Hello I'm having a big problem with Action 2 turning to black and white the video, I've done an explanatory video but summarizing it happens when exposing correctly to protect the highlights from clipping and recovering the shadows in post then mid-tones colour brakes apart in weird isolated regions and shadows turns black and white leaving the whole image unusable, this doesn't happen with any other normal camera, so please DJI a fix for the Action 2 color is really needed:



To explain it here graphically, I've compared the RAW format (which is what the camera is actually seeing) to what the video format is recording in black and white (both images where underexposed to protect highlights then brightened in post):




More examples:






I've got many videocameras, cheaper and older, and they have no problem at all, so I only ask for a fix for Action 2 to simply make normal video.

Thanks

Hello there Isaac RC. I am sorry for the trouble this has caused and thank you for giving out this information. This matter will be noted and  I will forward this matter to the designated DJI department for attention. Thank you.

DJI Stephen Posted at 5-12 20:18
Hello there Isaac RC. I am sorry for the trouble this has caused and thank you for giving out this information. This matter will be noted and  I will forward this matter to the designated DJI department for attention. Thank you.

I really hope so, as DJI would understand I bought the new top quality videocamera Action 2 months ago and until now I'm still unable to make video.

Does lowering the ISO (to force slower shutter speed) help with this?

I am currently using ISO 100-800 at 24fps with mixed success when shooting in low-light...

I've made a graphic for better understanding of what's exactly going on. With this graphics demonstrates accurately what in the above video was shown: how the Normal and D-cinelike profiles are cutting colour f-stops dynamic range proportional to exposure compensation f-stops (something like -2 exposure comp. = -2 f-stops of colour data loss ).
More over RAW format shows how little of recoverable highlights dynamic range has Action 2 compared to the shadow recoverability (what I consider that would be saveable in extreme shadow recovering conditions), in my opinion shows this camera dynamic range potential it's strong underexposing to protect the highlights.

fish sticks Posted at 5-14 16:25
Does lowering the ISO (to force slower shutter speed) help with this?

I am currently using ISO 100-800 at 24fps with mixed success when shooting in low-light...

No it doesn't solve the white and black colour cut-off problem, during 3 months I've tested everything, including ISO dynamic range which doesn't affect at all.
As described above it's more of a Normal and D-cinelike colour profiles problem combined with Auto Exposure and Exposure Compensation settings, as RAW has no problem at all but Normal and D-cinelike colour profiles are applied at the end of the process just before compression to MP4 video takes place.

Yes, sorry, the ISO / shutter speed suggestion won't help. I was wrongly thinking of how to get more light to have more accurate shadows, but you want to expose for the highlights.

This might be a limitation of the color profiles - they are not log profiles and therefore will loose information in the low end quicker than the SLog footage from your comparison. Maybe the camera processes photos in a more elaborate way than video (well, obviously). Would be interesting if DJI can make improvements for the video part. They have "HDR" modes and log color profiles in some of their drones.

Anyway, congrats on the great work analysing and presenting the problem. That's really helpful!

Well, I seen similar problem, and it happened not only in the shadows.  Here is the comparison of Action 2 in 4k vs Gopro Hero 7 in 2.7k. First - there is clear difference in sharpness, but then the colours... You can see desaturated fence posts and some other areas.

Uncle Longbeard Posted at 6-1 15:55
Well, I seen similar problem, and it happened not only in the shadows.  Here is the comparison of Action 2 in 4k vs Gopro Hero 7 in 2.7k. First - there is clear difference in sharpness, but then the colours... You can see desaturated fence posts and some other areas.

[view_image]

About your picture, it looks like you used the Normal profile for the Action 2, I prefer to use it as well for underexposing as it has a little more colour integrity than D-cinelike, and also I see very washed out clouds in the highlights, a cloudy day diffused light is much more forgiving with exposure problems. The other action camera colour science looks more flat, not desaturated, actually more natural and pleasing shadow rollof, I'm owner of a 9 and shoot everything at -2 E.V. at daylight with gorgeous results with no highlights problems or shadow artefacts but of course the expected noise ratio that should be from any small sensor.

Isaac RC Posted at 6-1 16:36
Yeah but my problem occurs when recovering shadows in challenging exposures like a backlight sunny day from inside a forest, which by the way is a very common situation for an actiona cam, the scene natural contrast is so high that protecting the highlights a.k.a. lowering the auto exposure is a must otherwise looks absolutely crappy artefacts of clipped highlights, I've tried hard man but with the Normal / D-cinelike already high fixed contrast it's one or the other and not only is easier to hide in post shadows artefacts but as shown in the graph above the camera has more dynamic range/ detail recoverability in the shadows.
About your picture, it looks like you used the Normal profile for the Action 2, I prefer to use it as well for underexposing as it has a little more colour integrity than D-cinelike, and also I see very washed out clouds in the highlights, a cloudy day diffused light is much more forgiving with exposure problems. The other action camera colour science looks more flat, not desaturated, actually more natural and pleasing shadow rollof, I'm owner of a 9 and shoot everything at -2 E.V. at daylight with gorgeous results with no highlights problems or shadow artefacts but of course the expected noise ratio that should be from any small sensor.

