 Guys say we're gonna show you how to take your GoPro footage to the next level by using ND filters These are basically sunglasses for your camera lens They're they're tinted glass that you put in front of the lens on your GoPro. Why would you want to do that? Well as we'll learn today, it's to get more motion blur and to get a more cinematic image We've got our GoPro strapped to an FPV drone, which is one of the coolest ways to use these cameras Oh, yeah, let's get into it Here at Rotorite we fly these FPV drones FPV stands for first-person view So you've maybe seen shots like this before maybe you've seen drone racing on TV before Yeah, and so we're gonna fly these drones around this awesome park here in central, Florida We'll do some flying in 30 frames a second We'll also do some like 60 frames and maybe some even higher frame rate Some slow motion type shots and we'll talk about you know the changing of the ND filters as we do that as well So I'm gonna walk you guys through my process for how I choose an ND filter This isn't actually specific to freestyle But some of the GoPro settings that I use are specific to freestyle So we'll have another video on that but the same process applies for how you choose your ND filter So to understand exactly what an ND filter does let's think about taking a photograph Just a single still image when you make a photograph you expose the image for a certain amount of time And that's what the shutter speed defines How long is the image sensor being exposed to the image a faster shutter speed means a shorter exposure Longer means longer exposure Sometimes you want this sometimes you don't want this imagine if you're taking a photograph of someone throwing a baseball like a pitcher You might want to use a very fast shutter speed So you have a very crisp image of their athletic motion But imagine if you were doing something more cinematic and you wanted to make it look fast like a Image of a car racing across then you might want to use a longer shutter speed so that you get blur Essentially what you're doing is you are exposing that image over a period of time and during that exposure Your subject or the background or whatever is moving and that's going to show up as blur So if you understand what I'm saying about how this works in a photograph You understand how this works for a video because a video is nothing more than a series of photographs Over a period of time when we talk about a video being made in 30 frames per second That means for every second of video there are 30 photographs 30 frames So we're just doing this very very fast So you can use an ND filter shooting videos the same way that you do in making a photograph So I'm gonna go ahead and get my phone out. We're gonna go to the GoPro app I'm gonna make sure all of my settings are correct on my GoPro first And then simply I'm gonna turn my GoPro on and we're just gonna look at the sky But there's this relationship between motion blur and how much light gets on the image sensor So you have to think about your exposure. Are you gonna blow out the image, right? A very long shutter speed could just wash out everything is so brighter a short shutter speed could be too dark And so to compensate for this There's different things that you can do like playing with the ISO or the aperture or Using ND filters. You're gonna be shooting in 30 FPS and 160th shutter speed. Correct Okay, so I'm gonna go ahead and just double-check that my GoPro settings are the way that I like them So we can do that here 4k 30 super view 10-bit high shutter speed 1 over 16 A good rule of thumb to target for a nice cinematic look is to have a shutter speed that is Double the frame rate. So what that would mean is that if you are making a 30 frames per second video You would want your shutter speed to be 160th of a second to show you this kind of in real time We're gonna change the camera settings of what you're looking at right now We just tuned the camera you're looking at right now to be very sensitive to light with the ISO and the aperture and we have made These shutter speed very fast. This is at what one six thousand 16th is that one 16,000th of a second that is a very fast exposure as I wave my hand look look at this It looks like a strobe light almost right. It does not look like what you would see With your real eyes. So now let's go back to camera settings that we would actually want to use So now we've brought the ISO back down to a reasonable level and even put an ND filter on the camera Which has allowed us to set the shutter speed to a longer 160th of a second which is exactly what we would want for this 30 frames per second video And that's gonna be a lot more similar to what you would see with the human eye And when I move my hand you see blurred motion rather than strobe emotion and that looks more natural It looks more cinematic. It's generally just more Pleasant of an image. So this is exactly how you can use an ND filter to decrease the amount of light and Enable a longer shutter speed to make the image a lot more pleasant. I'm gonna put my ISO at 155 sharpness medium, and that's pretty much it So now what we can go back is we can enable the preview on the gopro And then all we're gonna do is we're just gonna point it up at the sky And we're gonna see how blown out we are and we're most likely gonna be really blown