Capturing MicaSense RedEdge -- Manual Exposure?

PIX4Dcapture PIX4Dcapture Questions/Troubleshooting
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I’m trying to develop a guide for capturing MicaSense RedEdge images from a Solo using the Tower app for running the mission.  The RedEdge only gets power from the Solo, so is programmed separately.  Things are working pretty well, and wanting to best ensure good, calibrated images.

I’m looking for any experience anyone has had on using manual exposure in the RedEdge when the images are going to be processed with Pix4D. The MicaSense manual says virtually nothing about it, and just warns against using manual settings.  But this would seem to be important when using the calibration panel as part of image capture.  

It’s possible that Pix4D is using the EXIF data for each image as well as the calibration panel to derive reflectance, so the exposures may not have to be the same – this is possibly indicated in https://support.pix4d.com/hc/en-us/articles/203891879#label3&gsc.tab=0 ,

… but I’d like to know if it’s best to use manual settings or automatic to get well calibrated images.

  

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… and to follow up, I’m also trying to figure out the benefits or issues with using the 1x, 2x, etc. settings in the manual exposure.  I’m assuming this is taking multiple exposures to increase light pickup because it increases the brightness when going to higher than 1x, but I’m not sure what this is doing – multiple exposures that are additive (so why not just expose longer?) and if this creates problems for image clarity.

 

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… and a further followup is should the manual settings be the same for each band?

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Hi Jerry,

Although we do not recommend to use manual settings of the camera when acquiring images this should not prevent the processing. But even that it is possible to accurately combine images with different ISO/aperture/exposure time settings you will have to make sure you do not have overexposed images.

Cheers,