I'm on the verge of ordering a Mavic Mini, my first drone.

One of my main questions is will it work at night? Auto exposure in video sounds like night time might be a problem or even impossible.


I've searched for video of someone using the mini at night, cant find anything.

My other option is the Mavic Air but that's above my budget and from reading the forum it sounds like it might be discontinued soon.

Can somebody with more experience share some knowledge on if the Mini will be able to capture anything usable at night?

In general, a very small sensor won't give pleasing results in dark situations.
But that is probably no news for you.
I tried flying my Mavic Pro in dark conditions.
It flies perfectly, but the video output is noisy as .... and completely unusable for my standards.
Now I have seen Mavic 2 Pro (with a slightly larger sensor) give nice video output (better) but I'm not sure how much post processing is done to get there.
Also note that it only works in area's where there is enough artificial lighting to get something nice out of it.

So I feel the M2P is the only one of the Mavic range that will allow for some decent video output.
Not having manual controls will make it even harder, as the auto exposure average will be way way way too high for night situations.
Now if it has EV compensation (I can't find it yet), you might have a tool to help with that.
But if night time videography is your thing, I would definitely wait for real users video's (not the ones that are send one for reviewing) to see how it performs.  

PS, Mavic Air has the same small sensor and is also struggling with low light situations.
Although you can control the camera, so the end result will look better.

I have a refurbished Mavic Air and flown at night. Still images are pretty good, but the video was as Peter (Monyfrooij) said noisy and not really useable. I found night flying to be terrifying initially, if it’s your first drone, strongly suggest a lot of practice in daylight first so that your control inputs are intuitive. At night the return to home feature is useful in bringing the drone back towards your location before I manually land it. At night, it is easier to get a little less sure of the drone’s orientation. Good luck whatever you choose. I had a Spark for a year, and the difference ibetween the Air is night and day! Chris

I'm not 100% sure but from what I remember the mini does not have orientation lights.
That might be something to check because you need them to fly min darker conditions.
(some countries even require that)

Thanks for the responses.

It's essential to have the lowest possible ISO when shooting at night, while bumping the shutter speed to get enough light. If we can't control this, like you've said, the video will probably be noisy

I just can't afford the pro drones.

Montfrooij Posted at 11-3 23:54
I'm not 100% sure but from what I remember the mini does not have orientation lights.
That might be something to check because you need them to fly min darker conditions.
(some countries even require that)

There's a flashing red light on the center read of the Mini.

DAFlys Posted at 11-4 07:11
There's a flashing red light on the center read of the Mini.

But not in the front right?

Dirty Bird Posted at 11-4 09:15
DJI drones achieve excellent results at night & I don't expect the Mavic Mini to be any different.  I expect you'll get results similar to these Mavic Pro videos recorded in full-auto.  No post video processing was done on these videos.

https://youtu.be/lWvD3CFXxRM

Hey thanks for this, very reassuring, I could certainly work with footage like that!

Hi Paulsusnet, thank you for the inquiry. Regarding flying the DJI Mavic Mini at night time, I would recommend flying the drone  in your line of sight, because the said drone, does not support obstacle avoidance. In addition please use the DJI Mavic Mini with the 360 degree propeller guard to fully protect the drone and it's propeller and to improve flight safety. In addition, the camera has the Auto mode and M mode. When the camera is in the Auto mode, users can adjust the EV (exposure value) manually, as well as enable or disable AE (automatic exposure). When the camera is in the M mode, users can manually set the ISO and shutter speed. The aperture is fixed to f/2.8. Thank you.

This drone will be about as good as a Spark at night, maybe a tad worse.

Dirty Bird, really enjoyed each of those, thanks for putting in the efforts and sharing them here.  Truly something to see.

