so ive been flying for about 8 months now and im pretty comfortable with the stick work at this point, not crashing into trees as much lol. but i feel like my footage and photos still look really flat and boring compared to the stuff i see other people posting. like i know the composition side is something i need to work on but even when i think i have a decent shot the colors just feel off

im shooting on a mini 3 pro if that matters. ive been leaving most settings on auto because i was scared to mess things up but i think thats maybe the problem? someone told me to shoot in d-log but then the footage looks even more washed out so i gave up on that pretty quickly. any tips from people who actually know what theyre doing would be really appreciated

yeah d-log will absolutely look washed out straight out of the camera, thats the whole point of it ? you're supposed to bring the colors back in post. if youre not grading your footage youre better off just shooting in the normal color profile honestly. d-log is really only worth it if you're spending time in premiere or davinci or whatever doing a proper color grade, otherwise youre just making more work for yourself for no reason

for stills specifically though, shoot in raw if you arent already. jpeg out of any drone camera is just kinda meh, raw gives you way more to work with when youre pulling things into lightroom. and dont be afraid to crank the highlights down and lift the shadows a bit, that alone makes a huge difference with aerial stuff where the sky is always competing with the ground

honestly same boat as you a few months ago. what helped me the most was just watching a few youtube videos specifically about color grading drone footage, not generic lightroom tutorials. the flat look thing with d-log confused me too until someone explained the lut workflow. you basically apply a lut first to get it back to normal looking and then do your actual adjustments from there. took me a while to click but now i actually prefer shooting in the log profile