Drone Videography 101: Basics to Get You Started - 42West (2024)

Drone videography is becoming increasingly popular in today’s diverse media landscape. Being proficient at capturing compelling drone videography is undoubtedly an essential skill for creators who want to have their media stand out.

Learning to fly a drone has become relatively easy with today’s modern drones. They are smaller, lighter, more affordable, and easier to operate than ever before. Creators, business owners, enthusiasts, and families can all enjoy the benefits of learning the basics of drone videography.

Choosing the right drone — and following some fundamentals of drone videography — will ensure you capture high-quality drone videos easily.

How to Get Started in Drone Videography

When considering how to get started in drone videography, you may be presented with a wide range of available drones to choose from. Choosing the right drone that fits your needs and skill level is an important first step to getting started.

Choose a Drone Based on Your Desired Footage

Choosing the right drone for the type of footage that you want to captureis an important consideration when getting started in drone videography. Drones are available in a multitude of sizes, weights, prices, and include a diverse set of imaging capabilities. You can choose a drone that has interchangeable lenses, one that can be flown using FPV (First Person View) goggles, or a tiny drone that can fit in your pocket.

The drone videos that you can capture will depend greatly on the choices that you make when purchasing your drone. It’s best to make your purchasing decision with your end-goal in mind. Do you want to focus primarily on capturing high resolution cinematic video? Do you have the budget to spend a significant amount on a cinema drone with interchangeable lenses? Will you be able to maximize the potential of your drone’s imaging capabilities based on your current skills and qualifications? Knowing the answers to important questions like these will help you choose the right drone for your needs and skill set.

Know How to Use the Camera

Another important consideration when getting started in drone videography islearning the basics of how to operate your drone’s camera.This includes the configuration of the camera’s manual settings, video recording codecs, and available frame rates.

Mastering the full set of features and options on your drone’s camera is essential for creating compelling drone videos. Depending on your drone, you may have the ability to control the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO on your camera. You’ll want to familiarize yourself with these controls, so you can get the best results when capturing drone videos.

Professional cinema drones like the DJI Mavic 3 and Autel Robotics EVO Lite+ all offer full manual controls of the camera. Meanwhile, intermediate drones like the DJI Mini 3 Pro and DJI Air 2S are limited to manual shutter and ISO controls.

Mastering all of the available features and settings of your drone’s camera will ensure that you have the ability to maximize the opportunities you have while flying on-location, and the imaging capabilities of the drone that you choose to fly.

Read more about the DJI Mavic 3 in Renan Ozturk’s article, Why You Need the DJI Mavic 3 Drone for Videography.

Capturing the best drone footage is relatively simple if you follow a few simple rules. You’ll also need some useful accessories in your drone videography toolkit.

Set Shutter Angle to 180 Degrees

One of the easiest ways to make your drone videography more cinematic is toensure that you always set your shutter angle to 180 degrees.This technique consists of setting your camera’s shutter speed to twice that of your video’s FPS (Frames Per Second).

For example, if you want to shoot slow motion at 4K 60 FPS on the DJI Mini 3 Pro, set your camera to manual mode. Ensure that your shutter speed is set to 2x 60, which is 1/120 per second.

The purpose of using the 180 degree shutter angle is to ensure that your drone video has a natural motion blur. The natural motion blur created by the 180 degree shutter angle is what gives your drone video a cinematic quality that is easily recognizable.

Use Filters

Another way to capture the best drone footage is toensure you use high quality neutral density, or polarizing drone filters on your drone’s camera lens.Neutral density filters are essentially sunglasses for your drone’s camera. They take the place of having manual aperture controls, if you’re flying a drone that doesn’t offer this. They come in varying densities or darkness levels. You can choose a level depending on the amount of light you need to cut.

Fly Slowly with Caution

You’ll also want to ensure that you use the rest of your drone’s settings and features to maximizes these techniques.Try to fly as slowly and intently as possible when executing your shots.Most of the DJI and other drones offer a “cinema” setting. This reduces the speed and rates of the controls. This allows you to get smoother and more cinematic shots. Try to use these modes to your advantage. Fly your drone as if you’re moving your camera with the intention to create cinematic movements — such as push-in, pull-out, pan, and parallax movements.

Considering the Lighting

Be sure to also do your best toshoot your footage in the most pleasing light of the day, and with the lowest possible ISO values.By shooting at ideal times of day like sunrise or sunset, you’ll ensure that your drone footage captures beautiful tones and colors in the sky.

Remember to try and minimize your use of ISO whenever possible. The cleanest drone footage is always achieved by balancing all of your camera’s settings, using cinematic techniques, and setting an optimal exposure value. Meanwhile, try to maintain the lowest possible ISO levels without being underexposed. I tend to favor a 0.3 EV whenever possible, unless I’m deliberately looking for a brighter image for stylistic reasons.

How to Edit in Post-Production

Drone videography allows creators to draw their audiences into a scene like never before. It gives visual stories an immersive aerial perspective. It also creates a sense of location which is not easily achieved from the ground. In order to maximize audience engagement, you’ll want to capture your footage using cinematic LOG color profiles and high-quality codecs with 10bit color depth.

