hey what's up it's Jerad with Ditch Auto and these are the top five camera
settings that I change on the DJI Mavic air or shooting photos now I also have a
video on shooting video the top five settings that I changed so make sure to
check that out and one other video that I think is extremely important I'm going
to talk about at the beginning here so the first thing that I think is most
important with with a DJI Matic air in shooting in manual mode so if you don't
understand shooting in manual mode with your camera I highly recommend checking
out that video I've got a link down below and in the card above so that you
can see that video I think it's extremely important because though the
camera is actually pretty good it isn't gonna give you the quality of image that
you're expecting or that you're hoping for
unless you're shooting in manual mode if you're wondering why your images are a
little flat in comparison to others or they don't have that cool kind of like
cinematic drone look it's probably because you're shooting in automatic
mode so you'll definitely want to check that out so the first thing that I
automatically do and you can see I've already got it changed as I go and shoot
in in JPEG and RAW format now out of the box
this thing's gonna shoot in JPEG there's really nothing wrong with JPEG but the
problem with a JPEG image is that it's compressed from the get-go so you're
losing image quality right out of the camera though it will produce a decent
image and one could say not everybody really needs to shoot in RAW but for me
I like having the ability to go and edit that photo on my computer or on a
smartphone app and I found that you have much more flexibility in doing that when
you shoot in RAW because the raw image is raw out of the camera no compression
nothing changed you have a lot more flexibility there and so I like having
that so I shoot in JPEG plus raw I shoot in JPEG plus raw as opposed to raw only
because I like to have that JPEG image in case I just want to quickly share it
through social media or something like that though a lot more devices are
accepting RAW images and able to edit RAW images it's easier to transfer JPEG
images there's smaller size they're not huge images this will export a dmg style
raw image and not all cameras can handle the DNG
style so I do the JPEG plus Raja so that I have that flexibility but shooting in
RAW gives you that extra information in your image that you can go and color
correct it you could do a lot more to it later on in software on your computer or
on a smart device so as I mentioned before the second thing I do is go and
shoot in manual mode you can see there's automatic mode which is going to change
and adjust all the settings as I as I do on the fly so for somebody who's maybe a
beginner shooting in automatic mode might be best to kind of get your feet
wet so I shoot in manual mode because I want my image to be more consistent as
you fly around there may be little differences that your camera decides to
compensate for by changing the exposure of your image and that means that some
of your images may be super bright and some of them might be a little bit
darker even though the overall seem that you were flying in was relatively the
same so for me I like to be able to control that manually which means
playing with the settings a lot more while I'm flying but nonetheless my
images end up looking much more consistent now DJI has gotten really
good at automatic mode the automatic modes got mean much better than it used
to be but if you're wanting an image that and this is where manual mode
really comes into play if you're wanting an image that has more of a balanced
sharpness as far as everything that's in the image meaning that your target point
of interest is more sharp but everything else is maybe a little bit more soft or
a little bit blurry because it is a drone that's flying so you want to make
it look like it's something that's moving so the image has to have some
movement there you're gonna want to shoot in manual mode and you'll want to
check out the video that I put out on how to shoot manual mode with your drone
because that's going to show you the settings I'm going to talk about what
these different settings do how to use manual mode but for me
manual mode all the time it's just a must it's where I shoot and it's gonna
get you better images so the second thing I do is go and set a custom white
balance you can see here I've got it set to sunny
if you shoot an auto white balance and fly around some of your images are going
to be warmer some of them are going to be cooler because maybe you're flying
towards the son not completely towards it away from
it you want all of your images to have kind of a generalized color now because
you're shooting in RAW if you're shooting in RAW like I am you can color
correct all of your images later but it's still better just because of the
small sensor on this camera that you do your best to get it right in camera
which means setting the white balance to something that makes sense for where
you're at so there is Auto sunny cloudy and then there's two for different
lighting types which means flying indoors which I don't know about that
and then custom scene go and set a custom white balance which over to the
right is warmer over to the left is cooler so you could set a custom white
balance if you feel comfortable with that but for me I typically choose sunny
if it's if there's no clouds and I'll choose cloudy if there's some or a lot
of clouds and then I'll just go with one of those two because it means it's
setting it at a predetermined amount color temperature and as I fly around
it's not changing cloudy is one color temperature sunny is one single color
temperature and I'll get that consistency there the next thing I do is
change my photo style or I guess the image style there's standard landscape
and soft now all of those are kind of things that you can change based on what
you're actually taking pictures of for me I want a little bit flatter of an
image because I want my contrast in my sharpening and my vibrance to be added
in post-production I'm never too often taking a photo with
the drone and uploading it or sharing it or delivering it or wherever it's going
straight out of camera that's almost never so I want a little bit flatter of
an image so that I can add some more stuff in if I want an image to be super
contrast II meaning and the darks are really dark and the and the brights are
really bright and and there's not much room in between I want to be the one
