dji mini 3 pro drone fireworks camera settings comparison splitscreen 

Disney shut down my drone.. complained to FAA.. and my family that lives at same address was prevented from entering the park until security came to talk to them. There is a 3 mile no-fly zone centered on The Contemporary Hotel.. and that includes my house. I cannot even fly to inspect my own roof. So.. please check all rules everywhere you go. The DJI app allows you to open a locked zone with a request for a specific area.. even when it should not allow it. I thought since they said yes I was okay. The FAA was very good about it but I needed a zoom call with an agent and promise to ground my drone inside that zone. Last thing.. I have since take fireworks video from a hotel at a similar height as the drone and the description of the fireworks videos tends to show my settings... even thought I don't overlay it on the screen. I say this because the most recent came out very good. And here's a fun trick.. I use Topaz video AI to upscale.. especially if a crop is needed. I can then output to STILLS of X number of frames per second. Then you can take teh stills and overlay them over one another in stacked layers (using the Lighten only option).. and come out with some glorious stuff. Oh.. You do something similar with taken photos will keeping the shutter open.. real hard to do with a drone unless it is very still.. even then the props themselves will move the camera. But timed shots (hyperlapse where you do not move) with long shutter time can look pretty cool too. Color grading the video in Davinci Resolve can do a lot as well. I think you have to pay for the studio version to get DEHAZE fx.. but I think its a very fair price..

Thanks... maybe I'll do a series in portrait mode to get more settings to compare.. summer is hard to get two nights the same conditions

Thanks a lot.. putting up a new one tonight.. 4K 24fps, using an ND64 filter.. EV 0.. pretty dark but check out the colors and tell me what you all think. It is current processing for 4K. Will try to get video with each ND filter.. at least ND32 and ND16 and will stick to EV 0 for now. Then I'll maybe try a timelapse.. hyperlapse is likely a no-go.. very tight window of permission to fly.. can't get into Disney property, nor would I want to. Gotta stick with the digital zoom from a safe distance... be a good drone pilot.

Thank you 🙌

I prefer the one on the right.. ev -1.7.. there really is not autofocus function afaik.. it is infinity.. but the light control in the -EV ranges effects the look quite a bit. Pause the video and look at th parking lot lights in the distance. They are pin-dots on the left and larger blobs on the right. I hate that tungston light color and wish I could take this from the other side.. but that would be on Disney property... no-go. So.. the trick is to find a nice -EV setting that allows in enough light.. but not too much. And down here in Florida.. you get some dry days in the winter with very clear skies.. and that helps. In typical very humid summer (which lasts 6 months or so) each shell burst creates vapor clouds and the light gets spread and muddied and obscures future bursts.. unless it is also windy.. which is not ideal for drones. I may soon do new tests with ND filters.. I tried this early on but did not do a great job with it and though the no-filter look was better.

While I came to answer a new comment I thought I should add to my previous reply.. you do not want a camera doing any kind of continuous autofocus for fireworks. Use the spot/single focus on something you can see well pretty far in the distance... and make sure your exposure looks pretty dark.. I have had many examples where the early fireworks bursts look great and colorful and well exposed.. only for teh grand finale's overlapping bursts to blow out the exposure... too bright. Ideally you shif the EV down a couple notches before the finale... and your chosen focus point works for the fireworks distance. I recall one phone camera (Pixel 3XL) I used from the 2nd floor window shooting the nightly fireworks worked perfectly with a manual focus of INFINITY. Then using the same app (ProShot) on an iPhone.. INFINITY was too far.. and the fireworks were not in focus for the zoom I had chosen. I think Pixel's single lens worked well.. bnut zooming in to 2X+ on the iPhone meant it went to a telephoto lens.. and the manual focus point was not good.

Nice video. I plan on taking video tonight for Canada Day.

@@ospreycove good luck and happy independence day! you may need another independence day soon.. sadly. us too. oh.. and link your results on youtube... love to see em. The general idea is open shutter as long as possible but prevent blow-outs in exposure. So you go low-ISO.. which is the exact opposite as most night-photo stuff you have done... where higher and higher ISO allows in more light but gets noisy and grant fast. So for video on the DJI dones.. the mini 3 pro anyway.. you go as low as possible in FPS.. which is 24.. so the shutter can be open 1/24ths of a second for each frame of the video. If DJI allows a 15FPS I'd try that and try to find settings that kept the shutter open as lone as possible... and knock ISO down and down.. trial and error. One of my somewhat recent videos was a SONY RX100M7 compact camera ona tripod over at The Contemporary Hotel on a 8th floor balcony.. or 6th floor.. hard to know the way they number stuff. Anyway, I was able to get a better video than the DJI is capable of.. larger lens, more settings... but only a f2.8 lens.. DJI mini-3 pro is f1.7 a brighter lens. But larger glass and 1-inch sensor did better.

Drone does not autofocus afaik.. it gets to infinity focus in a short distance.. not sure where it cannot focus for close-up objects but everything from a few feet out is always in focus... not counting motion blur, shakes, etc.