ok so ive been flying my mini 3 for about 4 months now and honestly the footage i get in the early morning or evening looks pretty decent but whenever i go out around noon or even like 2pm everything just looks blown out and flat. i shoot in auto most of the time which i know is probably the problem but every time i try to go manual i either underexpose everything or i lose track of what im doing while also trying to fly and then i panic and switch back to auto lol

someone at my local park told me to just slap an ND filter on it and call it a day but im not sure thats the whole solution? like i feel like theres more to it than that. does anyone have a sort of starting point for midday shooting that isnt too complicated, im not trying to become a cinematographer i just want my shots to look less garbage

the ND filter advice isnt wrong but yeah its not the whole picture. the main thing with midday shooting is the light itself is just really harsh and coming straight down which flattens everything out and kills shadows. no camera setting is fully gonna fix that but you can manage it. for starters try shooting in D-Log or whatever flat profile your mini 3 supports, it gives you way more to work with in post and you wont blow out the highlights as badly. pair that with like an ND16 or ND32 depending on how bright it is and set your shutter speed to roughly double your frame rate - so if youre at 30fps go for 1/60, that 180 degree rule thing. ISO as low as it goes, and then let aperture or the ND handle the rest.

honestly though midday is just the worst time to fly for photos. if you can push your sessions to golden hour even once youll never want to go back. the light does like 80% of the work for you

same boat as you a few months ago, the ND filters made a huge difference for me but what really clicked was watching a short youtube video on just the exposure triangle - like 10 minutes and suddenly manual mode wasnt scary anymore. dont overthink it, once you fly a few times just messing with the settings youll get a feel for it pretty fast