Mini 2 St Andrews, Scotland 4K Drone Footage

[Chicolabronse]

A short film i made with my new mini 2 on a recent trip to St Andrews bay and Elie beach on the east coast of Scotland, was limited to certain areas due to being near RAF Leuchars air force base. Footage was shot in 4K/30FPS and is ungraded.

DJI Mini 2
Freewell ND 16 Filter
Edited on DaVinci Resolve 17

 

[Squidinc]

OK...so it's a tad long.....but you know what.... I didn't really notice until it finished! There is a lot of really smooth and technical flying in this video. Some great angles and well constructed editing. Coupled with the perfectly matched soundtrack I thought it was brilliant. Makes me want to try harder to get those angles. Liked & subscribed!

 

[Chicolabronse]

OK...so it's a tad long.....but you know what.... I didn't really notice until it finished! There is a lot of really smooth and technical flying in this video. Some great angles and well constructed editing. Coupled with the perfectly matched soundtrack I thought it was brilliant. Makes me want to try harder to get those angles. Liked & subscribed!

Thank you so much for the positive feedback, glad you enjoyed it, this was only my second time flying the mini 2 and first try at a proper edit, now I'm hooked!!

I did cut 3 mins from my original video (had over an hour of footage from this trip) maybe I should have split it into 2 parts?

Cheers

 

[steve13]

What technique did you use for the smooth flying?

 

[Chicolabronse]

What technique did you use for the smooth flying?

This was only my second time flying the drone so i don't think i had a specific technique I mainly used cini mode and just gentle inputs on the sticks, It did take several attempts to get certain shots the way i wanted them, hope that helps.

 

[kiwineill]

Well constructed video, great flying. I've just changed to DaVinci 17 - a lot to learn, has many great features.

 

[Sharky05]

A short film i made with my new mini 2 on a recent trip to St Andrews bay and Elie beach on the east coast of Scotland, was limited to certain areas due to being near RAF Leuchars air force base. Footage was shot in 4K/30FPS and is ungraded.

DJI Mini 2
Freewell ND 16 Filter
Edited on DaVinci Resolve 17

Loved the natural look of the video mate drone sees what the eyes see and not un naturally colourgraded so it is good enough to be in a movie or a magazine. We've been so brainwashed with photo shopping photos and videos in order to attract peoples attention that when they do visit a country or a certain place, they're disappointed with what it actually looks like. You have seasonal changes weather conditions and patterns that actually changes the area so not always picture perfect but it still has its own natural beauty as far as many people all over the world would agree with me I'm sure. You've got to love our hobby as the camera actually sees what your eyes are seeing and that's how the photos and videos are taken all natural as is on that day and time. Well done and good flying.

 

[Chicolabronse]

Well constructed video, great flying. I've just changed to DaVinci 17 - a lot to learn, has many great features.

Thanks! it was my first time using DaVinci and my pc really struggled (needing an upgrade soon) when editing but I kept things simple so it was relatively straightforward, watched a few beginner videos on youtube to get to grips with it.

 

[Chicolabronse]

Loved the natural look of the video mate drone sees what the eyes see and not un naturally colourgraded so it is good enough to be in a movie or a magazine. We've been so brainwashed with photo shopping photos and videos in order to attract peoples attention that when they do visit a country or a certain place, they're disappointed with what it actually looks like. You have seasonal changes weather conditions and patterns that actually changes the area so not always picture perfect but it still has its own natural beauty as far as many people all over the world would agree with me I'm sure. You've got to love our hobby as the camera actually sees what your eyes are seeing and that's how the photos and videos are taken all natural as is on that day and time. Well done and good flying.

Thanks! I agree, there are times when colour grading looks good but I personally prefer the natural look for the reasons you mentioned in your post, as you can see in my video the difference between the stark look on the overcast days and the lovely golden glow on the last couple of minutes of the video when the sun was going down, much more natural look.

Cheers.

 

[Chicolabronse]

Some pics from my trip

 

[macfawlty]

One of the best I’ve seen from a new pilot cinematographer. Such simplicity, smart enough to just fly straight and not make annoying course corrections. Straight down shots are always some of my favorites and I’m glad to see you used a lot of them. Go into your advanced settings, reduce yaw speed and increase smoothness, same with gimbal. That will help you make subtle turns and smooth gimbal action. With regards to length, as long as you’re not using redundant clips of the same subject, I don’t mind long edits. I often like to shoot long continuous clips and will cut out only the messy parts between so I have a full edit of my good clips. For public consumption, you can pick some music and cut to fit. Long continuous clips can be spliced into pieces and used throughout the edit or speed ramped. In a presentation edit, you‘ll need a variety of shots, forward/backward, gimbal tilts up/down, shots high/low, subjects close/far and turns and POI’s clockwise/counterclockwise, spins in both directions and those great straight down shots. This is something you need to plan for when filming so you have a variety of shots for your edit.

