Mavic Pro exposure issues

I have done 2 missions with my Mavic so far and both times the images cam out severely underexposed. The first time I allowed DD to use the camera’s automatic settings and the second time I set the exposure manually, both times the images came out the same. While flying the second mission I paid attention to the live camera feedback and the exposure was correct during the mission. Any input would be great! I’ve attached pictures from both missions. I am fully up to date on the app (iOS) and the Mavic Pro.

I just ran my first DD mission today at a wastewater treatment plant, just before sunset. Everything appeared to go off without any issues. It flew the route great despite some fairly strong winds. I was looking every now and then at the video preview in the top right corner of the DD app to see what the camera was looking at and could see things just fine.

When I got home and transferred the files to my computer they were just about all solid black they were so underexposed. I could only make out a few of the photos where there was metal or white structures in the photos. Pulling them into Photoshop I could crank the levels and generally see what was going on but there was no contrast at that point and wouldn’t be worth uploading to try to stitch together.

Before the flight I did open DJI Go 4.0 and fly over to the area I was to be mapping to check the height of a tower to ensure I would clear it and had no issues with the level of light. I came back and landed, quit out of the DGO 4.0 app and opened DD and started the mission.

I’m running another mission tomorrow and I’m going to try to disable Automatic Camera Settings within the DD app and set the levels via DJI Go and see if that works for me. I really hope I can get this to work as I’m driving about an hour away to this site tomorrow.

-Grant

Photo from DD mission:

Photo from DJI Go app taken when checking hight of tower just minutes prior to DD mission for reference:

Hey you guys, I’m so sorry to hear about these issues. One of our users, experiencing underexposure on his Mavic, ran a test and posted his process. Check it out here --> DJI Mavic recommended camera settings

The same happened to me during a mission today (using Mavic). Sincerely, I think there’s something wrong with the application (at least for the IOS version). All photos are severely underexposed, way too dark. It ruins everything. I am not very prone to try “magic solutions” to make everything work. My feeling is that it is something to be worked out by you guys… I was about to start my regular signature and I will hold on until the issue is solved. It sure was frustrating. Waiting to hear from you…

I understand it’s frustrating that it doesn’t work automatically. The team is working to make sure it works as smoothly as possible and these things take time to perfect. In the meantime, this seems to work and I hope you’ll try it out:

Here is the process I’m going with:

In DroneDeploy, turn off Automatic Camera Settings

Run DJI Go first to set camera settings

Shutter: 200 or higher to reduce motion blur
Style: Standard or Landscape (to preference)
Color: none or True Color (to preference, D-Log or Cini are two flat)
Histogram: ON to help adjust lighting

Fly with DJI Go to DD project height, and point the camera down
– AF: Tap to set Autofocus to a ground point
– MF: Switch to Manual Focus to eliminate refocusing during the flight
– ISO: Set to to achieve good brightness (e.g. histogram centered)
– White Balance: Sunny, Cloudy, or Custom (not AWB)
– Style: Landscape or Standard
– Color: None or True Color

Fly to a safe location.
Switch to the DroneDeploy app and connect
Run the mission

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Thanks, Kara! I will give it a try…

Please let me know how it goes.

It came out very well. The only problem was the camera aperture. I will use something like 400, instead of 200, to avoid then overexposure I got. I did the procedure a little different, though… All the camera settings were done before takeoff, including setting the focus, manually, to infinite (the flight height was 60m). This way while on the ground I did switch to DD, disabled the AUTOMATIC CAMERA SETTINGS, and started the mission as usual. Regards,

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