Cinema DNG and Apple ProRes

Depending on the type of drone that you choose to purchase, you may have access to high-quality color profiles that are ideal for color grading and post-production. Drones like the DJI Mavic 3 Cine, and DJI Inspire 2 offer Cinema DNG, and Apple ProRes codecs. These are some of the highest quality, and least compressed video codecs available on a drone.

These codecs will typically be offered in conjunction with LOG color profiles, which are flat in color. They are meant to retain as much dynamic range as possible from the camera’s sensor. If you have a drone with high quality codecs, and 10bit LOG color profiles, you can have the maximum amount of flexibility for color grading and achieve advanced stylistic editing in post-production.

“Cine-Like”

In the absence of a true LOG or 10bit color profile, most entry-level and intermediate drones will offer a“Cine-Like” semi-flat color setting and a moderately compressed codec like .h265. These profiles may not offer as much latitude in post-production as Apple ProRes or Cinema DNG. Although, they are the best alternative to standard automatic settings and offer increased flexibility for post-production.

They’re limited in the amount of push and pull that you can apply to the coloring of your drone footage in post-production. They don’t retain as much dynamic range or color information. Although, its still always better to use “Cine-Like” color profiles instead ofthe baked-in standard color. Keep in mind that you’ll want to apply a more moderate color grade to your footage than you would if you were using a true 10bit LOG or Apple ProRes codec.

Best Drones for Videography

Let’s take a look at some of the options for drones that offer amazing cinematic video. There are options covering advanced, intermediate, beginner drones. It should be easy to find the right drone to meet your needs and skill level.

DJI Mavic 3

The DJI Mavic 3 blurs the lines between pro-sumer and professional drones. It features a large 4/3 CMOS Hasselblad main camera and a versatile 1/2 CMOS tele-lens camera. Cinema-level image quality in a compact form factor is a best-in-class feature of the DJI Mavic 3.

Read more about this drone at Introducing the New DJI Mavic 3 Drone with Dirk Dallas.

DJI Air 2S

The DJI Air 2S combines portability and power in a pro-sumer drone. It offers a large one-inch CMOS sensor capable of capturing 12.6 stops of dynamic range. High-resolution video is available at 5.4K/30fps, along with slow-motionvideo at 4K 60fps. The DJI Air 2S features Intelligent HDR technology that automatically merges multiple images without the need for post-processing. This results in high dynamic range video, which retains increased highlight and shadow detail.

Learn more at DJI Air 2S Drone: Hands-on Review with Women Who Drone.

DJI Mini 3 Pro

The DJI Mini 3 Pro is a revolutionary drone for its size and weight. It’s the first drone to weigh 249 grams. It also offers tri-directional obstacle avoidance sensors and a vertical and horizontal camera. This is combined into an imaging platform that can shoot vertical videos in full 4K resolution without the need to crop. In addition to its camera, the DJI Mini 3 Pro also offers up to 47 minutes of flight time. It also has an optional extended battery.

Interested in this drone? Read up at DJI Mini 3 Pro Drone: Hands-On Review with AndrewOptics.

Autel Robotics EVO II V2 Pro 6K

The Autel Robotics EVO II V2 Pro 6K is a foldable 6K drone featuring a large one-inch CMOS image sensor and 40 minutes of flight time. It can capture 6K video, which offers up to 4x of lossless in-camera zooming capabilities. Equipped with 12 computer vision sensors, the EVO II V2 Pro 6K features 360 degree obstacle avoidance for enhanced safety during flight.

Autel Robotics EVO Lite+

The Autel Robotics EVO Lite+ takes compact foldable drones to the next level. It packs a multitude of powerful features for capturing cinematic drone footage. This includes 6K 30FPS HDR video, up to 3x of lossless zoom, adjustable manual aperture control, Sky-Portrait AI portrait mode, and pre-programmed cinematic “Movie-Master” shot sequences — including Rocket, Orbit, Flick, andFade Away.

Conclusion

Learning the basics of drone videography is relatively simple. You’ll want to start by identifying your goals for the type of drone videography you want to capture. Knowing your skill level and ideal budget will also help you to identify the right drone for your needs.

Once you’ve decided on the right drone, it’s a matter of following some basic guidelines for capturing compelling drone videography. Take some time to familiarize yourself with the fundamental features and settings of your drone. Learn the basics of your drone’s camera, how to maximize the available codecs and color profiles, and combine those features with some cinematic techniques.

Using the 180 degree shutter angle rule will always help to yield the most cinematic and natural looking drone footage. It gives your drone videos the natural motion blur that our eyes are used to seeing in real life. This the first step towards capturing great drone videography.

From there, simply use the best codecs and color profiles available to you from your drone. You can also include some high-quality drone filters in your aerial toolkit to take your drone footage to the next level.

To learn more about how you can level up your drone photo and video skills, continue reading more of our 42West educational content.