So spotting the sunset was a good one last night I thought I would see if I could get some decent shots playing with the camera settings, although still not fully understanding what I’m doing. So after using what battery life I had left I put the batteries on charge ready for the next time.
The next time happened to be this morning with the misty sunrise. So out came the drone, ran through the usual checks and just about to take off and thought, hang on a minute the screen on the phone was black. Oh no the camera is broken and not working! So after the old I.T. turn it off and back on again, then checking the cable from phone to controller still a black screen. Then it dawned on me, check the camera settings, DOH! I’d still had the exposure and shutter with settings that meant the screen was black!
So thankfully I did manage to get the sunrise. I’ll post later. But I thought it might be a good lesson to share!
Look forward to the results.
I did a similar thing one night doing a backup of some files on my desktop, turned off the screen saver and the brightness right down so it wouldn’t get screen burn. Next morning, in the lightness, couldn’t work out why the computer wasn’t working, nothing on the screen!
The first time I tried a sunset, I didn’t notice there was no GPS signal for some reason but I did notice a warning about it being too dark to do any visual positioning. So it took off in ATTI mode on a windy evening. Luckily the hedge it flew straight into was soft.
probably because it had not set it’s home point.
You need to always wait until you hear “The Home Point Has Been Updated” before you take off , and fly any distance.
I’ve done that a few times too, still do on occasion when in a hurry to grab a shot. Good thing to do if in doubt is switch the Camera settings to auto and go from there.
Ha - actually, I either forget to use them on my DSLR, or I forget which one is for what. But, normally, DSLR photography is done less in a hurry and it can be more about tweaking all the settings in any case.
With a drone, it’s in the air … the battery has limited life … you don’t want to piss people off by hovering in the one place for too long …. and you want to switch between settings.
I’d use this a lot on my MP. A lot more than my DSLR.
Exactly this . You’re up in the air grabbing sunset or sunrise often enough to have dedicated camera settings stored as an option and likewise for many other situations. We’d have a great idea of which dedicated setting we would need before taking off too which would give us a great starting point.
Lesson no-one taught me (amongst others) until my PFCO was wait until rear led’s (on M2P) are flashing single green once a second, then check GPS for mi of 8 then you can think about taking off
Seems like confession time? The other day I took off with my fpv quad, (which meant I was wearing goggles) I thumbed up the throttle and got to 30 feet but my thumb weirdly slipped over the roll stick with no effect… In the resulting confusion I crashed into a tree.
After taking off my Goggles I saw what the problem was… I still had the stick cover on the right hand stick! Talk about elementary pre-take off checks. The crash involved some more soldering practice so lesson learned!
Just one thought, having experimented with Dronelink. You can easily build a module in it that only adjusts the camera’s settings - no go here, do that, or do the other. Just set the camera?
While we’re on the topic of silly mistakes, a while ago I went out to this viaduct with my old phantom 3 abt 45 min away from home. Got there and set everything up to go then realised there was a problem, no SD CARD! Was still able to fly but couldn’t get any shots obviously. Had to go back at a later date to redo it. Such a stupid mistake
Good thing to do if in doubt is switch the Camera settings to auto and go from there. 
. You’re up in the air grabbing sunset or sunrise often enough to have dedicated camera settings stored as an option and likewise for many other situations. We’d have a great idea of which dedicated setting we would need before taking off too which would give us a great starting point.