ok so i finally got my hands on the DJI Neo after waiting forever for stock to show up at a reasonable price and i have some feelings about it. first the good stuff ? it is genuinely tiny and the automated shot modes work way better than i thought they would for something this size. took it out to a trail run last weekend and the follow shots came out usable, not perfect but usable which is more than i can say for some other attempts i've made with bigger gear.

the thing that bugs me though is the image quality in anything less than perfect lighting. indoors or late afternoon it gets pretty noisy pretty fast and the stabilization while impressive sometimes gives that weird floaty look that just screams drone footage to me. i know its not trying to be a Mavic 3 or anything but i guess i expected a little more from the sensor given how much DJI hyped it. anyone else finding workarounds for the low light stuff or am i just expecting too much from a drone this size

the low light thing is just kind of the reality of that sensor size, no real way around it. what i started doing is shooting in d-log if the scene allows and then being really conservative in post rather than trying to save noise in grading. also slowing the footage to 24fps helps a tiny bit just because you're getting a bit more exposure per frame. honestly for what it costs and how pocketable it is i've made peace with it being a daylight drone mostly.

the floaty stabilization thing you mentioned is so real and it drives me crazy too. theres a setting burried in the app to reduce the horizon leveling aggressiveness and that helped me a lot actually, it makes the footage feel a bit less like its fighting against natural camera movement. might be worth digging around in there if you havent already. took me like three weeks to find it by accident