so ive been flying my mini 3 for about 4 months now and i feel like my footage and photos look way worse than what i see other people posting online. everything just looks kind of flat and washed out, especially when im shooting around midday. i shoot in auto mode mostly because i was nervous to mess with the settings but i think thats probably the problem?

someone in another thread mentioned shooting in d-log or something and i have no idea what that even means. do i need special software to deal with that? i have lightroom but ive mostly just used it to crop stuff. any help appreciated, even just pointing me in the right direction would be great

yeah auto mode is definitely working against you in bright conditions. the camera is basically trying to expose for everything at once and usually blows out the sky or crushes the shadows in the ground. first thing id do is switch to manual and learn the exposure triangle ? ISO, shutter speed, aperture (though on the mini 3 you dont really have aperture control so its mostly ISO and shutter).

the rule of thumb most people use is set your shutter speed to 2x your framerate so if youre shooting 30fps set it to 1/60, and then keep ISO as low as you can. you'll probably need ND filters to get there in bright sun, like an ND16 or ND32 for midday. as for d-log, its a flat color profile that retains more dynamic range ? yes you need to color grade it after but even just throwing a lut on it in lightroom makes a huge difference. dont be scared of it once you try it once it starts making sense pretty fast

oh man i was in the exact same spot like 6 months ago. the washed out thing at midday is SO real. golden hour changed my life honestly ? like just flying an hour before sunset and the photos look completely different without me doing anything special. it's kind of a cheat code while you're learning settings lol