How To Use Neutral Density Filter Drone

ND (Neutral Density) Filters should exist a key accompaniment in the backpack of every content creator who uses a drone.

Easy to use and able to produce beautiful imagery, it is easy to empathize why ND Filters are a popular add-on to any aerial photographer or videographer's kit.

Indeed, DJI drones are compatible with a range of ND Filters, including the new Mavic 3, which can be used with two sets of ND Filters. PolarPro is also set to release new filters for the Mavic 3 in Dec.

The true value of ND filters is also epitomised past the new DJI Ronin 4D, which comes with the powerful Zenmuse X9 camera with a built in 9-stop physical ND filter for shooting in dissimilar lighting conditions.

Simply what are ND Filters, how do they work and how do they make your aerial photography ping? Find out in our in-depth guide.

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What Are ND Filters?

ND Filters are placed in front of the camera lens (or dropped into a filter slot).

They are used to reduce the amount of calorie-free which enters the camera, as the beneath picture demonstrates.

In many ways, think of them equally a pair of sunglasses. While sunglasses limit the amount of low-cal coming into your eyes, ND filters block the light coming into the lens.

Importantly, because ND stands for Neutral Density, ND filters block the calorie-free in a neutral way without irresolute the colour of the light being captured by the camera and lens.

Too as limiting the amount of light, ND filters are commonly used to highlight movement (i.e. taking shots of a waterfall) or to give busy images a softer more surrealist appearance.

ND Filters - Aperture And Shutter Speed

When bright sunlight is thrown into the equation, an ND filter allows photographers more leeway in selecting an aperture and shutter speed to prevent overexposure.

Discontinuity

ND filters can be used to back up larger apertures in brilliant light without overexposing.

This enables sharper imagery and allows shallow depth of field and selective focus effects while under lighting conditions that exceed the shutter speed capabilities of the photographic camera.

Shutter Speed

When y'all cake light coming into your lens, yous need to expose the photographic camera to lite for a longer menses of fourth dimension. In other words, you demand to open the shutter for longer to allow for the correct amount of light to enter the photographic camera.

This means you need to wearisome the shutter speed. This lower shutter speed volition allow annihilation moving in the shot to become blurry. This is particularly important when you want to emphasise movement.

ND Filters In Action

With this in listen, let'due south accept some existent-life examples and demonstrate how they piece of work in do.

The below drone photo was captured without an ND filter, but using the everyman ISO and smallest aperture possible. In this case, reducing the shutter speed would hazard overexposure. With these settings, the shot also feels fairly static.

The adjacent shot has been taken with the addition of an ND16 filter. Equally the corporeality of calorie-free entering the lens has been reduced, the shutter speed tin can be lengthened to 1 second or longer. The result is a general smoothing of the waves and a general feel of movement.

The 3rd image has been captured using an ND32 filter, and therefore further extending the shutter speed - making the blurred effect even stronger.

The above examples demonstrate the use of ND fiIters for waterscapes. But how nigh urban landscapes?

The below GIF shows a scene captured with a fast shutter speed. The objects inside the shot are moving, but at that place'south very little motility blur, giving a fairly unnatural look.

In contrast, the second GIF shows a shot captured with an ND filter and longer shutter speed. This provides more than motility blur, which provides a more lively feel.

This shows the importance of ND filters for dynamic action shots. And, by giving content creators more lenience to adjust shutter speed, ND filters give more creative control over shots.

ND Filters - Their Numbers And What They Hateful

ND filters come in dissimilar strengths and levels of darkness.

Many ND Filters operate on differing levels of F Cease reduction which correlates to the amount of calorie-free they let into the sensor.

So, the larger the F-Stop, the less light immune into the sensor.

This combats excessive exposure and allows you to frame the perfect shot, even in challenging lighting conditions. Used correctly, this ensures your stills and footage are never exposed.

The tabular array below shows the relationship between the ND Factor and the F-End.

ND Gene	F-Stops
ND2	1
ND4	2
ND8	3
ND16	four
ND32	5
ND64	half-dozen
ND128	7
ND256	8
ND512	9
ND1024 (ND1000)	10

This ways that for every cease of ND filter, you halve the corporeality of lite entering the camera. When the light is halved, to maintain the same exposure, you need to double your shutter speed.

So this process continues. Add some other ND cease; double the shutter speed once more - as the below tabular array shows.

Original Shutter Speed	ND Filter In Stops	New Shutter Speed
1 second	i	two seconds
1 second	2	4 seconds
1 2nd	3	8 seconds
ane second	four	16 seconds
i second	5	32 seconds
1 2nd	vi	64 seconds
one 2nd	vii	128 seconds
1 second	8	256 seconds
1 second	9	512 seconds
1 second	10	1024 seconds (17 mins)

For capturing the type of footage virtually associated with drone cameras, the standard ND Filters you'll encounter from the main manufacturers are ND4, ND8 and ND16, although there are further options available to upwardly the f-stops.

