so ive been flying for about 8 months now mostly just for fun but lately ive been trying to get more serious about the actual photos. my problem is whenever i go out on a bright sunny day everything just looks blown out and flat, like the sky is completely white and the ground is too dark or vice versa. i feel like im missing something obvious.

im shooting on a mini 3 pro if that matters. mostly leaving it on auto settings which i know is probably the issue but every time i try to go manual i end up with something worse. does anyone have a starting point they use for sunny midday conditions? or is it just one of those things where you shouldnt even bother shooting at noon

yeah auto mode is definitely fighting you there. the dynamic range on these smaller sensors just cant handle harsh midday sun, so you kind of have to pick your battles ? expose for the sky and let the ground go dark, or find some middle ground with exposure compensation around -0.7 to -1.0 and hope for the best.

honestly the biggest thing that helped me was just switching to shooting in d-log or whatever flat profile your camera supports and then doing the actual exposure work in lightroom or darktable afterward. you recover so much more detail in the highlights that way. takes a bit to get used to editing flat footage but once it clicks its hard to go back. also golden hour is not a cliche, it genuinely solves like half your problems before you even touch a setting.

i had the exact same issue when i started out. one thing nobody told me early on was to just use the histogram on the live view instead of trusting how the screen looks, screens are always lying to you especially outside. if you see the right side of the histogram slamming against the edge your highlights are toast.