Nope, it's was shot in D-cinelike and graded to make it lookalike as gopro. Basically some colours there are missing and I suspect it's a part of the same issue as yours.

Uf DJI color profiles are contrasty. The problem may also come when using such a high contrast profiles with an auto exposure in an extreme wide angle lens, you can check how when auto exposure is clipping hard in a scene only to make a zoom-in the exposure doesn't clip anymore because it's excluding the natural contrast that an extreme wide angle encompass in average.

Uncle Longbeard Posted at 6-6 08:38
Nope, it's was shot in D-cinelike and graded to make it lookalike as gopro. Basically some colours there are missing and I suspect it's a part of the same issue as yours.

So, in the images in your post above, you have graded the Action 2 footage and couldn't get it to match the GoPro?

You can probably get closer by boosting the red, or by playing with the overall saturation (not sure if increasing or decreasing will bring the red back in).

fish sticks Posted at 6-6 13:39
So, in the images in your post above, you have graded the Action 2 footage and couldn't get it to match the GoPro?

You can probably get closer by boosting the red, or by playing with the overall saturation (not sure if increasing or decreasing will bring the red back in).

nope, I graded both to look similar or meet in between if you prefer that.  
The problem is that DJI A2 profile is cutting out the saturation on some darker areas, therefore it's impossible to recover it unless you want B&W footage, while gopro have no problem whatsoever. So in simple words - it doesn't matter where the problem is,  because one company can clearly address that problem, while the other cannot...

And actually my grade on that clip doesnt't matter as the simple fact is - Action 2 is missing colour on that fence, GOPRO is not. It is already missing on ungraded footage.

DJI does provide full range color but with their D-log profile which inexplicably for the Action 2 seems to be reserved only for their high-end drones. The only reason to desaturate shadows and highlights is to avoid color "artifacts" and chromatic noise so DJI can present a cleaner and color corrected image to their customers, which is ok but not when one is underexposing to avoid highlights clipping, we could agree this is basic photography, which would be avoided for starers with a D-log and at the very least preserve more color information in the shadows as a log state is lower in contrast.

Desaturated shadows at it's best. I use plenty of other camera brands and never seen it anywhere else. Good job DJI ;)

I have no cameras from other brands to do a comparison but I've noticed the issue in quite a few shots, and I think it is really a major issue for an action camera that should be fixed as soon as possible. Is disappointing that we are getting only standard answers from DJI like in post #2. The detail is there but the video mode desaturates it, so I guess and hope that it can be fixed with a firmware update

Eagle88 Posted at 4-24 00:00
I have no cameras from other brands to do a comparison but I've noticed the issue in quite a few shots, and I think it is really a major issue for an action camera that should be fixed as soon as possible. Is disappointing that we are getting only standard answers from DJI like in post #2. The detail is there but the video mode desaturates it, so I guess and hope that it can be fixed with a firmware update

It's difficult to do a better comparison than this video of Uncle Longbeard: nothing complicated two different brand new action cameras side to side out on a real world situation and how A2 struggles in broad daylight where the other simply delivers a "good enough" video with the possibility of continuing improving it in a video editor.
In his video Action 2 performed with less dynamic range creating unnecessary over-contrast and highlight clipping, not that it lacks dynamic range, as proven above this camera has more than enough dynamic range to avoid clipping skies but D-cinelike and Normal color profiles are cooked with too much unnecessary contrast for an action camera that it's going to be exposed constantly to moving exposure contrast variations meaning the best chance of exposing "good enough" is a color profile with a less contrast cooked-in that covers for a wider exposure situations. Color profiles are just that custom adjustments like contrast that can be improved if needed but of course that can only be done by DJI.
The contrast problem in turn creates the awkward desaturation artefacts situation when anyone attempts to compensate for the Normal/D-cinelike contrast limitations: the image ended too dark or by underexposing to protect highlights then when increasing the exposure in a video editor reveals the black and white artefacts in the shadows. That is non other than the nature of 8-bit color compression, all the cameras would brake an image when pushed that far, the simple solution is preserving shadow/highlight detail by not cooking so much contrast avoiding that extreme breakage in the video editor when attempting to save the video. On other hand the desaturation is a DJI unique thing, I haven't seen it in any other camera brands, it's how DJI chose to handle the shadows and actually it's something that it's often done by professional colorists in moviemaking, but applied to an 8-bit color compressed video of a wide-angle action camera with exposure problems caused by a too heavy contrast and it only makes the video much much less salvageable with that 8-bit strong and very obvious color cut artefacts.