this has been bugging me for a while. i shoot in d-log or whatever the flat profile is on my air 2s and then i try to grade it in premiere but it just never looks as punchy and cinematic as stuff i see posted here or on instagram. im doing something wrong in post i think but i dont know what

or maybe its just that people are using way better locations than me, i mostly fly around suburbs and parks so maybe thats part of it. idk posting here to see if anyone has been through the same thing

honestly it took me like a year to figure out that shooting d-log and then just dragging contrast up isnt the same as using an actual lut designed for d-log footage. once i started using a proper lut as a base and then tweaking from there everything started looking way more like what i was seeing from other people. there's some free ones out there that are decent enough to start with

also check your sharpening settings, sometimes in camera sharpening being too high makes things look kinda weird when you try to grade it later

location matters more than people admit. suburbs are just hard to make look cinematic, flat rooftops and parked cars dont exactly scream epic. not saying your grading is fine but dont be too hard on yourself if the raw material isnt giving you much to work with either