Easy ways to improve your shots FAST

Shoot away from the sun if you can. Watch out for shooting in harsh super bright sunlight though. Clear sunny days look nice to you but your camera has a hard time with all those shadows.

Even lighting is great. If you’re shooting something that’s completely in the shade it will look well lit. If you’re shooting on a cloudy day it will also look very nice and even.

The closer you can get and the closer to the ground, the better it will look ironically.

If you fly up 400 feet and try to look at something, it doesn’t mean it will have a giant wow effect, it will just be hard to see. Having a drone really just removes the limitations of the ground but it doesn’t mean you have to fly FAST AND HIGH you can do a slightly above ground shot if it makes sense.

A unique perspective is shooting straight down.

Drone shots aren’t completely unique and unheard of anymore, but still not a lot of people will have photos of their estate/casino/farm, whatever from a birds-eye view. Usually the lighting is easier this way anyway. So as usual, just aim for symmetry. Most drones have a grid you can place over the shot to line things up, but I suggest you develop an eye for it on your own.

CINE MODE

On your drone, flip the remote over to Cine mode (if it’s a DJI drone) so the flying is smoother and more precise. When you take off the drone defaults to Normal mode, so remember to switch it off and back on if you take off with Cine Mode switched on.

If the shot you’re taking is crazy extreme in terms of brights and shadows, like a sunset shot with the house in the foreground so its super dark and shady, you can choose a photo mode called AEB – auto exposure bracketing. This will take 5 photos at different levels of brightness so that you can overlay them later on in post.

We go over this later so relax, but I find this is only if you are desperate. Most of the time, RAW format will be able to handle what you are shooting just fine.

PORTRAIT MODE

There is a feature called Portrait mode on some DJI Drones (Mini 3, 4, Mavic 4) where the camera turns sideways. This is really handy for Instagram photos since they are allowed to be tall and fit a screen better that way.

I basically never do this though, I just shoot a normal photo and crop in later in Lightroom. OR I shoot a vertical panoramic photo to get a really cool fisheye look and way higher resolution

Take multiple photos, from multiple angles, there's really no harm in this. You'll catch onto which ones work better for framing pretty quickly.