out as you guys We're talking about depending on your shutter speed and your frame rate That's gonna change how much ND that you need but usually with one over 60 shutter speed You're gonna probably need a lot of ND on a day like today where it's pretty bright outside Yeah, and you can see that is so overexposed completely blown out. There's no detail there So we're going to use an ND filter to let in less light so that it'll be properly exposed So the ND filters come in different levels of darkness and higher the number the darker it is What we're trying to do with ND filters is almost always trying to increase the amount of blur so we Decrease our shutter speed. We have a longer exposure And then we use an ND filter to decrease the amount of light being let in over the course of that exposure The ND filter is essentially sunglasses for the lens of your camera And so what we do here on the camera if you're using a GoPro camera these just simply unscrew it takes a little bit Of force the first time you do it And then after that just pops out like that make sure you don't you know get dirt on the lens or anything like that Which one did you like first? I'd say let's try with the 16 first Why do you go with that decision? So I from experience knows that like an ND4 and ND8 is probably not gonna be enough on a bright day like this Generally speaking I like to use an ND8 around sunset ND4 actually once the Sun has gone down even sometimes by usually in like bright daylight I like to use an ND32 because we're in this like tree section. There's a lot of dark spots I'm gonna be flying. Yeah, I'm a little concerned that 32 is too much I could compensate with a little more ISO, but I like to keep that as low as possible So we're gonna because when you add ISO you just add a lot of graininess to the camera And so I like to lock it out a hundred. So I'd rather be a little Over-exposed when I'm looking up at the Sun but be perfectly exposed whenever I'm under the tree canopy Which is where I'm gonna be doing you know most of my flying. Yeah, so let's start with either. Yeah start the 16 And these filters they just go right on Like so oh that looks so much better right when you put it on yep And even with the 16 if I'm looking straight up at the Sun you can see it's like if we have like um Wave chart it would be like a tiny bit blown out But man when you're looking down here at the trees and everything like that it looks still a little bit over But I would agree. I think it's a little over. So let's try the 32. Yeah. Oh, it looks amazing That's really everything's properly exposed even the Sun's not blown out. Yeah, even the shadows another thing I like to do too is I literally like to walk over to shadows Let's do it because I look at this tree here even the tree looks pretty good. Yeah a little underexposed I mean that's very minimal and when you think of the speed at which an FPV drone is flying as well Mm-hmm. You know just not even gonna notice that yeah for sure So that's basically how I go about choosing the ND filters the same process applies if I'm just shooting handheld on the GoPro or anything like that Yeah, so I want to talk a little bit more about Once you raise the frame rate and the reason you want to do that is if you want to get some awesome Slow-mo shots. I know a lot of action sports use this So if you're doing a sick flip on a snowboard and you want to slow the footage down You're going to have to raise the frame rate so that you have extra frames to slow it down in post So the standard rule to get the natural looking motion blur is have your shutter speed double the frame rate So if you go up in frame rate, you're gonna also have to go up in shutter speed Which means you're letting less light in so maybe we'll have to use a less of an ND filter like an ND 8 so let's go ahead and set your frame rate to a 120 yep We'll go 4k 120 so you're gonna set your shutter to to afford one over two one over 240 So let's see what it looks like now And notice it looks a lot darker a little under exposed you can see here when I'm like looking at the trees in the shadows It's really dark. Okay, and I have sunglasses on yeah, but I still say that's a little under so I think we go to the 16 Yeah, try and be 16 and see how that looks the 16 looks really good. Yeah, this looks right I would highly recommend you guys again Don't try and compensate if it's a little dark with ISO Especially on go-pros you really add a lot of greeniness when you do that So do your best if you're on a bright day like this just lock your ISO on a hundred Especially on the GoPro. I cannot emphasize that okay. This is the grain we're talking about so Gordon Go ahead and put your ND filter super high We make it really dark and compensate with exposure for ISO This is that ISO grain that we're talking about that's not really really desirable when you're trying to get the footage To look as cinematic as possible. It's really grainy and just isn't really pleasing to look at We're gonna get some sample footage using ND 32 and D16 and D8 and ND4 and no ND filter to kind of show you guys What different levels of ND look like in this in the lighting condition we're in so the way that we control these FPV drones Is with you know a radio and then goggles so the FPV goggles allow us to see what the drone is seeing in a lifetime Basically, no