The cloud this evening pattern looked promising, so as I got home from work I grabbed my Mavic 2 Pro, went up and started a timelapse. I nearly ran out of battery, but I made it home safe.
A few more details for those who are interested (those who are not can scroll down straight to the YouTube clip):
WHAT WENT RIGHT
I had a little time before the actual sunset, so at least I was able to format my SD card, the thing I kept forgetting to do my last few flights.
I also decided to play it right, so, instead of going into Free Hyperlapse mode I actually switched to the Waypoint mode, went up, recorded my first waypoint slightly to the right of the sunset direction, then went out at about 2/3 of a mile and twice as low (I live on the hillside, so I have a couple hundred feet of a safety cushion before I start scraping the trees and the rooftops on the valley floor), recorded my second waypoint to the left of the sunset, *reversed* the route (VERY IMPORTANT, see below!), saved it to my Library Tasks, and hit GO.
considering my virtually non-existent video-making skills, as well as me utter lack of desire to become a videographer (I'm a still-image capturer by trade, thank you very much!) I decided to stop saving RAW files for the timelapse, as I am not currently able to produce the videos better than in-drone, yet it takes an enormous amount of resources and post-processing time to deal with the individual frames. Maybe later. At this point, I'm happy with ready-to-go MPEG.
Before I started the timelapse, I finally took time to figure out how to adjust the EV compensation in AV-mode, so I was able to adjust it during the timelapse and thus avoided majorly overexposed (blown up) skies.
For still images I switched from RAW+JPEG to RAW only, as I really have no need for out-of-drone JPEGs, thus, again, saving the resources.
Last but not least, I did remember to take bracketed shots (I have chosen 3, not 5, more on this later).
WHAT COULD BE IMPROVED
As this was my very first experiment in a Waypoint Hyperlapse, I got overzealous - again! - and recorded the points way too far apart. I should have watched the indicators probably, or maybe adjust the max speed in the free mode first. Anyway, when I set my WP#2, I realized that the video will take nearly 30 min to take, and I already had only about 20 min left of the battery life, the sunset was in progress, I simply had no time to go back and start fresh. So, I started it off anyway and had to kill it and RTH when there were 5 minutes on the clock. Luckily, since I reverted the route, I was fairly close to home, so when the aircraft went into the panic mode and demanded an immediate landing, it was just a few yards off home point, even if still pretty high up. Anyway, I brought it home safely, with a couple of minutes of flight time still remaining.
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of the reverse route.
With the current dynamic range of the camera and me finally learning drone's EV management I think I can safely switch from bracketed/AEB to a single shot, shoot in RAW, expose to the right and the pull out the shadows in post (if you are not familiar with all those terms, you might need a class or two on the proper landscape photography and advanced camera operations:-).
And now, without any further ado, this evening's time-lapse (panos and HDRs will follow shortly):
Second Officer
Captain
