ok so ive been flying for about 8 months now and my footage just looks... fine. like its not shaky or anything but it doesnt have that smooth floaty cinematic feel that i see on youtube all the time. im using a mini 3 pro and i have cinemode turned on but it still just looks like drone footage you know? not like a movie.

i tried doing a slow reveal shot last weekend where i start low behind some trees and rise up to show the mountain behind it and it looked cool in my head but on the playback it just looked kinda choppy and the movement wasnt smooth at all. i dont know if its a camera settings thing or a flying technique thing or maybe im just expecting too much from myself this early on

any advice from people who actually know what theyre doing would be great. also should i be shooting in dlog or normal color profile? ive been avoiding dlog because i dont really know how to color grade

the choppy movement thing is almost certainly a shutter speed issue before anything else. a lot of people skip this but the 180 degree shutter rule is huge for cinematic feel ? basically your shutter speed should be double your frame rate. so if youre shooting 24fps your shutter should be around 1/50. without that you get either too much motion blur or that weird crisp stuttery look that screams "drone footage" instead of film.

youll probably need ND filters to pull that off in daylight because the exposure will be blown out otherwise. i know that sounds like another thing to buy but honestly an ND pack was the single biggest upgrade i made to my footage before i even touched editing.

on the dlog question ? yes shoot in dlog if your mini 3 pro supports it, but dont let it intimidate you. DJI has free luts you can drop into premiere or davinci that basically do the grade for you as a starting point. you can always tweak from there. shooting in normal color profile and then trying to do anything creative in post is just way harder.

also something nobody told me for ages ? slow down way more than you think you need to. like whatever speed feels cinematic in cinemode, go even slower than that. i used to think i needed to be moving to make interesting shots but some of my best stuff now is barely moving at all, just a super gentle drift or rise. the mountains arent going anywhere lol