 

[macfawlty]

Let’s clarify some points on ‘colour grading’. Surely, we all know the ‘HDR look’ of overly processed photos/videos. Many folks like the HDR look if not overly done, but it’s less about look and process than the camera sensor having enough dynamic range to lift some of the details in shadows and recover a bit of the highlights so your imagery doesn’t look super contrasty with blown highlights and crushed blacks that often occurs in scenes with a wide range of exposure values. I would recommend you shoot in the d-cinelike profile, a compression scheme with a wider dynamic range that provides a little more to work with in post. I can see in your footage some of the blacks are a bit crushed, which I’ve seen with several MM2 videos since its release. In your scenes, you got a bit lucky as the lighting was more even due to the slightly overcast skies typical in the UK. Midday summer in other locales might yield a very contrasty image from the MM2 that you may not like so much. I noticed that the normal color mode on my MA2 was quite good compared to normal mode on my M2P, so DJI has gotten better with their color science, but not sure the normal mode on the MM2 is as good as normal mode on the MA2. D-cinelike is very easy to grade in Resolve and it’s just a better compression scheme. Also shoot all of your photos as RAW & JPG bracketed series (AEB) and use Adobe Lightroom for post-processing.

 

[Chicolabronse]

One of the best I’ve seen from a new pilot cinematographer. Such simplicity, smart enough to just fly straight and not make annoying course corrections. Straight down shots are always some of my favorites and I’m glad to see you used a lot of them. Go into your advanced settings, reduce yaw speed and increase smoothness, same with gimbal. That will help you make subtle turns and smooth gimbal action. With regards to length, as long as you’re not using redundant clips of the same subject, I don’t mind long edits. I often like to shoot long continuous clips and will cut out only the messy parts between so I have a full edit of my good clips. For public consumption, you can pick some music and cut to fit. Long continuous clips can be spliced into pieces and used throughout the edit or speed ramped. In a presentation edit, you‘ll need a variety of shots, forward/backward, gimbal tilts up/down, shots high/low, subjects close/far and turns and POI’s clockwise/counterclockwise, spins in both directions and those great straight down shots. This is something you need to plan for when filming so you have a variety of shots for your edit.

Thanks for the kind words, I'm extremely happy with how this video turned out. I watched nearly every mini 2 video on youtube (footage & tutorials) before I made the purchase and just tried to follow the advice of keeping it simple and flying straight and smooth (re-shooting if not happy) I also studied the areas we were going to be visiting so i had a good idea of the kind of shots I was wanting, especially the top down shots which are my favourites.

I enjoy a longer video as well and I tried to capture as many different angles of the same subject which I knew I could fine tune in the edit.

I'm planning to go out with the drone to fine tune my gimbal settings for each mode asap.

Cheers

 

[Chicolabronse]

Let’s clarify some points on ‘colour grading’. Surely, we all know the ‘HDR look’ of overly processed photos/videos. Many folks like the HDR look if not overly done, but it’s less about look and process than the camera sensor having enough dynamic range to lift some of the details in shadows and recover a bit of the highlights so your imagery doesn’t look super contrasty with blown highlights and crushed blacks that often occurs in scenes with a wide range of exposure values. I would recommend you shoot in the d-cinelike profile, a compression scheme with a wider dynamic range that provides a little more to work with in post. I can see in your footage some of the blacks are a bit crushed, which I’ve seen with several MM2 videos since its release. In your scenes, you got a bit lucky as the lighting was more even due to the slightly overcast skies typical in the UK. Midday summer in other locales might yield a very contrasty image from the MM2 that you may not like so much. I noticed that the normal color mode on my MA2 was quite good compared to normal mode on my M2P, so DJI has gotten better with their color science, but not sure the normal mode on the MM2 is as good as normal mode on the MA2. D-cinelike is very easy to grade in Resolve and it’s just a better compression scheme. Also shoot all of your photos as RAW & JPG bracketed series (AEB) and use Adobe Lightroom for post-processing.

I don't have any experience of colour grading video footage (i do like the natural look) and have only dabbled in lightroom for editing photos, I have the RAW & JPEG setting on and will hopefully try my hand at better photo edits.

Can i ask what the D-cinelike profile is, is that a setting on the app?

Cheers

 

[macfawlty]

I don't have any experience of colour grading video footage (i do like the natural look) and have only dabbled in lightroom for editing photos, I have the RAW & JPEG setting on and will hopefully try my hand at better photo edits.

Can i ask what the D-cinelike profile is, is that a setting on the app?

