ok so I finally switched to shooting in D-Log on my Mini 4 Pro after everyone said it was the way to go for flexibility in post. and yeah the raw files look flat and grey which I know is normal but no matter what I do when I try to grade it the sky either blows out or the shadows go all muddy and it never looks like those clean cinematic grades I see everywhere.

im using Premiere and I have a LUT applied as a base but maybe im doing something wrong in the order of operations? or maybe my exposure when filming is off? I feel like I was happier with the footage when I was just shooting in Normal color profile which is embarrasing to admit but at least it looked decent straight out of camera

the LUT order thing is probably your issue. you want to do your exposure and white balance corrections first before the LUT hits the footage, otherwise the LUT is trying to interpret incorrectly exposed log footage and it just falls apart. in Premiere you can stack your lumetri effects so put one on first just for the technical correction, then a second one below it for the creative LUT. makes a massive difference.

also check your histogram when youre shooting log - you want to slightly overexpose compared to what looks right on the screen, maybe half a stop to a stop, because log needs that extra data in the highlights otherwise they do exactly what youre describing. its a bit of a mental shift from shooting normal profile

nothing embarrasing about preferring normal profile tbh. log is great but it only really pays off if the lighting conditions actually have enough dynamic range to justify it. flat overcast day? sometimes normal just looks better with less work. i still shoot log for golden hour stuff but for like midday urban flying I honestly just leave it on normal and save myself the headache