so ive been flying for about 8 months now and my photos honestly still look kind of garbage compared to what i see other people posting. i have a mini 3 pro and i thought the camera was supposed to be pretty decent but everything i shoot around noon just looks blown out and kind of flat. i was flying over a lake last weekend and the sky was this beautiful blue but in the photos it just looks white and hazy. i have the camera set to auto everything because i honestly dont fully understand manual mode yet and im wondering if thats the whole problem or if theres something else going on. do i need an ND filter or is that a different issue? ive seen people mention shooting in d-log but i dont even know if my drone does that

yeah auto mode is probably killing you, especially midday. the drone is doing its best but it really struggles when theres a huge difference between the bright sky and darker ground. first thing id try is switching to manual and setting your ISO as low as it goes (100 or 64 depending on the drone), then use an ND filter to bring your shutter speed down to roughly double your framerate - so if youre shooting 30fps, aim for 1/60 shutter. the ND filter is doing a lot of the work here, not just for video but photos too. for midday sun youre probably looking at an ND16 or even ND32. the washed out look is almost certainly overexposure and the auto mode just cant handle that dynamic range well. as for d-log, yeah the mini 3 pro does have it, its in the camera settings under color profile i think. its a flat profile that gives you more to work with in editing but you really do have to edit it or it looks even worse straight out of camera. dont start there though, get your exposure sorted first

honestly the biggest thing that helped me was just stopping to fly midday altogether lol. like golden hour stuff looks so much better and you dont have to fight the settings as much. i know thats not always practical but even waiting til like 4 or 5pm makes a huge difference. that said the ND filter advice above is solid, i was skeptical at first but it does help