Bill Drones Posted at 2017-6-6 19:04
Wow, that first poster is a straight up d!ck... Get over yourself man! Geez...

You don't need filters for photos because you can change the shutter speed to account for the crazy amount of light you will likely be getting when shooting in the sky, with a drone. You need the filters for when you do video, because you want to keep the shutter speed lower (1/60 - if you shoot 30fps and 1/50 - if you shoot 24fps). You want to use one of these two combinations to create a natural looking motion blur, which is what our human eyes are used to seeing. If you shoot in one of those two fps without an ND filter (sunglasses for your camera), your highlights will be crazy blown out during the day, if you try to keep the shutter in the 1/50-1/60 range. You can raise the shutter to account for the high amount of sunlight, but then your footage is going to look like a soap opera, rather than a movie. That's where the ND filters come in. It allows you to keep a nice, evenly exposed image, and keep your shutter in that Goldilocks zone.

Understood.  I am about to find out...  Tomorrow!  They better be worth the $150.

I got the PGY-Tech 4 pack ND4-32 off eBay and would not be without them now. £30 well spent.

One more of the contents of the box.  The filters are in a decent size container so I don't think I can cram this in the fly more bag.  They give you a cleaning cloth and a polar pro sticker.  They also give you a placard showing their app for determining the right filter to use for the current conditions:

Just a small two photo unboxing:

This is the box as sent:

thehippoz Posted at 2017-6-5 13:12
Yeah, only have uv and cpl here and nd 4-32. Like to see how testing goes on those pl+nd xman. I've been thinking about getting the denoiser 3 from red giant. They have a half off discount for teachers and students. Emailed them about it and they'll give it to retired teachers too.

Rain.  Testing will have to happen tomorrow.  {:4_142:}

thehippoz Posted at 2017-6-5 13:12
Yeah, only have uv and cpl here and nd 4-32. Like to see how testing goes on those pl+nd xman. I've been thinking about getting the denoiser 3 from red giant. They have a half off discount for teachers and students. Emailed them about it and they'll give it to retired teachers too.

This is just an ND16, but it seems to lessen the contrast between light and dark.  I stayed in the area of dark with bright sky in the background for a bit so you can see.

Should have used an ND8, but I am still learning.

Sorry for the jerky cam movement was after contrasty areas:

Hello Xman1,
You captured great pictures without ND Filters. I suggest you ND filters are not mandatory but if you want to improve the quality of picture then definitely try filters. I am using FREEWELL ND filters for my Mavic. They have great stuff.

seeker_ktf_ Posted at 2017-5-30 18:10
It's a little unfortunate but the others speak the truth.  On a clear sunny day new noon. you're going to get a lot of whacky flicker or "jello" without a filter.  It's more or less unavoidable.  I use a polarizing filter all the time now.  Even if there's no need for an ND filter, the polarization part takes a lot of the sky out as well as haze apparent in in the second photo.  In the first grab, the sky is heavily affecting the metering, so that the ground is too dark and the polarizing part will help with that.  It's good over water too.

At the same time, it really depends what you're going for.  If you're really more interested in flying and don't mind the occasional glitch, you probably don't need filters.  You'll want to get habit of setting all of the exposure parameters manually.  It doesn't take a long time to learn.

THUNDERBIRDS GO !!!

During video recording, the purpose of an ND filter is to allow you to decrease the shutter speed sufficiently to introduce some motion blur and make the motion look smoother.  It has no effect on still image quality.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of YouTubers discussing this get it completely wrong. They talk about the brightness, contrast and colour of different image areas.  A truly colour neutral filter will have absolutely no effect on such things. But some of the popular brand filter are not at all neutral. They purposefully alter the colour of the image, and in many circumstances they do make it look nicer (see e.g. warmening here).  A filter that does that isn't an ND filter though. It's a colour filter.  

As for the motion blur effect: there is indeed some improvement, but the effect is rather subtle, especially at YouTube levels of compression.  I challenge anyone who claims that ND filters are absolutely necessary and make a huge difference in quality to show a with/without example recorded with a colour-neutral filter.  There is in fact such an example in this thread, and the difference is barely visible, except where the video is stopped to make the motion blur visible on still frames.

Not necessary, they are personal preference.  

What a thread - interesting to see new Mavic 1 owners working out what ND filters are three to four years ago - glad to see szh hit the nail on the head in the end.