Camera Settings cheat sheet

[Pipeliner_USA]

I am someone who has never dabbled whatsoever in photography outside of smart phone filters, so advanced video settings have been frustrating and hard to remember what does what. This has helped me so I wanted to share.

 

[Pipeliner_USA]

This also is a good cheater

 

[chrismartin3391]

Thank you for this. I'm in the same boat. This will help a lot. Great post

 

[Meta4]

I am someone who has never dabbled whatsoever in photography outside of smart phone filters, so advanced video settings have been frustrating and hard to remember what does what. This has helped me so I wanted to share.

The effect of stopping down the diaphragm isn't so really making images sharper.
You can have pin sharp images taken with a wide-open aperture.
It's about increasing the depth of field - the distance behind and in front of the focus point that will also be in focus.

BUT ... the amount of depth of field also varies a lot with the lens design.
Longer lenses have a very small DoF while very wideangle lenses have loads of DoF.
With the wideangle lens on your Phantom depth of field isn't really a concern.
Here are some numbers to show that it has a load of DoF at any aperture.

At f2.8 and focused at 50 feet - everything from 12ft - infinity is in focus
At f5.6 and focused at 50 feet - everything from 6ft - infinity is in focus
At f11 and focused at 50 feet - everything from 3ft - infinity is in focus

You won't ever have a DoF concern unless you are shooting subjects 2 or 3 metres away.
For general aerial photography where everything in the picture is distant, it doesn't make much difference.

 

[FlashBuddy]

Stopping down the lens (smaller aperture) uses less of the lens glass (plastic?). In some cases, depending on the physics of your lens, this can help reduce distortion, reduce lens flare, cteate starburst effect off of bright points and generally facilitates a sharper image. As it turns out, closing down the lens (smaller aperture) sharpens the image - to a point. As you continue closing it down, difraction increases, creating cool starburst effect as you shoot into the sun, but also diffuses the image (blur).

Testing the lens to find optimal aperture is fun and easy. Simply take shots of the same subject under the same lighting condition; one shot per aperture setting (f-stop).

 

[Pipeliner_USA]

Stopping down the lens (smaller aperture) uses less of the lens glass (plastic?). In some cases, depending on the physics of your lens, this can help reduce distortion, reduce lens flare, cteate starburst effect off of bright points and generally facilitates a sharper image. As it turns out, closing down the lens (smaller aperture) sharpens the image - to a point. As you continue closing it down, difraction increases, creating cool starburst effect as you shoot into the sun, but also diffuses the image (blur).

Testing the lens to find optimal aperture is fun and easy. Simply take shots of the same subject under the same lighting condition; one shot per aperture setting (f-stop).

Thanks for taking the time to explain that stuff. Big help.

I have a question... what settings should I leave alone and not mess with to allow me the most flexibility afterwards in editing software? I am an Adobe Creative Cloud subscriber (for InDesign) so I just activated free trials of Lightroom and Premiere. I had absolutely NO idea how powerful some simple changes to exposure/hues/etc in Lightroom could be. Sure beats iPhone filters, haha.

Thanks in advance.

 

[androidrobo]

Everyone loves cheat sheets, and photographers are no exception. Squeezed into a set of short tips, schemes, and definitions, a cheat sheet is a quick way to learn something, as well as refresh your knowledge about any particular subject.

 

[FlashBuddy]

Thanks for taking the time to explain that stuff. Big help.

I have a question... what settings should I leave alone and not mess with to allow me the most flexibility afterwards in editing software? I am an Adobe Creative Cloud subscriber (for InDesign) so I just activated free trials of Lightroom and Premiere. I had absolutely NO idea how powerful some simple changes to exposure/hues/etc in Lightroom could be. Sure beats iPhone filters, haha.

Thanks in advance.

Uh, Are we talking videos or stills? I'm not sure this is something I want to tackle. There are oodles of threads and YouTube videos on what settings to use to preserve the most detail so one can reveal it as they like in post production. Where one user will set the camera sharpness, contrast and saturation to minus 1 or minus 2, others prefer to leave them at 0.

Check out this video by Tom (Tom's Tech). He's pretty good, easy to watch and knowledgeable. Tom says: "In the main camera settings choose "Style", click "Custom" and set it to "Sharpness -3", "Contrast -2" and "Saturation -2" to avoid a moirée effect and make the image look more flat for more grading options in Post-Pro.

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The most common recommendation for fast easy improvements is to add a circular polarizing neutral density filter after removing the camera's protective glass; Polar Pro is the brand most often mentioned.

Currently I have my settings at default and instead of spending hours in Da Vinci Resolve I've been shooting Normal or Vivid and just slamming it up onto YouTube (depending upon the project). If somebody is paying good money, I'll spend a lot of time in Resolve
Here is straight from the drone; no color grading (color grading = tweaking all manor of hue, saturation, contrast etc. in post production).

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[chrismartin3391]

Uh, Are we talking videos or stills? I'm not sure this is something I want to tackle. There are oodles of threads and YouTube videos on what settings to use to preserve the most detail so one can reveal it as they like in post production. Where one user will set the camera sharpness, contrast and saturation to minus 1 or minus 2, others prefer to leave them at 0.

Check out this video by Tom (Tom's Tech). He's pretty good, easy to watch and knowledgeable. Tom says: "In the main camera settings choose "Style", click "Custom" and set it to "Sharpness -3", "Contrast -2" and "Saturation -2" to avoid a moirée effect and make the image look more flat for more grading options in Post-Pro.

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
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Accept third party cookies

The most common recommendation for fast easy improvements is to add a circular polarizing neutral density filter after removing the camera's protective glass; Polar Pro is the brand most often mentioned.

Currently I have my settings at default and instead of spending hours in Da Vinci Resolve I've been shooting Normal or Vivid and just slamming it up onto YouTube (depending upon the project). If somebody is paying good money, I'll spend a lot of time in Resolve
Here is straight from the drone; no color grading (color grading = tweaking all manor of hue, saturation, contrast etc. in post production).

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This video is far more better than anything straight from my bird. P3A. My videos usually have what appears to be lines that go from top to bottom. Likes it's refreshing or something. I'm still new to this so trying to figure it out as well