Hi Folks,

I received my Mavic 3 a little over a week ago and have done a couple of flights.  So far I'm loving it, but I'll admit I'm a bit rusty as it's been a couple of years since I've flown my M2P.

On the flights I've done so far, I used DLOG and exposed to the right on the histogram, about 2/3 to the right for most of my shots, and according to the screen I saw no overexposure indicators and the histogram I believe did not show any clipping in the highlights.  However, once I pulled the files into Premiere Pro, the highlights are not recoverable.

On my M2P, I remember exposing in DLOG using the histogram and getting overexposure/highlight indicators in the Go 4 app.  I'm new to the fly app - I don't mind it as much as other people seem to, I do miss some elements of Go 4 but I appreciate the clean real estate of Fly and I'm getting used to it.

So what I'm wondering is this:

• For those that have tried, is the histogram working correctly in DLOG?
• If it is working correctly, how do I confidently not over-expose highlights?  I was thinking I could set my exposure using the normal color profile and then just switch over, but that seems like more work than should be necessary.  I think yesterday when I was flying I was somewhere around +2.0 or +3.0 EV, but again I didn't see any overexposure in the histogram (it was cold and I was doing a quick test during my lunch break so I didn't want to run inside and grab the ND filters).
• Unrelated to histograms but related to the Fly app -- is there a way to lock auto focus?  Or do people usually shoot in manual focus with peaking?
  

Sorry if some of these questions are overly basic, I got some great videos with my M2P but mainly only fly on vacations and with COVID I haven't been on vacation for a couple years.  Bringing the M3 to the Caribbean next month so I want to be ready and not come home with disappointing footage.  

Thanks!

1. Yes
2. Expose to about +0.3
3. Not sure what you mean by lock auto-focus. You can use AF and then switch to MF and it should hold the focus point.

KerryG Posted at 11-16 08:07
1. Yes
2. Expose to about +0.3
3. Not sure what you mean by lock auto-focus. You can use AF and then switch to MF and it should hold the focus point.

Thanks Kerry!

For the 3rd point, I was wanting to tap to focus on a point and then not have it change or continue to autofocus while doing a shot.  But that makes sense.

I'll try another flight soon and try exposing closer to +0.3 and see how the shots look.  It's been cold and windy this week but it seems to handle the wind just fine.

Alright I just had a minute to test so I aimed the drone out the window and it seems like the histogram will not go all the way to the edge to show highlight clipping, even if the entire image is washed out white.  Instead I'll just focus on proper exposure and make sure the histogram looks more evenly distributed.  Shaking off the rust, and learning the new system as M3's DLOG is significantly flatter than M2P's.

Chest Rockwell Posted at 11-16 10:08
Alright I just had a minute to test so I aimed the drone out the window and it seems like the histogram will not go all the way to the edge to show highlight clipping, even if the entire image is washed out white.  Instead I'll just focus on proper exposure and make sure the histogram looks more evenly distributed.  Shaking off the rust, and learning the new system as M3's DLOG is significantly flatter than M2P's.

Mate, I've got the same result as you and after my test, there is some conclusion about exposing Dlog on M3 :

1/ no, clearly the histo on DJI Fly is a joke, same as EV info.
2/ after several test, the highlights has really affect with the new Hasselblad color science. Lot of information is put on the middle spectrum so, do no over expose at +1 like the M2P. I found you can underexposed at -0.3 to -2 on the EV assist to got great dynamic, after push to Rec709 with DJI Lut the global is at 0, of you shoot at +0.3 after the rec709 apply you are over ex a lot, like 4 stop.
3/ good question, I've got several issues with AF on the tele lens or with the primary lens because the AF is an AF-C. Impossible to lock on rec like the DJI Go4 app and when you are front on the sun and create some flare... It's a nightmare.

Shikijo Posted at 11-16 14:55
Mate, I've got the same result as you and after my test, there is some conclusion about exposing Dlog on M3 :

1/ no, clearly the histo on DJI Fly is a joke, same as EV info.

Thanks Shikijo for sharing your experience as well.

I did do a flight this afternoon and achieved better, but still peculiar results. I kept the exposure between 0.0 and +1.0, primarily around +0.3. My highlights were much better retained.

However, getting a natural looking image is still more challenging than I would expect it to be. I feel like the mid tones are somehow lacking. But more than anything, I've been noticing purple and blue tint in some of my shots. Specifically red barns with too much purple making the tint of the image look wrong, and then seeing black/gray roofing that has blue and purple tint to it.

I'm following a couple other threads on the matter but I'm starting to consider rolling the dice and returning my drone at best buy and swapping for a new one while I can, to see if maybe I had bad luck on a hardware defect.

Picking up on this thread...

I just picked up the Mavic 3 and immediately run into these issues using D-Log.

The Overexposure Warning (Zebras) do not work.  The clipping point of D-Log seems to be around 85%, but Overexposure Warning only works in Rec.709 (Standard or with Color Display Assist).

I just posted about this to bring it to the attention of DJI's support team.  As-is, D-Log is extremely difficult to use, as the only tool for exposure is the histogram.

The Color Display Assist is based on one of DJI's LUTs, but it underexposes D-Log quite far.  
For best results, and until there's any update, I plan to use D-Log without Color Display Assist or Overexposure Warning (zebras), and just keep the histogram up.  

It's really not ideal.  A firmware update needs to be released.

Zebra, and histogram in Mavic 3 all versions is a joke. the horizon curves while panning and the range is much worse than in the mavic 2. This drone is very underdeveloped :/ I miss my mavic 2 Pro ;(

Hi there, I've just made some test about the Mavic 3 Zebra function. It turned out that it indeed very misleading... since I literally couldn't overexpose the shot....on the controller screen the picture was all over zebra, yet the Histogram didn't show overexposure  and in Premiere Pro the highest peak was at 70%.  So is it safe to say that Zebra should be turned off and we should use histogram  ?

Bump.  I'd still like to see either custom LUTs or the Histogram not affected when in D-Log.