so ive been flying for about 8 months now, mostly just messing around but lately ive been trying to actually get decent shots for my cousin's real estate business. the problem is like half my photos come out way too bright or just kind of flat looking, no real contrast or depth to them. im shooting on a mini 3 pro if that matters.

i think i might be letting the drone just do everything on auto but honestly i dont really know where to start with manual settings. ive watched some youtube stuff but everyone seems to assume you already know what youre doing. do i need to shoot in d-log or something? ive heard people mention that but when i tried it everything looked even worse and i panicked and switched back

any help would be genuinely appreciated, starting to feel like maybe im just not cut out for this

d-log will absolutely look terrible straight out of camera, thats the whole point of it ? you're capturing a flat image with more dynamic range and then you bring it to life in editing. if youre not color grading in lightroom or resolve then yeah just leave it on normal color profile for now, theres no shame in that at all

the washed out thing though, that sounds like overexposure more than a color profile issue. try setting your exposure compensation down like -0.3 or -0.7 and see if that helps. also what time of day are you shooting? midday sun is brutal for aerial stuff, golden hour is your friend especially for real estate where you want that warm flattering light on the property

for real estate specifically i'd also suggest keeping your shutter speed at around double your framerate if youre doing any video, but for stills just make sure your histogram isnt blowing out on the right side. takes a bit of getting used to reading it but once it clicks it becomes second nature

dont be too hard on yourself, i was in the exact same spot not that long ago. one thing that helped me a ton was just shooting in raw instead of jpeg ? gives you so much more room to fix stuff in post. washed out jpegs are basically done but a raw file thats slightly overexposed you can usually pull back the highlights and recover a lot of detail