iceberg.
Autoexposure :
mostly dark == overexposure of highlights to attempt to get more light to the predominately dark areas to achieve neutral grey which results in 'grey' shadows and overexposed and lost highlights.
mostly light == underexposure of highlights to attempt to get less light to the predominately bright areas to achieve neutral grey which results in very black shadows and whites that are actually grey.
I do shoot with auto-exposure after setting the white balance in challenging light such as pre-dawn and sunset as those conditions change so dynamically I can't set a pre-fixed exposure.
I recommend when shooting in auto-exposure to set the exposure compensation to -1 to -1.5 stops to underexpose to allow the highlights to show if shooting darker scenes, and the inverse of +1 - +1.5 stops of overexposure if shooting mostly bright scenes. Note - ocean and lake water is actually dark (not Tahiti or the Carribean), sand is bright, snow is very bright.
In post-production you can lighten darker area's if underexposed by 1 stop or so; it is very difficult to correct for overexposure (as you washed out ice-bergs) as there is no detail to work with.
In the overcast scenes, the exposure is appears very good.
In the sunlight shots over the iceberg, they are over exposed washing the highlights out. I would surmise from watching the video you are using auto-exposure which takes in the scene and sees mostly darker areas like the water around the iceberg and shadows in the iceberg and will adjust to make those a neutral grey by adding more light which will overexpose the highlights of the iceberg.
Autoexposure :
mostly dark == overexposure of highlights to attempt to get more light to the predominately dark areas to achieve neutral grey which results in 'grey' shadows and overexposed and lost highlights.
mostly light == underexposure of highlights to attempt to get less light to the predominately bright areas to achieve neutral grey which results in very black shadows and whites that are actually grey.
I do shoot with auto-exposure after setting the white balance in challenging light such as pre-dawn and sunset as those conditions change so dynamically I can't set a pre-fixed exposure.
I recommend when shooting in auto-exposure to set the exposure compensation to -1 to -1.5 stops to underexpose to allow the highlights to show if shooting darker scenes, and the inverse of +1 - +1.5 stops of overexposure if shooting mostly bright scenes. Note - ocean and lake water is actually dark (not Tahiti or the Carribean), sand is bright, snow is very bright.
In post-production you can lighten darker area's if underexposed by 1 stop or so; it is very difficult to correct for overexposure (as you washed out ice-bergs) as there is no detail to work with.
I agree with Windluv. ND filters allow more reasonable shutter speeds (eg. 1/60th sec for 30 fps) on bright days. This makes camera or target movement seem smoother in the resulting video.
Auto exposure uses the average brightness of the whole scene. Also, the CGO3+ seems to want to overexpose slightly. Auto exposure is very useful to keep up with scene changes but many times I have to give it -0.5 stop to keep from overexposing. So, for especially bright objects in a dark background, you may need -1.0 or more stops to bring out the details in the bright areas.
Nice video, by the way! I like seeing the blue ice under the water.
Auto exposure uses the average brightness of the whole scene. Also, the CGO3+ seems to want to overexpose slightly. Auto exposure is very useful to keep up with scene changes but many times I have to give it -0.5 stop to keep from overexposing. So, for especially bright objects in a dark background, you may need -1.0 or more stops to bring out the details in the bright areas.
Nice video, by the way! I like seeing the blue ice under the water.
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