Discussing Exposure strategy

Terry, what kind of shutter speeds do you get with auto settings?

CloudyDay
1/60 sec at f3.5 with ISO 100 taken on cloudy day

This is a small part of one picture showing blackberry bushes on ground between 100’ tall trees. Nice uniform lighting all around.

Thanks. That is consistent with what I get. While that crop looks sufficiently sharp, I prefer to keep the shutter speed a bit higher on a moving camera. 1/60 is perfect for video at 30fps though :slightly_smiling_face:

I used to let DroneDeploy pick the flight speed but this resulted in too much ground blur. So I slowed it down to 9 mph, which at 325’ elevation and 1/60 shutter speed works well. I’m guessing you have not flown this high and this slow and that this is the reason you prefer a faster shutter speed (so your photos are not blurred).

I’m usually between 200 and 300’ depending on the subject. I have slowed the flight down to 11 mph and the images have been okay, but I’m not comfortable with such low SS. On a recent job that involved deep shadow, auto dropped the SS to 1/30th and kept iso @ 100 and apt. @ 3.2. So the iso and apt. are set and the shutter just slows. Ideally, for me, it could be set on shutter priority and it would open and close the apt. primarily and then raise the iso as a last result leaving the shutter fixed at at least 120 and on sunny days is could be set at 250 and the flight speed could be increased accordingly.

It would be good to know if the camera settings can be / or are defined by the DD app. Or if it is just a basic auto setting defined by the craft fw.

That’s a whole lot of discussion about camera settings when it could be download, 5 clicks and upload.

https://forum.dronedeploy.com/t/batch-post-processing/8444

Your comments wander too much for me to follow. Are you saying you wish DroneDeploy or DJI would control the camera so it runs on shutter priority( with 1/120 sec min) with mostly aperture control backed up by ISO control?

For my case, I use DJI auto-camera settings when flying DroneDeploy missions. Then I pick a speed that I know from experience will avoid blurry photos.

They are all coupled. With ACDSee post-processing you can get away with a bit faster shutter speed, which helps reduce blur, and still pull out useful information from the darker areas. But if you fly so fast the photos came out blurred, your mission is toast and ACDSee is not going to fix it. So you need to be reasonably good at picking camera settings and flight speeds to obtain photos worthy of ACDSee post-processing. Using ACDSee certainly increases the operating window for camera settings and flight speeds.

My results and comments were based upon exposure settings handled by DD, not GO.

I fly DroneDeploy auto with this ACDSee batch develop setting. It is able to “perfect” the histograms 90% of the time. Sometimes I will and another step of backlight or contrast to get it to my eye’s liking.

https://forum.dronedeploy.com/t/acdsee-batch-editing/12368

This is from 260’ at 9:30am.

Capture

Does ACDsee support dng lens profile correction for any dji craft? (Not related to jpg ortho capture)

Yes, it does and here is the supported file formats.

Do they also have a list of supported lenses that are corrected?

There is a ton of information to sift through if you Google “ACDSEE compatible lenses”, or similar. It picks up my P4P camera the same as Pix4D.

image

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You must be flying in very low light situations.
I use DD auto exposure settings and usually get something like 1/500 sec; f/5.6; ISO 100 for average ground shots with no need to slow the flight speed.

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Yep, sometimes. Pacific Northwest in winter; Low sun angle, and a mix of steep terrain, 100’ + trees and often overcast.

Latest recipe. Take off manually in GO, ascend to mission altitude. Set Shutter Priority in GO, focus on high contrast area, close GO and open DD and start mission.

(Sunny day) ISO at 100, Shutter at 1/500 and aperture adjusts between f 3-5. Perfecto!