- So you just got your DJI Mini 2
and you're super excited to fly,
so you take it off and then this happens.
(drone buzzing)
So in this video, I teamed up with my buddy Aldryn
and we're going through some of the biggest mistakes
that new pilots make starting out.
All right, guys, let's get into it.
(upbeat music)
The DJI Mini 2 is such an awesome little drone.
It's tiny, it's lightweight,
but you can get some awesome photos and videos.
So I've teamed up with my buddy Aldryn.
He has a channel called FlytPath
which is a great resource for anything
and everything drone related.
And I highly suggest you guys go check out his channel
after you finished this video.
Now me and Aldryn also did another video, just like this,
the biggest mistakes that new pilots make around the Mini 1,
but all those same mistakes also apply
to you as a Mini 2 owner.
So between these two videos,
there is a ton of tips to help you guys out,
especially those of you who are first-time flyers.
So I'm gonna pass off to Aldryn
and he's gonna start with the first mistake.
(light music)
- Now, when you first get the drone up in the air,
one of the mistakes I see a lot of people doing
is not taking into account your surroundings.
Now, the reason why your surroundings is so important
is because if you've ever had to press
that return to home button,
you wanna make sure that their return to home height
is higher than anything around your area.
Right here, I have a really tall light post
right here to the left.
I have some power lines also on the right-hand side here,
I have a lot of hillsides.
Now the reason why you wanna make sure
that return to home is set higher than that
because if you ever had to press
or if the drone had to return to home,
what it's gonna do is it's gonna go to that height
and then start making its way back home.
So if your drone is set to a lower height
than some of these obstacles, then you definitely will risk
having that drone run right into it.
Then if you wanted to pause or stop that return to home,
just press that pause button.
And there you go,
it'll stop right there in the middle of the air,
and then you can actually manually,
which I like to do is manually fly it back in.
And then same thing,
the wind is coming in my back right now.
If I wanted to catch this,
all I do is come up, place my hand underneath
and safely land in your hand.
(light music)
- So mistake number two is not paying attention
to what time of day you're filming at.
So if you shoot midday
and the sun is right up there high in the sky
rather than a little bit lower in the sky.
Right now, the sun's kind of getting towards sunset.
If you shoot midday,
your images are just kind of very bland looking
and kind of bluish,
especially with the sensor on this drone.
And it just doesn't have that pop
that you wanna see from really good-looking drone footage.
So if you pay attention to time of day
and you shoot closer to sunrise, closer to sunset,
you can get some really good-looking footage
out of this drone and the colors look amazing.
You just don't wanna put the drone up
in the middle of the day
and expect to get the best looking footage.
So think through when you're planning to shoot,
think through when you wanna get those shots
and where the sun position is gonna be.
And if the sun can be a little bit lower in the sky,
you'll see you can get some really awesome footage
with this little tiny drone.
(light music)
- Now when you first get your drone,
I know a lot of people get really excited.
They wanna get out there and fly
and they'll pull over to a parking lot
and try to get this thing up in the air
as quick as possible.
And what I see a lot of new fliers do
is that they'll take their drone out of their car,
place it right here on top of their hood,
and then try to take off.
Now even have the hood
or the roof might seem like a nice flat surface
to take off from 'cause that's what you're gonna want to do,
the problem is the metal in the hood
or the roof of your car might cause
some magnetic interference on the drone itself.
Now, if you do try to take off from the hood of your car,
where there's a lot of magnetic interference,
it will affect the GPS in your drone,
and that's something you definitely do not wanna do.
You want to have solid GPS lock.
You wanna have a lot of satellites connected to it.
And if you try to take off around something
that has a lot of metal in it,
you're gonna have some compass calibration issues
with your Mini 2.
(light music)
- This mistake is not paying attention
to what mode you're in.
So on your controller in the center,
you have Cine, Normal, and Sport mode.
Now you wanna use these interchangeably
depending on the situation that you're shooting in.
And you don't wanna just flip it into Sport mode
and then fly trying to get good-looking footage
with the Sport mode
because if you push the throttle too fast,
this is what happens: the drone will dip
because the propellers are moving faster;
it's trying to get more speed,
so the angle of attack is gonna change,
which basically causes the drone to dip
and your camera dips as well.
Now there's definitely times
where you're gonna wanna flip it into Sport mode
to get those super fast shots,
but just know that your camera's not gonna be as stable
when you're flying in the Sport mode.
You wanna use Normal or the Cine
to get the most stable footage out of this drone.
(light music)
- Now hand launching and hand catching
is a little bit more of an advanced move.
So if this is your very first time flying it,
I definitely would not recommend trying it right away.
However, it's definitely one of those things
that you're gonna wanna learn
mainly because of the fact,
you're not always gonna have an ideal place
to take off and land from.
Now the one mistake a lot of new flyers do
is that they don't take into consideration
where the wind is coming from.
Now, of course, here for this demonstration,
there's no wind today,
but what wanna do is you wanna make sure
that wind is normally coming towards your back.
That way, if your drone is gonna hand launch
and hand catch from your hand,
the wind is gonna be pushing it away from you
and not towards you.
I've seen a lot of videos online
when people try to hand launch and hand catch
and the drone will take off
and then kind of blow right into or towards their face.
So the one thing you wanna do, don't make the mistake,
is make sure that that wind is coming from behind you
and pushing your drone away from your body
and not towards you.
Press that button for takeoff.
And then it'll say Takeoff, press and hold it.
