okay so ive been flying for about 8 months now and honestly the flying part is fine, im comfortable with that. but my photos still look kind of garbage compared to what i see other people posting and i cant figure out what the deal is.

specifically at golden hour, which everyone says is the best time to shoot, my images just come out super washed out and blown out in the highlights. im shooting on a mini 3 pro and i usually just leave it on auto because i never really knew what else to do. tried switching to manual once and it was a disaster.

is there a good starting point for settings i should be using? like i dont even know where to begin with shutter speed vs iso at that time of day. and should i be shooting in d-log or whatever? someone mentioned that once but i have no clue what that means in practice.

golden hour is actually one of the trickier times to expose correctly because the light changes so fast. the main thing with the blown highlights is you want to dial down your exposure compensation ? try setting it to like -0.7 or even -1.0 when you're pointed anywhere near the sun. auto mode on the mini 3 tends to overexpose warm light because it tries to balance for the shadows.

and yes shoot in d-log m if your camera supports it. it basically flattens the image so you keep more detail in both the bright and dark areas, but your photo will look really grey and boring straight out of camera ? thats normal, you fix it in lightroom or whatever editor you use by applying a lut or just manually pulling the contrast and saturation back up. its a bit of a workflow change but once you get used to it you wont go back. start with a free lut pack for d-log m, there are loads of them online.

i had the exact same problem when i started lol, auto mode just does not know what to do with that orange sun on the horizon. one thing that helped me before i figured out manual was just using the exposure lock ? tap on the sky in your frame and hold until it locks, it forces the camera to expose for the bright part and your foreground goes darker but at least nothing is blown out. easier fix than diving straight into manual settings imo