Robharris07
 lvl.2
United States
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Someone posted this on my comment. Really good stuff:
I have written some longer comments with tips in this community. You can probably find them yourselves (I don't have time to find the links right now). Also, look up Jim Hare's Inspire 1 YouTube (or Vimeo?) videos explaining about videography with the DJI quadcopters. But let me give you a few quick pointers (in no particular order):
Tips for flying and shooting video
SMOOTH: As you noticed, it looks best, when movements are really really really smooth and slow. This is difficult to achieve with default settings.
EXPO & GAIN: In MC Settings -> Gain & Expo Tuning, changes the graphs so they are 0.30, which will mean that when you first touch the stick a little, it will almost not do anything (for slow fine movement). When you move the stick further, it will 'accelerate' how much stick is used, if that makes sense? Also, below in "Gain", consider lowering them a bit, especially "Yaw" (rotating) for those smoother and slower yaw movements.
MAKE STICKS LONGER: On the Remote Control itself, you can make the sticks longer, for further precision. You can in fact screw the little tops of the sticks off/loose and make the sticks short or longer. If they are longer (if you have long enough fingers to be comfortable) it will be easier to make fine adjustments for that buttery smooth movement we love in aerial videography
GIMBAL: Change the Gimbal speed! (Lower it). By default it is quite fast - which is fine to "look around". But it does not look good in video. I put mine about 50 or 60. But I also change the EXPO of the Gimbal so it moves really really slowly if I put in a little imput in the dial (front left) and increase speed if I move more. That makes it possible to make smooth gimbal movements that ease-in and ease-out. Takes some training - but these settings really help.
FLYING: Try to be as smooth as possible (did I mention this already? ). It helps to "follow thru" if you want to do a move, and try to plan it in advance. This (also) takes training - but thats part of the fun
Tips for videography
LOG-mode, DYNAMIC RANGE: To get the maximum dynamic range (detail in dark and light areas of the image) I shoot in LOG-mode. This is a more "flat" profile that looks dull and unsaturated and without contrast. This is then - with greater freedom - added (colorgrading) in post-production in your editing software. I also tweak the Custom Style to 0 sharpness (default) -2 saturation, -2 contrast to get an even more flat looking image. There are some problems with this; it looks boring straight out of the camera, and also on the monitor/iPad when you film. I live with this in order to get the maximum quality in the end-product.
SHOOT IN MANUAL: in order for the camera not to do a lot of 'ugly' switching of the light (up and down) when the light changes, you can turn on Manual mode (the button with 3 sliders under the Shutter Button). Use ISO 100 (best) when there is enough light (almost always unless after sunset) and set the shutter-speed to where the light looks good. Make sure you have turned on "Exposure Warning" which then makes "zebra stripes" on the areas of the image that is blown out (100% white meaning no detail that can never be returned in postproduction). Some zebras are okay and unvoidable. You just want to avoid the (whole) sky being fully blown out etc.
SHUTTER SPEED: This brings me to the mystery of shutter speed in video. In photography fast shutter speed is generall good. Less shaking, sharp images. But in video it is our enemy because high shutterspeed makes us lose motion-blur which helps the brain think the video is very fluid at 24-30 fps (less of a problem if shooting in 60fps). If the shutterspeed is up around 400 or maybe 1200, the 30 frames per second each becomes very sharp. that might sound good (and is if you want to grab stills out of your video). But when there is movement in the video, it will appear stuttery/choppy/staccato. Thats not what we want. We want smooth, remember? In fact, a rule of thumb is, that the shutterspeed in video should be about 2x the framerate. So if you film at 30 fps, shutterspeed at 60 will be good for some natural looking motionblur. This is impossible in daylight or sunlight without a filter. And that is why people (myself included) experiment with ND-filters. ND-filters (Neutral Density) are grey filters that cut out an even amount of all wavelenghts of light so the shutter has to stay open longer in order to get enough light to expose each frame correctly. With an ND-filter we can get shutter-speed down. This is a third-party thing for now for the P3. ND-filters (lowering shutterspeed) can also help alleviate the dreaded "jello"-effect that some people (with unbalanced props etc.) suffer from. Thankfully the P3 is so well built that this is rarely a problem. But it can be. And an ND-filter is part of the solution. Personally, my motivation for experimenting with ND-filters is to get motionblur. However, you can work around this problem - again by being really smooth If you don't move the camera around a lot or move fast, you won't notice the problem form the high shutterspeed so much (the lack of motion blur).
COMPRESSION and GRASS: The video we get from our Phantoms is compressed (with the h.264 codec). So we should be aware that certain things can cause some ugly artifacts. Again, fast movement or panning og tilting the gimbal up and down (fast) can cause blockyness and artifacts in the videostream. Our 4K records in 60 bit which is good, but in the world of professional digital video, it is a bit low. So we have to work with that. In fact, you show some of the really difficult "problem-scenes" in your video. Filming grass, tall grass, large areas of similar color but with a bunch of tiny detail, is worst case for the P3-camera. So we should be aware of this, and plan accordingly. If we film that sort of thing, again being slow and smooth helps a lot. Don't pan (only very very slowly) or you risk the image 'collapsing' into a green mushy mess of blockyness. We would like to avoid this So be careful if that sort of thing fills up a large part of the frame.
SMOOTH MOVES: In general what looks good is smooth moves. Like you already do in your video. A flyby (also try going backwards where in fact you can have the camera pointing more up and flying faster without getting the props in the frame) where you don't correct your directly or only do it very smoothly, almost always works well. Mix in a little smooth gimbal movement, and it looks like a million dollars
Guess I could not help myself and ended up writing a small book for you. Hope you can glean some useful information from it |
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lvl.3
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). It helps to "follow thru" if you want to do a move, and try to plan it in advance. This (also) takes training - but thats part of the fun 
In fact, a rule of thumb is, that the shutterspeed in video should be about 2x the framerate. So if you film at 30 fps, shutterspeed at 60 will be good for some natural looking motionblur. This is impossible in daylight or sunlight without a filter. And that is why people (myself included) experiment with ND-filters. ND-filters (Neutral Density) are grey filters that cut out an even amount of all wavelenghts of light so the shutter has to stay open longer in order to get enough light to expose each frame correctly. With an ND-filter we can get shutter-speed down. This is a third-party thing for now for the P3. ND-filters (lowering shutterspeed) can also help alleviate the dreaded "jello"-effect that some people (with unbalanced props etc.) suffer from. Thankfully the P3 is so well built that this is rarely a problem. But it can be. And an ND-filter is part of the solution. Personally, my motivation for experimenting with ND-filters is to get motionblur. However, you can work around this problem - again by being really smooth