Thanks, Dirty Bird. Extraordinary flights. Beautiful flight course and lighting. Thanks for sharing.

i crashed my mini actually going from one well lit room to dark room. sensors lost fix while i wasn't paying attention lol

djiuser_rYqL2R5IvL76 Posted at 11-4 12:52
i crashed my mini actually going from one well lit room to dark room. sensors lost fix while i wasn't paying attention lol

Im surprised the Mini started to arrive already.

Montfrooij Posted at 11-3 23:54
I'm not 100% sure but from what I remember the mini does not have orientation lights.
That might be something to check because you need them to fly min darker conditions.
(some countries even require that)

They are easy and cheap to add. The biggest issue, spart from lack of low light video quality will be that due to the small sensor you wont see much on your screen.

*DM* Posted at 11-5 01:00
They are easy and cheap to add. The biggest issue, spart from lack of low light video quality will be that due to the small sensor you wont see much on your screen.

Yeah, that is true!

Nighttime video with Mavic Mini

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAFTRJoVdy8&feature=youtu.be

Keep movement to a minimum.

The image quality at night is not so good,  the videos are too dark, and there is no way to improve that. For the images there is both EV compensation and manual control, but of course it doesn't help if there is not enough light, the results are too noisy.
In one of my night flights, the drone suddenly started running away to the side without any control input. No idea what happened, the GPS signal was very strong and it was after compass calibration. It almost crashed into the wall after running away for 20 meters (the video shows distance increasing).
In short, be very careful  when flying at night, the drone cannot be trusted in such conditions.

One cool thing to try would be a night time lapse, with longer shutter speed, it wont be a real video but it gives you that night time shot cleaner, also since the pictures are 4K a lot of stabilization could be done in post.
I have to try some of this myself even during day light.

Dirty Bird Posted at 11-4 09:15
DJI drones achieve excellent results at night & I don't expect the Mavic Mini to be any different.  I expect you'll get results similar to these Mavic Pro videos recorded in full-auto.  No post video processing was done on these videos.

https://youtu.be/lWvD3CFXxRM

Nice! Camera settings?

are you allowed to flight at night time ? do you need a waiver or the 107 cert?

My Mavic Mini is loosing the GPS and showing (3008 error) and notifying not o fly as it is dark. Moreover when i ignored the message it was totally manageable with the RC which is not so comfortable in tiny places. In case someone faced such issue please reply back. Thanks

low light test from last night, was shot at aprox 20:30 in uk

Bezik Posted at 4-7 09:44
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Rgg3f7qX5E

low light test from last night, was shot at aprox 20:30 in uk

Hi, nice video! Were you in sport mode? I tried with a similar light and my mavic mini took off and headed for the nearest wall. Luckily it survived. I packed up and called it a night. I’m worried it might happen again. How did the drone look in that light. Was it well lit?

Thanks

Andy

djiuser_6b8XN4ekVBRX Posted at 4-9 15:00
Hi, nice video! Were you in sport mode? I tried with a similar light and my mavic mini took off and headed for the nearest wall. Luckily it survived. I packed up and called it a night. I’m worried it might happen again. How did the drone look in that light. Was it well lit?

Thanks

hi Andy, no i was in P mode, was just a quick flight to check if i could minimise a green colour shift i was getting on low light vids. Yeah the mini was visible from the small light on its back end. that sounds dodgey/scary with the mini loosing control, might be worth uploading the flight log on this site https://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/Upload/ to see if you can spot any errors the mini was showing when this happened.

At least photos are great with MM. Even in stong wind I was able to get good result with 2 and 4 sec. exposure.

Is there any word on how night flying is now with the new firmware update with manual video controls?

I don't believe it can make much of a difference as you need max-ISO to keep up with the frame rate.

What's new is that you can ideally under mixed lighting conditions keep the ISO lower to help clean the (motion) picture a bit more, providing you're focused on stronger discrete light sources.

As for the light gathering the advantage the novelty is 24 fps (but you could still use 25 fps before) which allows a slight but noticeable increase of the shutter speed, resulting in a bit more light gathered.