ND filter for drone
Also known as: drone ND filter, aerial ND
A neutral density filter clipped over a drone lens to cut light, letting the shutter stay slow enough for natural motion blur in daylight.
Updated
What it means
An ND filter is sunglasses for a lens. It removes light evenly across the frame without changing colour, which lets a slow shutter survive a bright sky.
On an aircraft the need is structural. Shutter is pinned to the frame rate for motion reasons, sensitivity is already at its base, and aperture on most drones is either fixed or small enough to soften the image.
That leaves the filter as the only remaining control. It is the reason a bright afternoon and an overcast morning can produce clips that cut together instead of looking like two separate shoots.
How it works in practice
Strength is chosen for the light. Two or three stops suits a cloudy day, while midday sun over water asks for considerably more, and most pilots carry a short set rather than one filter. Guessing wrong on a strong filter is the slower mistake to discover.
A Variable ND filter trades convenience for a small amount of sharpness and the chance of uneven darkening at extremes. Fixed filters avoid both and have to be swapped.
Fitting it is a gimbal operation. The filter clips over a moving camera, so it goes on before takeoff and is checked for seating, because a loose one vignettes or falls off in flight.
What to watch out for
Poor glass colours the image. A filter that is not truly neutral adds a cast that varies with strength, which turns White balance into a per-filter problem rather than a per-day one.
Weight and balance matter on small aircraft. A heavy filter on a DJI Mini makes the gimbal work harder and can leave a faint wobble in otherwise smooth footage.
The last failure is forgetting it. A filter left on into Blue hour forces sensitivity up, and the clip arrives noisy for no reason at all. Checking the lens at every battery swap prevents it.
How RawClip handles it
Filters do not change how a clip is analysed, but they change which clips are worth choosing. Material shot at a consistent shutter across a session needs no reconciling, so neighbouring shots in a highlight share the same sense of motion.