In this video I'm giving you my exact settings for cinematic photography and video on the DJI Mavic Air. PLUS one trick nobody is talking about.

Ok, I wont keep you waiting, the one trick nobody is talking about is adjusting the EXP curves! Watch the video for my explanation of what's going on here as it does look a little confusing when you first see it.

If you've ever seen the DJI Go app then you'll know it can be extremely overwhelming the first time you open it. My goal here is to simplify everything for you and set you up for the first time with the right settings for photography and video.

The first problem is that the default settings on the Mavic Air move the drone around very fast. When it's fast, it's hard to control and hard to make smooth movements. Cinematic looking video requires non-jerky slow and controlled movements. So to set this up we simply need to reduce the sensitivity of all of the controls on the drone for the both the camera gimbal and the drone itself.

- EXP curves to 0.1.
- Yaw movement limit 50.
- Max gimbal pitch speed 20.
- Gimbal pitch smoothness 20.

Once we've done this we can look at the technical settings for the video itself. Learn manual mode first!!! If you dont understand manual mode this is absolutely essential. I've included a link below teaching you how to do this. From there our video settings are as follows:

ISO - Low as possible. High ISO handling still not good on the DJI Mavic Air.

Shutter Speed: At least double the frame rate, not too fast to avoid jitter.

Frame Rate - 24FPS is what's used in cinema. If you slow motion use 60FPS and slow down in post production.

White Balance - Cloudy.

Style - None.

Color - D Cinelike. Better baseline settings for post production.

For photography you want to be shooting in DNG RAW and developing your photographs in Lightroom! Dont bother with JPEG mode at all. Set your image size to 4:3 as this is the native resolution of the sensor. 16:9 is just 4:3 cropped in camera.

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Dont forget to enrol in the free 5 day online Lightroom Workshop! Visit https://onelightroomworkshop.com/ to start right away. Join 10,000 students from around the world! You’ll learn: How my photograph was featured on the cover of National Geographic Traveller magazine. Why you will regret shooting in JPEG mode and how to use RAW right now. Five instant improvements you can make to your photographs using Lightroom. How to create professional landscape panoramas with any camera and much more!

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Instagram: @danielbilsborough @djbphotographyschool