For instance, the Mavic 3 Cine Premium Combo comes with a set of ND4, 8, 16 and 32, as well as a set of ND64, 128, 256, and 512. For the record, both these ND filter sets are bachelor with the standard Mavic iii. Read our web log to detect out the difference between the Mavic three and Mavic 3 Cinematics.

Using An ND Filter On A DJI Drone

When using an ND filter, ensure that your drone's photographic camera is fix to transmission via the specific DJI app yous are using and that your desired specifications (i.e. ISO & Shutter Speed) have been applied. Setting the camera to transmission ensures that it doesn't digitally right the exposure level and, in doing and so, reduce the capture quality.

Once this is done, you should see a scale at the lesser of the options console which displays the paradigm'southward exposure.

As yous tin see, in the above example information technology is reading +two.0 which indicates that using an ND filter (in this case, a 2 stop ND4) would help to level the prototype lighting.

From here, it's simply a case of choosing the right filter and playing around with the aircraft'southward camera settings until you're happy with the prototype transmitted onto your device and ready to capture perfectly levelled footage.

The interface on DJI's products makes information technology easy to choose the correct ND filter to minimise overexposure which is inextricably linked with shutter speed, frame rate and ISO.

This means that you tin use these filters to gauge the right camera settings and ensure optimum quality for every shoot regardless of the lighting atmospheric condition.

It is worth mentioning that they aren't foolproof solutions and you must accept intendance not to apply an ND with too many stops or you lot'll end upwardly with underexposed, muddied footage which is as much of an effect every bit also much light entering the sensor.

Consider taking some time getting to grips with the transmission settings on your drone's camera, with or without the ND (as loftier shutter speeds can benefit drone photography), and you will be rewarded with a superior cease result.

Note:Always power down the aircraft earlier making any changes to the camera's lens to avert dissentious the gimbal.

Aerial Filming with an ND Filter

Using ND Filters when filming on your drone substantially manipulates the shutter speed allowing you to retain the optimum shutter angle and in turn affect motion blur.

If yous're looking to get cinematic quality from your drone's photographic camera information technology's worth maintaining a shutter bending of 180°. This means y'all'll exist getting a shutter speed of around 1/50 of a second at 25fps.

This strikes a fine residue of footage quality, negating the common issues of jitter and overt blurring to provide truly impressive results.

If the angle is whatsoever larger (i.eastward. 360°), you lot'll observe that a strong blur effect carries over between frames making footage of moving subjects appear smudged in places and if it is smaller (i.e. 45°), your video will turn out jerky and stuttery with no mistiness to smooth the transition of frames ofttimes giving the appearance of images stitched together like a flipbook.

ND filters are popular with aeriform filmmakers equally they grant you greater control over these settings - allowing you to capture polish, professional person quality footage that makes the virtually of the unique perspectives offered by drones.

Best ND Filters For Drone Photography

If yous're looking for ND filters for your drone, there's every risk you will come across PolarPro and PGYTECH.

Between them, DJI's content-creation drones are covered, and they provide reliable options for your photography and filmmaking needs.

Aside from PolarPro and PGYTECH, there are the DJI versions, such every bit the DJI Mavic 3 ND Filter Sets or the DJI Air 2S Filters Set.

ND/PL Lenses

When looking for ND filters for your drone, you lot might come across ND/PL filters.

ND/PL filters - or Neutral Density/Polarisation Filters - are a unique type of camera filter that combine two popular filter furnishings together into one single lens.

In addition to having the properties of a neutral density filter, a ND/PL filter, integrates the features of a circular polarising filter, which allows you to capture vividness and contrast in an image.

These polarising characteristics not only enhance the colours of your epitome, just also reduce glare and reflections within your photograph or video.

As a result, ND/PL filters achieve smooth, flushed out photos or videos at slower shutter speeds with improved contrast and colour saturation.

ND/PL filters offer the best of both worlds, so it is an enticing accessory to have. But there are some drawbacks: For example, ND/PL filters piece of work best when shooting at a xc-degree angle to the dominicus. Because they only remove calorie-free that's polarised in a specific direction, they tend not to work well with broad-angle lenses.

Drone ND Filters - A Summary

Drones are amazing content cosmos tools, and they proceed getting better and better. The upgraded specs of the recently-released Mavic 3, compared to other camera drones before it, are testament to this.

ND filters are an essential tool for bolstering aerial content and should be considered a key office of a photographer's or filmmaker's kit bag.

Adding these filters to your drone photographic camera tin can pb to remarkable results, helping to ensure your imagery is non overexposed and providing even more freedom to go truly creative with your shots.