Cheers

Apologies, the Mini 2 doesn’t have the d-cinelike profile. It’s on the MA2 and M2P/Z. Adobe Lightroom is the best app for photo editing. You can get the photography package with LR, Photoshop and a few other apps for £9.98/month. IMO, It’s the best deal for software in the history of software. Lightroom is easy enough to learn. There are a lot of controls, but you typically use only a dozen of them. You don’t actually need Photoshop to edit drone pics, but it’s a package, so…
I like Serge Ramelli’s workflow for photo editing. Find his tutorials on YouTube. He’s not a drone photographer, but the same principles and workflow. Everything you need to know is in his free YT tutorials.

 

[Chicolabronse]

Apologies, the Mini 2 doesn’t have the d-cinelike profile. It’s on the MA2 and M2P/Z. Adobe Lightroom is the best app for photo editing. You can get the photography package with LR, Photoshop and a few other apps for £9.98/month. IMO, It’s the best deal for software in the history of software. Lightroom is easy enough to learn. There are a lot of controls, but you typically use only a dozen of them. You don’t actually need Photoshop to edit drone pics, but it’s a package, so…
I like Serge Ramelli’s workflow for photo editing. Find his tutorials on YouTube. He’s not a drone photographer, but the same principles and workflow. Everything you need to know is in his free YT tutorials.

Thanks for the clarification, I was sure i never came across a d-cinilike profile in the menus! I'm a regular user of Adobe Illustrator so I have photoshop and lightroom but never really used Lightroom so I will check out the tutorials you recommended.

Cheers

 

[macfawlty]

I didn't use Lightroom in the early versions cause I thought Photoshop could do whatever it did. When I bought the Canon 5DmkII shortly after its release, I started messing with HDR software. It was fun for a bit, but I grew disgusted with it because the controls and processing were so awful. LRc (Lightroom Classic) controls, processing, flexibility and depth, as with all of Adobe's products is brilliant. I know some people use Adobe Camera Raw, which shares a lot of the same functions and features, but it's more for single image processing. Photoshop itself is terrible for straight photo editing as the controls don't match up with a photo workflow. Also, LR is a non-destructive process as all adjustments are in a .xml file. However, it does a lot of things that LR does not do, so I'll roundtrip when necessary.
When I travel, I'll often shoot many hundreds of frames in 3-image brackets. The bracketing saves time trying to determine perfect exposure and I can pick the best exposed image of the series or use under/overexposed for masking when needed. LR comes in very handy when merging several images into a panorama. Most of my drone pics are shot as panos. I do my panos manually primarily so I can bracket.

 

[Prop Wash]

Chicolabronse - 2nd Time flying? I better get more practice time in!

That was a pleasure to watch. Your music was really good to match your cinematograpy. Good sound effects mixed in too.
@ 1:09 - you were above a seagull - I liked that shot. Good catch.
@ 2:07 - Is that a Navigational becon? Nice place for it.
@ 4:00 - St. Andrews - not a bad place for someone's final resting place!
@ 5:20 - you flying up toward the facade of St. Andrews to catch the sun - That was nice flying.
@ 6:00 - you just HAD to add a cute little man, didn't ya? HAHAHA

Well done - I wouldn't mind watching more videos you post. Thank you!

 

[macfawlty]

I just had to watch it a few more times, it was that engaging. I’ve been flying/filming for 4 years and I don’t think I’ve edited a presentation video that good. I may have more moves, but you captured so many scenes. That’s my objective any time I visit a locale… full coverage and a lot of shot variety. The straight down shots are the most compelling. I like the way you opened with the boy straight down and closed with the boy.

 

[Chicolabronse]

I didn't use Lightroom in the early versions cause I thought Photoshop could do whatever it did. When I bought the Canon 5DmkII shortly after its release, I started messing with HDR software. It was fun for a bit, but I grew disgusted with it because the controls and processing were so awful. LRc (Lightroom Classic) controls, processing, flexibility and depth, as with all of Adobe's products is brilliant. I know some people use Adobe Camera Raw, which shares a lot of the same functions and features, but it's more for single image processing. Photoshop itself is terrible for straight photo editing as the controls don't match up with a photo workflow. Also, LR is a non-destructive process as all adjustments are in a .xml file. However, it does a lot of things that LR does not do, so I'll roundtrip when necessary.
When I travel, I'll often shoot many hundreds of frames in 3-image brackets. The bracketing saves time trying to determine perfect exposure and I can pick the best exposed image of the series or use under/overexposed for masking when needed. LR comes in very handy when merging several images into a panorama. Most of my drone pics are shot as panos. I do my panos manually primarily so I can bracket.

I would like to try more aerial photography so I will need to take a deeper dive into how lightroom works.