that did that I want to have the information there so that I can do that
so the standard color is all flat zeros all the way across I go with a negative
3 on the sharpening a negative 1 on the contrast and a negative 3 on the
saturation simply because I want more control later on in the image I don't
want all of that stuff to be pre now shooting in RAW still like I said
before it gives me more flexibility but I want the camera to do a lot less and
even especially to that JPEG because I am shooting out a JPEG as well so I want
that JPEG to have a little less formatting on it so whether or not this
really affects the raw image or not the JPEG image would be affected a lot and I
want less to be done to that JPEG image so I would recommend setting your your
custom image style here a little bit and then you can even go into the color
profile this is really only for video you have your color profile normal but
if you're in video there's decent alike which is good so in video it's more
important to have this stuff changed because we're not shooting raw video
here video is highly compressed especially out of a drone like this so
there's a lot less room to play with so with this drone normal color profile
the image style we go a little bit subdued so that I have room to play
later on when I'm editing the photo so one of the last things that I do is I go
and I already have it enabled you can see it here but I'll go ahead and remove
it so we go into the gear tab and I turn on histogram and I turn on the gridlines
now the histogram allows me to see in areas in the photo that might be hard to
see when I'm flying and looking at a small display it's really hard to tell
your exposure when you're flying around like what areas are super dark and what
areas are overexposed it's hard to pay attention to that so the histogram gives
you a more visual representation on how to see what's going on around you
and of course you can see because we're in a darker room and especially if I
cover up the camera the histogram is pushed all the way up against the left
which is the darks and if we point the camera more at something that is bright
you can see we get the histogram moving over to the right-hand side and so that
gives me a better idea of what I'm looking at and then I can adjust my
exposure which I talked about in the manual mode video a little bit more
going in and adjusting my camera settings a little bit the histogram kind
of gives me some help there so definitely go and check out that video
so that you can learn a little bit more about what the histogram does and how to
shoot and manual like I talked about earlier
the gridlines make it really nice because with the gridlines I'm able to
actually see kind of and align things more in like a rule of thirds so with
the gridlines if I'm trying to position someone centered it makes it much easier
for me if I'm trying to use a little bit of positive or negative space and
position my subject or my object somewhere else in the scene it makes it
much easier for me to line that up especially if I'm trying to be
consistent by taking multiple images I can use these lines to more easily
compose my shot than if not having them at all I think that that's extremely
important and so I always have those turned on so there's one very important
tool that you have for maintaining exposure or even knowing where to go
with your exposure as you're flying the camera has a meter here which kind of
gives you an idea of where your exposures as you can see we're at
negative 2.3 which means we're a bit underexposed if I increase my shutter
speed a bit you can see we're getting closer to zero and now we're at positive
0.3 and so our exposure is more along the lines of where it should be when
you're flying around and you're trying to find your exposure you're gonna want
to rely heavily on the histogram and on the meter here to kind of determine
where your exposure should be so having that histogram UPS you know the areas
that are blown out because the exposure is kind of a general meter of everything
that the camera sees so you could have it nice right here at 0.3 but there
could be one area that's actually blown out and you'd be able to tell because
maybe the histogram is maxed out over onto the side so the combination of
these two tools make it really easy for you to determine what is exposed
properly and what is not getting a good practice I think for me is I typically
with the camera settings that I use fly around at like a plus point 3 - maybe
0.7 somewhere right in there is good because this camera isn't really have
that huge of a dynamic range so my practice is to kind of over expose a
little bit and then color correct a little bit to bring in a little bit of
contrast now this definitely is different whether I'm shooting photo or
video if I'm shooting video I definitely overexposed a little bit
more than I would if I'm shooting photo because in that raw photo that we can
get out of the camera I have more room to work than when I'm editing the video
so I tend to overexpose just a little bit or what seems like overexposing but
when I go and actually match that up to other footage it looks pretty good and
photos I can go more of an even exposure maybe you know like a point zero
straight across because I have more room to play with that raw photo than I do
with the video so those are my five settings that I change I have one pro
tip which is always format your card inside of the drone don't format it in
your computer put the card in your drone go into your settings click on the gear
icon scroll to the bottom and format your SD card there of course you can
also format your internal storage because the drone does have some of its
own internal storage but I highly recommend always formatting your SD card
inside the drone as opposed to a computer or something like that it's
just a better practice and I've never had a card fail on me when I do it this
way when I've done it the other way format it on a computer or maybe I took
a SD card that was in a GoPro and then put it into a DJI I always end up having
problems there so make sure to format your cards inside of whatever device
you're going to be using them in so with that I hope that you enjoyed this video
give it a thumbs up if you liked it and subscribe to our channel if you want to
see more videos from us there are other videos about the Mavic air and I've
linked to those in the description below so make sure to check that out I
appreciate you checking out our video I hope that you enjoyed it and I hope that
we get to see you back here soon on ditch auto take care