Hi everyone,

I'm new to the Osmo Action.  I recently took video of a tournament I held in a school gymnasium.  I'm unsure what type of lights are in the gym, probably metal halide, or mercury vapour, but i'm unsure.

I recoreded in 4k/24.  My video came out ok, but incredibly grainy.  It was well lit, in terms of the amount of light, and the best thing I can think is that the quality of light was no good.  Has anyone else had experience recording in gym lighting?  If so, is your video grainy?  What did you do about that?

Thanks to anyone with thoughts/suggestions.

Hi. Thank you for reaching out to DJI Forum. With regards to the said issue. I would recommend to please try taking a video or photo in a different well lit location to isolate the issue. If the issue still persists, kindly please provide a short video or photo of the said issue. Please keep us posted for further assistance. Thank you.

I've taken several test videos, both indoors and outdoors.  It appears as though any indoor lighting I am getting very, very grainy video.  I tried 4k/24,30,60.  I film outside, and I get clear video at the same resolution and fps as indoors.

Am I doing something wrong?  Is the Osmo action really this grainy when filming indoors?  Do I need to get professional lighting for indoor filming?  that seems bad for an action camera.  

Is it possible that I'm missing some sort of settings to get more clear footage indoors?

Have you tried limiting the maximum iso value ? If it uses a higher value than it needs it will be more noisy.

But note , none of these cameras will be great in lower light.

It's not low light, it's just indoor light.  I will try limiting the maximum ISO.  Do you have a suggestion for what the limit should be indoors?

Kalamos Posted at 12-13 11:07
It's not low light, it's just indoor light.  I will try limiting the maximum ISO.  Do you have a suggestion for what the limit should be indoors?

Anything that has not a degree of natural light short of being near stage lighting at close quarters would be considered low light. Your eyes have a much wider dynamic range than any camera sensor and will put auto settings on ISO quite high. On such a small sensor, anything from ISO 400 and over is going to start showing grain.  Anything as a light source that looks bright will fade rapidly with distance and is inversely proportional and illumination will drop by half for each doubling of distance.

Yeah I am having the same issue.

My camera has terrible low light performance, here is a test footage I shot at around 4pm, an hour or 2 before the sunset. There is still daylight but the area I am at is considered indoors. I realized I cannot shoot proper footage until 11am if I am indoors, after 4-5pm or if its cloudy. If its a cloudy/dark day even outdoors in open air I get grainy/noisy footage. I am shooting in auto 4K - 24fps. I tried using 800 or 1600 ISO but makes the footage dark and when I edit it and add brightness grainy look comes back.

Doesn't let me post URLs so you can find the test footage on YouTube with the following titles:

1-) Osmo Action low light test - terrible grainy footage
2-) Osmo Action very bad low light performance - super grainy footage

I was hoping to use this camera for vlogging but under these conditions its impossible to use Osmo action since I cannot use it in my apartment, apartment building, elevator, parking place, anywhere that is not taking direct sunlight really. I am very disappointing.

Ray-CubeAce Posted at 2019-12-14 00:19
Anything that has not a degree of natural light short of being near stage lighting at close quarters would be considered low light. Your eyes have a much wider dynamic range than any camera sensor and will put auto settings on ISO quite high. On such a small sensor, anything from ISO 400 and over is going to start showing grain.  Anything as a light source that looks bright will fade rapidly with distance and is inversely proportional and illumination will drop by half for each doubling of distance.

Thats not true at all, im having the same issue with the osmo action 3 as well in indoor low light have ridiculously grainy footage, another simulation with low light conditions with my my GoPro hero 7 black which is now years old, and the camera in the osmo action 3 has a far superior camera and technology now, so we should not be having issues like this right out the box of a new product, outdoor low light is great its only indoor low light thats the Issue.

will say this do not have the light bulbs in the vid or you will get bad vid