so i've been flying my mini 3 (non pro) for about 4 months now and the footage is ok but i keep reading that i need ND filters to get that cinematic look. went on amazon and there's like a million different sets ranging from $15 to $120 and i genuinely have no idea what the difference is or if the cheap ones are just fine. i mostly fly on sunny days at the beach and sometimes around my neighborhood in the late afternoon. not doing anything professional just want my videos to look less like they came from a security camera lol. does the brand actually matter or is this one of those things where the cheap set is basically the same

honestly for casual flying the mid range stuff is totally fine. i use the Freewell kit and its been solid for like a year, no complaints. the real expensive ones like Polar Pro are more for people shooting commercial work where color grading accuracy really matters. for beach shooting on a sunny day you probably want an ND16 or ND32 most of the time, the goal is just getting your shutter speed down to roughly double your framerate. if youre shooting 30fps you want to be around 1/60 shutter which on a bright day means you need a fair bit of ND to get there without blowing the exposure. the cheap $15 amazon ones i would skip though, ive seen some that have a definite color cast that's annoying to fix in post

fwiw i flew for almost a year without any filters and my videos were fine. might be worth just learning the other settings first before spending money on accessories tbh. not saying filters dont help but theres a lot of other stuff that makes a bigger difference like smooth camera movement and just picking better times to fly