so ive been flying for about 8 months now and i feel like my footage and stills are finally getting decent but theres this one thing thats been driving me crazy. whenever i go out to shoot in the middle of the day or when theres a lot of direct sunlight everything just comes out super washed out and flat looking. like the sky is almost white and the ground is just this blown out mess.

im shooting on a mini 3 pro if that matters, usually just leaving it in auto mode which i know is probably my first problem. i tried dropping the exposure compensation down a bit and it helped a little but i still cant seem to get that punchy contrasty look i see in other peoples shots. do i need to be shooting in a flat/log profile or something? i honestly dont really know where to start with all the manual settings stuff

yeah auto mode is gonna fight you on this, especially in harsh midday light. the drone is basically trying to expose for everything at once and ends up compromising on all of it. the single biggest thing you can do is switch to manual exposure and lock in the 180 degree shutter rule ? so if youre at 30fps set your shutter to 1/60, 24fps means 1/50 etc. then use ISO to control brightness and get an ND filter on there to bring your shutter down to where it needs to be. for stills specifically you want to shoot in raw format if you arent already, that way you can recover highlights in post without it looking terrible.

the d-log or flat picture profile thing is great but honestly learn the basics of manual exposure first or youll just end up with flat AND washed out which is worse lol. golden hour is also just genuinely easier to work with when youre starting out, midday sun is brutal even for experienced shooters

nd filters honestly changed everything for me. i was in the same boat and kept wondering why my shots looked amateur compared to people on youtube. turns out a lot of it is just the light being too harsh and the camera not being able to handle it without help. i use the freewell magnetic nd set and being able to swap them quickly mid flight is really handy. start with something like an nd16 on a bright day and go from there