ok so ive been flying for about 8 months now and my footage is getting better but theres one thing that keeps killing me and its shooting in the middle of the day. everything looks completely blown out and flat, like the sky is just white and the shadows are pure black. ive tried dropping the exposure compensation down but it only helps so much.

im on a mini 3 pro btw, shooting in d-log m mostly. i know people say shoot in flat profiles but honestly sometimes i wonder if im making it worse because i dont always have time to properly color grade after. like if im just making a quick clip for instagram i almost wish i hadnt shot in log because it looks worse before grading and i never get around to finishing it.

also does ND filters actually make that big of a difference or is it mostly a marketing thing? ive heard conflicting stuff. any help appreciated

the ND filter thing is real, not marketing, trust me on this one. the whole point isnt just to darken the image ? its to get your shutter speed down to roughly double your frame rate so you get natural motion blur. without it in bright sun youre probably shooting at like 1/2000s and everything looks weirdly sharp and stuttery even if the exposure looks fine on the histogram. for midday sun youll probably want an ND16 or even ND64 depending on how bright it is.

as for the log thing, honestly if you dont have time to grade then just dont shoot in log. its not cheating to use a normal picture profile. d-log m is great but only if you're actually going to finish the grade. a well exposed normal profile will look way better than an ungraded log file sitting at like +30 saturation in lightroom because you got impatient.

same boat here with the midday stuff, i just started avoiding it honestly. golden hour changed my whole opinion of aerial photography. like even a mediocre composition looks good when the light is doing all the work for you. i know thats not always possible depending on your schedule but if you can swing it even once youll see what i mean.