so ive been flying my mini 3 pro for about 4 months now and honestly the video footage looks great but every time i try to take still photos they come out looking super flat and washed out, almost like there's a haze over everything even on clear days. im shooting in auto mode mostly which i know is probably the issue but whenever i try to go manual i have no idea where to start with the settings. also i notice the horizon is almost never straight in my shots which bugs me way more than it probably should

anyone gone through this and figured it out? im mostly shooting landscapes and the occasional real estate thing for a friend

the washed out thing is almost certainly because youre shooting jpeg in auto and the drone is probably overexposing to protect shadows or something. first thing id do is switch to RAW if you havent already ? the jpegs out of most dji drones are processed pretty aggressively and you lose a lot of control. once youre in RAW you can pull highlights back in lightroom and the files hold up really well

for manual settings on a sunny day i usually start around ISO 100, shutter at something like 1/500 or faster if things are moving, and then dial in aperture from there. the mini 3 pro has a fixed aperture though so really youre just working with shutter and ISO which makes it simpler honestly. also the horizon thing ? turn on your grid lines in the camera display, it helps a lot once you get used to glancing at them

oh man i had the exact same problem when i started. the washed out look was driving me crazy. what helped me was just shooting in the golden hour ? like right after sunrise or maybe an hour before sunset ? because the light is so much more forgiving and your photos will look dramatically better even with mediocre settings. i know that doesnt totally solve the technical side but it made such a huge difference for me that i stopped worrying so much about the manual stuff at first