Manchester at night, October 2021

The Manchester Bomb started the revolution :slightly_smiling_face:

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I just need you to edit in the Tyrell Corp ziggurat and a few spacecraft buzzing about and it would be perfect!

Sorry to bump this thread asking dumb questions.

I intend to try another outing in the City Centre tomorrow (gonna be way too windy over the weekend) and was wondering on your approach for the best ISO/Exposure/Shutter Speeds to go with?

Last time I left on auto, as I was a little flustered and it left me with pretty grainy pictures, particularly the dark skies. As long as I feel Iā€™m comfortable and not going to get disturbed Iā€™d like to try some different things, but any advice and guidance on starters for 10.

Iā€™m thinking fly to where I want with settings on auto, so I can actually see where Iā€™m going, then put ISO back down to 100, and a two second shutter speed? Or will that be too long?

Iā€™ve only got a Mini 2, not sure what you took these pictures with!

All my urban stuff is on the Mini 2.

I donā€™t have any good solution to the issue of noise in dark skies. Sometimes Iā€™ve improved it with processing in the mobile Lightroom app. Also tried the Denoise It app recently. Darkening the sky also helps hide it. But the Mini 2 will always suffer visual noise when itā€™s dark.

Another way to reduce noise is to fill as much of the screen as possible with light, as in several images above! I think on that outing I did try several different exposure settings, but didnā€™t find that longer exposures have any real advantage over auto settings, for this type of image anyway, especially as they tend to reduce sharpness.

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thanks for the suggestions will have a play, and look out for that denoise app.

Evening, depending on weather and how much light is created by the street lights, will be crucial to your settings.
ISO ideally at 100 or if possible down to 50, but 100 is good, set the aperture to f/2.8 or as low as you can go, the lens will be at its widest and more light will enter the sensor, if you set the f/ number too high youā€™re be needing a longer shutter speed, if the drone is hovering and itā€™s breezy all your pictures will fuzzy from movement.
You can shoot manual on mini and Auto, make sure your creating both jpeg & RAW formats if you intend to do editing afterwards, more options with RAW over jpeg.
If you have to bump up the ISO because of poor light(too dark) say to 400 beyond that youā€™ll start getting noise and itā€™ll be increased more when you start editing because of not enough light captured in shot.
So ā€¦ISO 100
f/2.8 at 5 secs and youā€™ll have light trails, anything above 0.5 trails will stop.
Itā€™s a guessing game. I fly both in AUTO and manual depending on ambient light and weather. Good luck

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The problem is most of this urban photography uses the DJI Mini 2 for flexibility of where to fly: which means there is no ability to vary the aperture.

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Right ok I stand corrected there then, Iā€™m confusing my M2P over my Mini 2.
So your have to adjust either your iso beyond 100, but as I said if you intend to do lots of editing per shot, the noise from higher ISOā€™s will become more visibleā€¦
Longer shutter speed would be advantageous over a fixed aperture but if the drone isnā€™t stable enough your get those fuzzy shots because of movement
So your have to use either the auto mode and just do extensive editing afterwards or play with your settings when on site and airborne prior to taking the shots.
Judging the superb shots at the beginning of the thread, the urban environments will produce enough lights for you to get away with iso 200 to 400 and shorter shutter speeds as your sensor will still get enough light to produce sharp pictures

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Thanks, I posted what I produced here as donā€™t think pics were good enough to warrant their own thread, I resorted to auto settings due to a Police chopper coming and going so just wanted to get my shots. Will have another go at some point and hopefully be able to spend a bit more time playing with the ISO. Thereā€™s defiantly way too much noise in the pictures

Those pictures are amazing, despite the noise that is visible, you should be very proud of what youā€™ve got there using a mini 2.
I use Lightroom on my iPad itā€™s does just what I need for all my nighttime flights, there is a noise reduction mode, all it does is reduce the sharpness within the background but also affects the foreground so, try to get the shot you want exactly the moment itā€™s taken to reduce the amount of time spent editing.
Gotta admit a lot of my photos have all passed through Lightroom, even the professional users will create their perfect shots with editing.