Let go.
And there you go.
Like I said, don't make that mistake
of having the wind blow towards you.
Turn your body, get that wind on your back
and have the wind blow to the back of the drone.
That way, if it does take off from your hand,
it's gonna be going away from you
and not towards your face.
(light music)
- Let's talk about sun flares because depending
on which way you're positioning the camera,
when the sun, the sun hits the lens,
it creates this kind of like pinkish/purplish flare,
and you can see right here on the screen.
Now it could look cool to use these sun flares
when you're shooting,
but you don't wanna just like have a shot
where the sun is always at the same direction to the lens
and you just have this purple flare creeping in.
It just doesn't look good.
So just like I was talking about earlier,
you wanna pay attention to where the sun is, time of day,
but you also wanna pay attention to where the sun is
in relation to the camera.
If you're gonna be getting the sun in your shot,
you can let it flare,
but just don't let the sun be at the perfect angle
where it has that pinkish flare
because it's hard to see on the monitor.
So you just got to make sure
that you pay attention to where the sun is
and look for those flares.
Because for me, when I've been out flying,
I've noticed it's hard to see them on the phone
when you're recording,
but then when you get back home
and you put it on the computer,
all of a sudden you can see this flare coming in
and it will ruin your shot.
(light music)
- I don't know if we've talked about this
in a previous video, but one of the things
when you do pick up your Mini,
I always recommend getting the Fly More Combo,
mainly because of the fact that you get a bag
and you get a couple extra batteries.
And batteries are something
that I know I always talk about
mainly because of the fact you don't wanna go somewhere,
hike somewhere far and come to find out
you only have one battery to fly.
So that mistake, of course,
is try not to have just one battery.
Always have at least another spare.
However, if you do happen to only have one battery,
the rare thing about the Mini 2
is that if you do have a portable power bank,
like I said, this one's a little big.
If you have a lot of smaller ones
that you would use for your cell phone,
all you do is plug it in and there you go.
Now you can charge while on the go.
So if you did make the mistake
and didn't pick up extra batteries for your drone,
bring along one of your power banks
that you might have normally
that you use for your cell phone,
bring it along with your Mini 2,
and you could charge up your battery
with one of those power banks.
(light music)
- Another mistake is exposing too bright.
So with this camera, I've noticed when you shoot at zero,
the footage tends to be a little bit too bright,
like it just doesn't look right.
I found that when shooting auto,
I can shoot at negative 0.3, negative 0.7, or negative 1,
and I get a much better looking image out of this drone.
Now, if you're shooting on manual,
you see a dial in your settings.
So definitely turn on your overexposure warning
and bring up your histogram.
Those tools will help you expose properly
by seeing where 100% percent or like super overexposed is
and be able to bring your image back from there
so that you can get the best look out of this camera.
(light music)
- Now this one's not really a mistake.
I'd say it's more of a tip as well as something
that a lot of people might oversee,
so I could see it's a mistake as far as not utilizing it.
But what I like to do when I go out flying
is utilize the maps a lot better.
I think that's a mistake
that a lot of pilots don't really do,
especially when you're coming back home.
Now it's pretty normal to try to use the camera
to navigate your way back home, but what I've found
is a lot of people don't really utilize the map,
which actually gives you a really simple way
to find your way straight back home.
There's gonna be a lot of situations
where you're gonna be out there
and you might not necessarily understand orientation-wise,
so what you're seeing on the screen.
However, if you click on the bottom left-hand screen,
right there on the map and click on the map,
it'll show you exactly the route that you took
as well as what is gonna be that best route back home.
So for this demo, of course,
I just flew really quickly out there straight.
But as you can see here, that red line,
it gives me a direct path home
so that no matter what orientation I'm at,
as you can see here,
I'm kind of turning around left and right.
If I were just to look at the image,
it might be kind of hard to understand
which direction I'm at.
But if I look at the map right here,
I could see that in order for me to go straight back home,
I just need to line up that arrow with that home mark.
I will normally throw it back in Sport,
make sure I see that there's nothing in my way,
and then just head straight back
and follow that red line all the way back home.
Once you hear the drone,
throw it back on GPS or Normal mode.
And there you go, now you have a quick beeline back home
instead of using that camera,
which you might not understand the orientation you're at.
Don't make the mistake and not use that map system
that's in the very bottom left-hand corner.
(light music)
- My next mistake has to do with Quickshots
and that is shooting Quickshots entirely in 1080p
and not realizing that you can shoot in 2.7 or 4K.
So this camera does allow you to shoot 4K in Quickshots.
However, to turn on 4K, it's not where you think it is.
So when you turn your Quickshots on,
you have to go in the upper right-hand corner,
click the three dots,
and then your 4K setting is gonna be in the menu system
under the camera settings.
This is not intuitive,
and I've seen some videos out there around the Mini 2
where people are saying like,
"Oh, you don't have access to 4K when you use Quickshots."
Well you do, you just have to find it.
It's kind of buried.
This drone is a 4K drone
and the 4K footage looks really good,
so I highly suggest you turn on the 4K
when you're using Quickshots.
(light music)
We're all gonna make mistakes at some point
and we can learn from those mistakes
to become better pilots.
Now, I just wanna say a special thanks to Aldryn
for helping me out with this video.
I highly suggest you check out his channel.
But next, head over here to another video
that me and Aldryn did that's 10 more mistakes
that you might make with your drone.
All right, guys, I'll see you over there.