Best Outdoor Photography Settings For Your Drone

Hey what's up guys photographer David Johnson here, and I'm shooting aerial footage out here in Franklin Tennessee today out at a place called Harlinsdale Farm and I'm using the DJI Mavic Pro, but I got to thinking when you're out shooting and you're getting those amazing aerial shots and aerial footage, how do you get the most out of your drone? Well today we're gonna be talking about the best drone settings to have. Now drone capabilities are still progressing right now. Basically the only two settings that you're gonna have to be looking at are exposure speed and your ISO. So we're gonna get right into the drone, actually looking on the screen at exactly what I'm seeing and seeing exactly what you need to do to get the most out of your drone for the best settings to use to create those amazing images.

Okay so once you're up in the air, a few things you wanna look for, if you wanna get out of that auto mode and right into manual mode, what you're gonna click is the manual modes here you can toggle between auto and manual. Now I talked about it a little bit before you can choose between your ISO and your shutter, your ISO is gonna let more light in the higher it gets the lower you get the less light it's gonna bring in. I try to keep mine on 100 as much as possible cause that's gonna reduce the amount of image noise that's being produced. Obviously your shutter speed is important for drone photography as well, because you want to have a steady shot that has no shake in it at all. What you wanna remain on is above one, 100th of a second.

That's gonna ensure that your drone is stable and that your shot is going to be stable as well. Sometimes you're gonna have to be much higher than that, depending on what light you're shooting in. Just remember to try to keep it above one 100th of a second. Also try to keep your drone in raw mode. Now raw is going to be in your image format options.

Which have raw JPEG, JPEG, and raw try to stay on raw cause anytime you're in raw, you can adjust the photo as much as possible with your image size. You have four by three and 16 by nine is your options remain in four by three that's gonna give you the most resolution in a drone photo. The 16 by nine is not gonna allow you to crop anything down and really zoom in on what you wanna do. So try to keep this on four by three, and you can always crop down the four by three. If you wanna obtain a 16 by nine aspect ratio.

Also always adjust your white balance to whatever the weather is going on around you today we're dealing with partly cloudy to mostly cloudy skies. So I'm gonna set my white balance to cloudy based on the conditions that are given to me. If you're shooting in other conditions, be sure to switch your drone to that white balance instead. Some other things you can do to ensure that you're getting the right settings for your drone photography is to set up a grid line in your system. And that can be done in the settings category.

You can also add or remove a histogram option that you can even move around on your screen as well. It helps you to get the best light possible in your drone photos. Knowing and following these drones settings is gonna help you get the most out of your aerial images and create those stunning drone photos that you see all the time before you go and fly into a situation be sure to research any rules and guidelines surrounding drones so that you don't break any rules and that you can safely fly your drone as well.