latency at all so these drones are super high performance They can do really cool flips and they can go any orientation so you can do a flip and you can be hanging upside down The super acrobatic and they can go really really fast So the really cool piece of technology that we use go-pros on so a lot of the stuff that we do is called FPV freestyle so we'll go to really cool locations and do tricks around them and show off It's kind of like an art to see different styles of flying. All right, so we just got all the test footage Let's go ahead and bring it back to the studio and get some comparisons of it. Yeah, so Go ahead and get a look at this footage. I'm really curious I've never done this back-to-back with different ND filters do the 32 with start with the first flight We're not gonna watch this whole thing because I did an eight minute flight on this drone eight minute flight What a legend yeah, we started with this because we wanted to start with what we consider to be Proper exposure. This isn't color graded. It's just flat color But I mean it looks really good the sky is nice the ground looks nice the shadows too. Yeah They look dark and that's a good thing because you want to have some contrast. Yeah, definitely You can definitely tell that like when you get into some of the really dark spaces there a little bit Yeah, and this is I so walked at a hundred as well But it's not bad like this is exactly what I would want it I mean look when you look up at the sky there you can see that it's you know, yeah I find I find with go-pros that it's harder to bring back Over-exposed thing that is underexposed so this is kind of perfect for me like if I wanted to bring the shadows up I could they're still detailed there just with my experience working with go-pros at least right and one thing too with the one over 60 shutters you definitely get that motion blur So it's something that some of you guys may like some of you guys may hate I know I get comments all the time saying I have too much motion blur me too personally. I like the motion blur I also think that when you're flying with janky props It kind of disguises the way your quad may be flying if you're what's not flying good But that's more specific to FPV drones But for you guys who are new to using cameras and stuff Just keep that in mind with the one over 60 shutter speed You're gonna have a bit more motion blur and you're chasing like a really fast object. You may not want that. Yeah So that's the ND 32 Let's look at the ND 16 and the biggest thing to notice we went up in shutter speed right now We are at 1 1 20th. Yeah still 30 frames a second still ISO at 100 the exposure is the same obviously It's a competitive for that but there is just a little bit less motion blur Oh, there's definitely less motion blur. I mean it almost looks like everything is more sharp Yeah, even though we didn't touch the sharpness settings on the GoPro You can see when I'm doing a lot of these really fast movements to like there's really almost no motion blur to it whatsoever, so yeah, like when you look in the ground you can still kind of make out the Yeah, yeah, I'm curious like yeah What it looks like when I'm doing flips and stuff because I've only been flying with like very Like one over 60 shutter speed and stuff like that for the last couple years. I haven't flown one over 120 Okay So it's interesting to kind of look at it like I'm not really Freestyleing to my best of my abilities, but still like I just don't because I'm not used to the look I don't like the look I'm always for more motion blur or like I guess the two times frame rate rule I think that always looks best. Yeah, it looks the most cinematic to you usually But this is good. I mean this is what one over 120 looks like and D16 with an ND 16 and bright daylight And it works pretty well. Yeah, I think it'll be interesting now We're getting into one over 240 with the NDA. That's a I think that's too high of a shutter personally Wait, I have a shutter, but let's see what it looks like. I can definitely feel like the shutter is way too high right now Yeah, the downside to on the GoPro is now we were we had clouds. So like the light was changing This might actually look a little dark to you guys and it probably is but you only do so much because You know the Sun was going behind the clouds. Yeah. Oh, that was a nice trick there Thanks, bro. I'll dive into the venue. There were a couple of these flights where I was like this is a good flight I kind of like wish I didn't have it one over To for you can see here It's really dark with that one over 240 the moment that The downside to locking your shutter speed is like if you lock it super aggressively You know if you you know some goes behind a cloud or something like that then this is a good example What will happen? Yeah, it doesn't matter if you're having an NDA or an ND 32 with one over 60 The same exact thing can happen Yeah, I think one way to compensate for that if you want to lock your shutter is have your ISO minimum at 100 and ISO maximum at like 400 or 8 at 400 or 800 To kind of compensate for that a little bit anything above 800 is too much grain in go-pros at least I agree. That is the ND4. This is the last ND filter that we had. Okay, so now we're at 1 over 480. Yep. Yeah So high you and I can see it. Yeah, it almost looks stuttering like