so ive been flying for about 8 months now mostly just messing around but lately ive been trying to get more serious about the actual photography side of things. i have a mini 3 pro and honestly the auto settings do a decent job but i feel like im leaving a lot on the table

the thing i keep running into is when im flying over bright areas like beaches or snow my highlights just get completely blown out even when it looks fine on the little screen. and then i get home and load it up on the monitor and its just this washed out mess. ive been shooting jpeg this whole time too which i know is probably part of the problem

anyone have like a starting point for manual settings they use? mostly shooting in the afternoon because thats when i have time, so usually dealing with harsh light. any advice appreciated

switching to raw will honestly change your life for this kind of stuff, not even exaggerating. the jpeg processing in camera just clips those highlights and theres no recovering them in post but raw gives you so much more headroom to pull things back

for the blown out highlights issue specifically, try dialing your exposure compensation down like -0.3 or even -0.7 when youre over bright surfaces. i know it looks a bit dark on the screen but trust the histogram more than the preview. and if your drone has nd filters i'd grab a 4 or 8 for afternoon shooting, keeps your shutter speed in a reasonable range without cranking the aperture down too far

the 180 degree shutter rule is worth looking up if you havent already, basically just keeps your motion blur natural looking. with a mini 3 pro you're working with a fixed aperture so its all about iso and nd filters to balance things out

yeah same boat here honestly, i only switched to raw like two months ago and the difference in lightroom is massive. afternoon light is tough though i mostly try to fly golden hour when i can because the light just does half the work for you compositionally too