ok so ive been flying for about 8 months now and my footage just looks... fine. like technically fine, nothing's blurry or shaky but when i watch it back it just doesnt have that cinematic feel everyone gets. i'm using a mini 3 pro and i know the camera is capable because ive seen incredible stuff from the same drone on youtube.

i think part of my problem is i just fly too fast and i dont really plan shots ahead of time, i kind of just go up and see what looks cool. also not sure if my color profile is helping, im shooting in normal mode right now. someone told me to shoot d-log m but honestly i tried it and the footage looks washed out and grey and i panicked and switched back lol

is there like a fundamental approach or mindset shift i need to make? or is it mostly just experience over time

the d-log m thing is super common confusion and you're not wrong that it looks terrible straight out of camera ? it's supposed to, you need to apply a LUT in post to bring it back. think of it like shooting raw on a regular camera. the washed out grey is all that dynamic range just sitting there waiting to be worked with. there are free mini 3 pro LUTs all over the place, just drop one on your footage and suddenly you'll see why people bother.

as for the cinematic feel thing, honestly the biggest thing for me was slowing way down and using the 180 degree shutter rule. so if you're shooting 24fps you want your shutter at 1/50, that natural motion blur is a huge part of why cinematic footage looks the way it does. most people fly in bright sun with auto settings and end up with 1/2000 shutter and super crisp choppy movement that reads as drone footage immediately. get an ND filter set, makes a massive difference.

same boat as you a while back. what helped me most was honestly just studying shots i liked and trying to reverse engineer them. like pause the video and think about where the drone must have been, what direction it was moving, how high. then go try to replicate it at a location you know well. sounds tedious but it clicked something in my brain about how to think in 3d space while flying

also slow down more than you think you need to. then slow down again. seriously my best clips are ones where i was convinced i was going too slow