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My first video recording with Mavic 3 - Pacines Valley, CA

JoelP

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I flew my new Mavic 3 for the first video outing last week in the Pacines Valley of California. What a step up from my old Mavic Air 1! The battery life and range are so amazing that I was encouraged to fly to locations I would never have attempted more. The added collision avoidance not only allowed me to fly close to the cliff but enabled me to climb a slope 4-5 ft off the ground using the avoidance feature alone.

That said, I encountered several issues. I set it up to film in Dlog, but after a couple of flights into the day I had inadvertently switched out of Dlog. As it turned out that was for the best. When I postprocessed in Resolve 17 the dLog video using the standard DJI Mavic 3 LUT (GC_Dlog-Mto_Rec709) it doesn't look anywhere near natural. Is there a better LUT? Even so, I need to figure out why Dlog accidentally turned off.

A second issue was for video with the standard 24 fps frame rate all flown in cinematic mode. When recording with more altitude this was fine, but for pans and for imagery near the ground it is rather jumpy. I think that I will need to record in slow motion for any pans or near ground recordings. I tried to fix this in post by increasing the frame rate to 30 fps or more and by adding smoothing, but I didn’t see much improvement. Is there a better way to get flicker free video?

It was a very sunny day, but all of this was filmed with an ND16. The histogram remained well centered. I am still playing with the sensitivity and smoothness settings of the controls, especially with yaw motion. This drone flies like a dream, but I need more hours to get it to the next level.

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Dial back the yaw sensitivity, and consider a faster frame rate like 60fps to avoid the jitter.
 
I’m pretty happy with the LUTs from the Film Poets. Shooting with a shutter speed of 1/(twice the frame rate) should give you more smooth, cinematic footage (30 fps @ 1/60 shutter speed is a very common setup).

 
I’m pretty happy with the LUTs from the Film Poets. Shooting with a shutter speed of 1/(twice the frame rate) should give you more smooth, cinematic footage (30 fps @ 1/60 shutter speed is a very common setup).

Thanks! I will look at their LUTs.

I shot at 24 fps knowing that I was covering lots of distance and would increase the frame rate to 30 fps or higher in post. Surprisingly to me, even at frame rates of 30-60 fps I still see flicker in that footage. I will pay more attention to my shutter speed.
 
I just went to Film Poets and bought their complete set for the Mavic 3. I can already tell that this is much better than what I used. I am severely color impaired (a dichromat) so good LUTs are key for me to color grade in a way that looks natural to people with good color vision. Thanks for this recommendation!
 
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