today i want to show you a super simple and easy way you can pick
the right nd filter for your dji mini 3 or your mini 2 or pretty much any drone
hey my name is jake and i create content here to help solo creators on the go so i test and
review lots of drones cameras lenses filmmaking equipment here in alaska and i'll give you tips
and tutorials on how to use them so you can tell better stories if that's something that interests
you consider subscribing today i want to show you a really easy way that you can pick the right nd
filter for your drone and then pretty much be good and this works with pretty much any drone
it's just a way to figure out which nd filter you need to use based on the conditions you're flying
in the easiest way to find the right nd filter is set your settings for the drone for what you want
them now i'll explain a little bit more about this later on but really what you want is your shutter
speed should be two times your frame rate so if you're filming in 4k 30 you want your shutter
speed at 1 over 60 and then you want to keep your iso as low as possible especially on smaller
drones and smaller sensors the lower iso is best so set your iso at 100 and then we're gonna see
what sort of nd filter we need from there so this is the right shutter speed for what you want to do
but obviously it's way too bright so what we're going to do is just grab an nd filter and put
it on there and see what sort of difference it makes now this is the nd16 and obviously
it's it's probably not going to be strong enough but we'll start with this and see how that looks
it's all right obviously already you can see that it's better but it's still not where we want it so
now we're going to go stronger and pretty much honestly i think it's going to be an nd 64. so
here we have the nd64 i'm going to put it on and you see that it's pretty good now it's still a
little bright but we can always move the shutter speed up just a little bit to like one over eighty
or something like that so we'll move this up to one over eighty and maybe one over a hundred
so it's not perfect but i don't have anything stronger than an nd 64. i mean i have an nd 1000
that would be way too dark for this but you can see here that in bright light in this case even
with a little bit of clouds an nd 64 is pretty much necessary now some clouds have moved in
so the lighting has changed pretty dramatically from what we were filming in before and you can
see here the nd 64 is way too dark so there's two things we can do we can either raise the iso like
that and get the proper exposure for the footage that we want to get but the problem is with small
drones pretty much any drone as soon as you start raising the iso very far you get a lot more noise
so it's better to take the nd filter off and put on one that's a little less strong and again we're
going to do the same thing we did before which is basically set our settings where we want them and
then see which nd filter is going to be right and as you do this more and more you'll get a feeling
for the kind of lighting that you're in and the strength nd filter you want to use plus at the end
of the video i'll give you some general guidelines for what nd filter will be good for what types of
conditions so here i went down to an nd8 but that wasn't quite dark enough because as soon as you
start looking at the sky it's actually still kind of bright up with all the clouds diffusing the
light so i ended up with an nd16 and that might be a tiny bit dark but it does give me some leeway
to be able to raise the iso to 200 and still be fine or to be able to bump the shutter speed to
maybe one over 80 and still be fine so it gives me a little bit of leeway to either side now that
i've shown you a couple different situations of picking the right nd filter for whatever situation
you're filming in i want to tell you why you need to set your settings up on the drone the way i've
showed you and let's start with the iso iso at 100 basically gives you the cleanest picture quality
possible it means there's no noise the higher you go in iso especially when you start hitting 400
800 1600 definitely the image starts to fall apart and you get a lot of noise now on these drones
you can definitely split the difference and stick around iso 100 to 200 that's no problem so if your
nd filter is a little dark it's not a big deal to just bump your iso up to 200 but
you want to keep it as low as possible as a rule of thumb and then we come to shutter speed
and this has been hotly debated in my comments recently but basically what we're trying to do
is match the natural motion blur that your eyes see when you move something fast in front of your
face so if you shake your hand like that you'll see your fingers sort of blur together we want to
match that as closely as possible with our cameras our drones so that it doesn't make our brains kind
of try and figure out what's going on and that will lead to a stuttery uh sort of weird feeling
image where it feels jittery and stuttery as you can see here when we pause it obviously everything
in the frame is very sharp and very much like an individual photo was taken for every single frame
and that's what gives you that jittery stuttery feeling but if you put on the proper settings like
i've showed you where your shutter speed is two times your frame rate and your iso is nice and low
at 100 or 200 and then you run through you can see here everything when we pause it is a little
bit blurred where it's moving fast so everything toward the edges of the frame is a little blurry
the center is still nice and sharp because that's something we're flying toward but everything
else that's in motion is blurry and that's what matches what our eyes see naturally in the world
and that's why we want to match it that's why we're always telling you and me and many others
who are doing any filter reviews or talking about any filters or telling you put your shutter speed
at two times your frame rate to get that proper looking motion blur another question i get asked
a lot is what about polarized filters when you use polarized filters and polarized filters are really
useful in photography if you want to get rid of or cut the glare off surfaces of water like this
but they're also useful for controlling how much saturation you have in the blue in the sky or the
green coming from trees and other vegetation so as you can see here without a polarized filter
there's a lot of reflection on the water and it really sort of i mean it's not bad it just looks
like really a very highly reflective surface but then if we put on a polarized filter and
polarize it correctly where it's oriented toward the sun and this takes just a little bit of time
to play with you basically line the drone up the direction you're gonna fly and rotate the filter
until you see the picture change the way you want it to look when you're flying that direction
but now that we've got a polarized filter on there you can see that there's way less reflection
on the water and also if you look in the blue parts of the sky you can see that that sky looks
a little bit more blue and a little bit more saturated than it did without the polarizing
filter guidelines for nd filters are pretty simple and pretty basic you want to use nd32 to nd64 in
bright conditions so sunlit days snow filming over bright surfaces anything like that nd32 or nd64 is
what you're going to want to use nd64 pretty much on the mini 3 because it has such a large aperture
when it's cloudy or overcast that's when you're going to want to use nd8 to nd16 somewhere in
there depends on how cloudy it is if it's really dark and overcast like stormy nd8 probably if it's
not then nd16 nd4 is something you're going to want to use if you're filming things like sunsets
because you do need some nd filter but you don't want a lot of nd filter especially if you're going
to be up there while the sun is actually setting nd4 is pretty much the sweet spot for anything
just before and just after sunrise and just before and just after sunset now if you have
questions ask me in the comments but next you need to check out this video so you can learn the seven
drone moves that me and other professionals use on pretty much every shoot i'll see you over there