Wow, I mean WOW!! When I bought this little mavic mini drone I wasn't so sure about what quality I should expect. You see it was "only" 2.7K, it flies about 2 KM away and with no sensors, or waterproofing I guess I was a little bit scared. I always want to be on the safe side, I want my hardware to be waterproof, crash-proof and last forever, but we all know that dreams don't always come true (but they can sure come very close).
As you noticed, I am not so active now on my blog. I am being sincere and I can admit to myself that I got bored. I started this corner as a personal journal and maybe help one or two people along the way when they faced the same dilemmas as I had and exchange stories and solutions for the same problems. Unfortunately, these hectic times don't let the eye rest on beauty for more than a couple of seconds and what you create must be of spectacular quality and beauty to get noticed by even your closest friends. And we all know how difficult this is when you are occupied with a lot of things plus your day work to make ends meet.
But being the person I am, I had to share with whoever reads these lines my excitement about what a "cheap" drone can do right before everything becomes documented, catalogued restricted and fined. This summer I ended up with about 3000 photos and videos testing wisely the limits of the drone distance, quality and recovery after the shots. I can say that when you don't expect too much of the camera sensor and the battery duration, you can be pleasantly surprised by the results.
Putting a polarized filter always at maximum effect during sunshine and when flying at high noon will result at contrast colorful images that will only need minimum color grading to make your eyes roll from excitement. I won't tell you how to give your image maximum effect, after all this is personal taste we are talking about. But I can tell you to raise the contrast and saturation a bit AFTER managing the annoying noise in the skies or continuous colors (try Topaz DeNoise AI before everything else).
Another tip is to never put the White Balance to manual since if you forget it for your next location it is next to impossible to restore it in post processing. Of course there is always the risk of White Balance shifting throughout a video take, but if you only aim for images this should not be an issue.
Finally, it is a deal-maker when the people at DJI decided to unleash the manual controls of mavic mini. Being able to set the shutter speed, ISO and White Balance independently is both a blessing and a curse (if you forget the White Balance to Manual) and it can bring up image quality and speed up post processing. The color science is very good and you will be able to recover much of the lost details in white areas (but not all of them since it still lacks RAW). There is a newer version of the mavic mini called mini 2 with improvements in distance, image quality and duration among others, but since it is a tad more expensive and since this is the course of technology, I am happy with what I have and try to do my best with this little miracle of technology in my hands.
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