like if we just pause any frame We can just make out all the you can. Yeah. Yeah It's just honestly exposure doesn't look bad to be honest But man, it just the shutter speed is way too high I think if you guys are out there and you're flying FPV drones, I recommend having just a little bit of motion blur I really think it helps helps the skies all your Corrections as well as if your drone is not flying. I mean, that's truthfully one of the reasons I use is because like I don't stabilize my footage Yep, same and so there are still gonna be a lot of minor corrections and bobbles and stuff here and there We're not flying with perfect drones or perfect props all the time Yeah, and so you definitely want to have that shutter speed to your advantage I know you wanted to marry that right there. I know I just was like we're filming an episode and I don't really feel like walking So now we're gonna go to the final one, which is the no endee no endee and this is with an auto shutter so I'm curious how this looks because When I was using the session five for the longest time even with and ease I used auto shutter because I only I had so many issues getting into the GoPro app Yeah, and I just used auto shutter and I knew it would look decent But sometimes in a flight it would be way too much motion blur sometimes there'd be like no motion blur Yeah, and that got kind of annoying and it's interesting here with no endee It's actually favoring what I would describe as like a colder Exposure or it doesn't feel quite as bright or as hot Okay, you know at least when you're on top of the trees when you're below the trees You can see it's adjusting the shutter speed a little bit. Yeah, lowering it But when you're on top the trees, it's way higher of a shutter speed. Look at how high the shutter was there Yeah, you just see there's no blur on that tree It looks pretty similar to the endee for I Would say the sky in this case because we're not locking the shutter the sky in the back is really blown out Yeah, like it's just super white super blown out and this is me I was trying to haul to and you can see there's like no motion blur and some people really really like that. I don't I Don't like it then respectfully. I don't like it It makes me feel like it makes me actually look like I'm going really really fast to be fair I feel like more motion blur makes it I do too it man That made me feel like maybe just from watching him back to back it did mm-hmm well My consensus after just watching all these clips I I like the ND 32 the best just the motion blur look of it I would also fly the ND 16 look of it in that lighting We're not saying by the way that the ND 32 is the best of all these filters What we're saying is that with those lighting conditions and everything the ND 32 is the best choice Yes, we both like having our shutter speed being double of what our frame rate is and 1 over 60 is always just naturally a very good Shutter speed as well. Yeah, so like if we were flying in later Evening times, you know when the closer to sunset probably an ND8 or maybe even this ND4 would be really good Yeah, it just depends. I mean that's the thing we showed you guys how to do all this Yeah So hopefully whether you're flying an FPV drone or whether you're just using your GoPro for something You can use these ND filters and you can go out and have a great experience If you guys want to pick up some of these ND filters We sell them here at our store rotariot.com just type in camera butter ND filters and they'll pop up We sell and before a 16 and 32 and we also sell a bundles You can buy all four of these ND filters and you will be good for any lighting condition These were first kind of made for FPV drones and our FPV drones were smashing into stuff all the time Crashing a lot crashing a lot and so the last thing we want to do is be scratching up our lenses Yeah, you don't want to be replacing these things because we crash a lot So it gets very expensive quickly. So these were made to be very durable So if you're someone who's using a GoPro, which again, this is what you would be using those on Yeah, like you can trust that you don't need to buy a ton of these and like we're flying them on our FPV drones They do break eventually But for the most part they are way more durable than any other ND filters that I've used on the market They're made out of gorilla glass. So it's really tough and it's a high quality glass too That's not to say that the glass itself is being sacrificed. The glass is very very high quality I think if you did a side-by-side with some of the other Competing brands you probably wouldn't even notice a quality difference, but the durability is a huge improvement on these I agree. All right. Thank you guys so much for watching this episode of rotariot We do FPV drone content I hope you guys liked this episode where we did more deep diving to GoPro we post every Monday So make sure that you like this video to hit the thumbs up like button and also to subscribe and right next to it There's a little bell notification so you can get pinged when we post every Monday at 4 p.m. And I think that's a wrap for this episode any questions that you have about GoPro or any settings drop them in the comments below We will definitely be down there to answer them and I'm Bobby at TV I'm Alex fan over and I'll see you guys next time