I always wondered how Sofia Church looked from above during the night. Tonight when heavy clouds hovered above the whole area it was a time to found out…
After so many days with bad weather, heavy winds and rain your mood drops a bit. Tonight we had a light rain with almost no wind at all. Me and Rostam decided to visit Sofia Church at rainy night and see howe our drones behave in low light.
Most of the people fly during the daylight when drones and camera produces the best results. Considering s small sensor on my camera I wasn’t expecting any spectacular results. Even so during the night drone sensors which help you to not a crash your drone wouldn’t work as well. I those situations you as a pilot have much higher responsibility than usually.
Sofia Church at rainy night looked magnificent from above
You probably wonder if it was possible for me to see my drone up in the dark sky? I asked my self the same question before I took off. This part of the island of Södermalm where the church was located has a huge park around. Usually most of the huge cities has plenty of street lights and other lights sources. All this creates light polluted areas. Here around we had little bit darker sky because of the huge park area. On the other hand we had a plenty of free space to fly when we pass cthe zone of the huge trees.
We decided to take opposite parts of the park to avoid collision. I was standing on the grass area (on the left side from photo above) with some flat stones exposed. I wanted to take off from stone area to avoid the wet grass. Soon after I was in the air…
DJI Mavic Air and high ISO performance
Heavy clouds reflected the city lights as our benefit and created even more light pollution. I was expecting to photograph at the highest ISO and very long exposure to catch something but… it wasn’t so at all.
My start ISO was 800 and around 1 second exposure. I saw that it wasn’t enough to pull all details and then I higher it up to ISO 1000 and all the way to 1600. As you probably know my drone has fixed aperture at F/2.8 and thats the reason I never mention it.
As an experienced pro photographer with 20 years of experience I know that post processing would be even more important. I had to stitch all panoramas and try to get as more as possible details without to over done it. Those small sensor you cant push so much as DSLR full frame sensors thats a fact. Even so at the high ISO as photographed this time.
As you can see on my photos here I succeeded to preserve good details and light up enough for you to see the whole city and Sofia Church. I was pleased with final results considering my low expectations. Heaving the RAW files give you a lot of work space to recover details in both light and dark areas. Rostam on the other hand has only jpg possibilities on his DJI Spark and need to do a magic…
Leave a Reply