ok so ive been flying for about 8 months now and i feel like my photos are still looking kinda flat and boring compared to what i see other people posting. im using a mini 3 pro and i shoot in auto mostly because i was nervous to mess things up but i want to start doing it manually. i know the basics of exposure from when i used to do some ground photography but aerial feels different somehow, like the light changes so fast when youre up there and i never know if i should be exposing for the sky or the ground.

also not sure if i should be shooting jpeg or raw. someone at my local flying club said raw is pointless on the mini 3 but that seems wrong to me? anyway would love to hear what settings people actually use day to day, not the textbook answer, just what actually works for you

raw is absolutely not pointless, ignore that advice lol. the dynamic range you get to work with in lightroom or whatever you use is night and day compared to jpeg, especially when youre trying to recover detail in bright skies and dark shadows at the same time which is basically every landscape shot ever.

for settings i run iso as low as possible, usually 100, and i use the 180 degree shutter rule so if im at 30fps that means 1/60 shutter but honestly for stills i just make sure its fast enough to not blur. aperture on the mini 3 is fixed so you dont have to worry about that. the big thing that changed my photos was shooting in d-log m and then doing a proper color grade instead of using the in-camera picture styles. takes a bit to learn but worth it

i had the same question when i started out. honestly the thing that helped me most was just slowing down and not trying to get the shot in one pass. like fly to the spot, hover, and actually look at your histogram before you shoot. i was always rushing and then wondering why half my shots were blown out.

the sky vs ground exposure thing is real and i still struggle with it tbh. sometimes i just take two shots at different exposures and blend them later, its a bit extra work but some scenes really need it