Best Settings For DJI Mavic Pro & Phantom 4

Figuring out the best settings for your drone is certainly an important task, there’s no doubting that. However, as regulars on Drone Film Guide will know, once you have the correct settings dialled in, it drops off the radar as we prioritise the things that really matter when creating drone cinema, i.e. understanding our light, creating depth and suspense, using motion effectively, framing a beautiful composition etc. If you want to make the transition from drone owner to drone pilot to drone cinematographer then check out our Drone Cinematography Masterclass 2.0. In the meantime, let’s take a look at how to get the best settings for your DJI Mavic (or Phantom!).

There are two sides to getting the correct settings for your Mavic or Phantom, (a) camera picture settings, and (b) drone control settings. Let’s crack on with the picture settings first.

Resolution

Resolution concerns the number of pixels in each frame of the moving image. We’ve all heard of HD and 4K these days, the latter referring to a video in which each frame is approximately 4,000 pixels wide and 2,000 thousand pixels tall. In other words, each frame is the equivalent of an 8 mega pixel photo. There was discussion in some corners that lower resolutions (e.g. 2.7k and 1080p) had a higher bit rate and therefore better colour depth for grading in post and such like but in our tests we did not find that to be the case and in our opinion, even if it was the case, the difference would be so minimal that the benefits of higher resolution would outweigh the benefits of higher bit rate (e.g. sharper images, the ability to crop and reposition in post. So, the higher the resolution the better – stick it on 4K.

Frame Rate

There is more confusion concerning the ‘best’ frame rate. Is it ‘better’ to have more frames, e.g. 60fps? NO! The only reason you would have a higher frame rate is if you were planning on slowing the footage down in post to give you slow motion. In Europe we use 25 fps for realtime footage and in the US, 24 or 30fps (the former being the cinema standard and our recommendation for you). These frame rates give you the motion blur and look the eye is accustomed to. Any higher and the footage in our opinion has a camcorder look about it, i.e. not good! We have become aware on YouTube of a trend for YouTubers to film realtime footage at 60fps. Please don’t get distracted by this. If in doubt, we take Hollywood as our reference and trust me, they don’t film realtime at high frame rates. Peter Jackson tried it with ‘The Hobbit’ shooting at 48fps…how many have done it since…none!

White Balance

White balance controls the colour temperature of the image captured by the camera. In a nutshell, you want your whites to look white, not yellow or blue. Measured in kelvin, we recommend you set a custom white balance so it is fixed throughout the duration of the recording. Never set your white balance to auto. When set to auto, you might see the white balance change during the shot and this is not what you want. Given that drone filming will take place during daylight hours 99.9% of the time, either set a custom white balance between 5000 – 6000K or use one of the presets by tapping on the sun or the cloud icon but either way, make sure it doesn’t change during the shot by avoiding auto!

Style & Color

This has been quite the can of worms since the Mavic Pro was launched so let’s get straight into the answer. In the video above we recommend you set contrast, sharpness and saturation to -1 on the D-Cinelike colour profile. We’ll not get into it here but we have another video analysing the differences between D-Cinelike and D-Log and we arrive at the conclusion that D-Cinelike is the preferred option. Check out the video below if you want to find out more about that! As for the other settings, we like to set contrast and saturation to -1 just to take the edge of things and give us a slightly flatter picture to work with in post. If the blacks are too crushed coming out the camera then you can lose some detail in high contrast situations so we try to preserve a little detail by setting saturation and contrast to -1. As for sharpness, conventional wisdom is that you dial that down also to remove the digital sharpening that happens in-camera as it can easily be added in post. Indeed, this is the approach we subscribe to. However, a fantastic study by YouTubers, The Film Poets, found that in setting sharpness to +1 would over-ride the Mavic’s in-camera noise reduction, thereby giving a better image, particularly in low-light situations. It does however require the additional step of de-noising in post with specialist software. So it’s not an approach that we advocate for day-to-day flying but in certain situations, check out their video and consider going down this route. Ultimately however, you need to find the best settings for your workflow. Not everyone wants to spend a day colour-grading a handful of drone shots so if any of the other colour profiles work for your workflow, go for it!

Auto vs Manual Exposure

Much like white balance, you don’t want your exposure to change during filming so in this respect, 99.9% of the time you will want to set your exposure to manual. Manual exposure is controlled three ways: ISO, aperture and shutter speed. Since a by-product of cranking up the ISO is noise in the image, we always keep the ISO as low as possible, i.e. 100. Aperture is fixed on the Mavic Pro at f/2.2 so we can’t use this lever to control exposure either. So this leaves us with shutter speed for controlling the ‘brightness’ of the image. A higher/faster shutter lets less light into the sensor and on bright days this could be as high as 1/1000th of a second or higher (DJI presents this in the menu as 1000). Now, I know some of you are asking, what about motion blur, ND filters and keeping your shutter ‘double’ your frame rate? Well it just so happens we have a study on that too so check out the video below!

Histogram

Have you ever struggled so see your screen when out in the field because the sun is causing reflections on your monitor and your screen is not bright enough? If so, you will find it impossible to set a correct exposure and the risk is that you over-expose your image while filming, thinking your are correctly exposing it, only to find out when you get home that the highlights in the clouds and such like are completely blown-out with with no detail that can be recovered in post. As such, we need an objective way of measuring exposure and the histogram is your friend in this respect. We ALWAYS use the histogram so make sure you have that set to on as you will need it. Check out our detailed video on how to make the most of the histogram but in a nutshell, you are looking for that nice ‘mountain’ profile in the centre of the histogram with no spikes at either the left or the right side. If you take only one thing away from this article it is to use the histogram!

Focus

DJI introduced a rather strange focusing system with the launch of the Mavic Pro and I’ll be surprised if they continue it going forwards given the confusion it created. Certainly, with the Mavic Air they did away with it. In a nutshell however, you need to (a) make sure the focus is correctly set before you press record, and (b) make sure the focus does not change during recording (just like white balance and exposure). Our preferred method for doing this is to use the auto focus to set focus by tapping on the monitor where you want focus to be set and to then change focus to manual so there is no risk of it changing during the shot.

Being able to control focus makes perfect sense when you have a lens with a longer focal length that gives you shallow depth of field at a low aperture (the blurry backgrounds behind the subject you are used to seeing in cinema). However with the wide angle lens of the Mavic Pro, there is not such thing as shallow depth of field so having everything in focus is really the only option. Perhaps we’ll see interchangeable lenses at some point on the prosumer DJI drones and the issue of how to focus will come back into the spotlight but for now, just be sure to remember to set your focus before pressing record.

Gimbal Settings

Out the box, DJI gives us a fast and jumpy set of gimbal settings that really have no value for cinematic filmmaking. As such, let’s get the sensitivity dialled all the way down. Gimbal Pitch Speed controls the speed at which the camera tilts when you move the gimbal wheel on the controller. We recommend a setting of 10 or 11 for a speed that is neither too fast or too slow. Gimbal Pitch Smoothness combines with gimbal pitch speed to give you a nice roll-off when you ease out of the gimbal tilt, rather than the camera just coming to a halt suddenly. A setting of around 20 should sort you out here. As for Enable Upward Gimbal Tilt Limit to 30 Degrees, well why wouldn’t you want this added functionality? We love the way you can tilt the camera up on a Mavic or a Phantom and create low level manoeuvres that simulate Hollywood jib or crane moves. Try starting off low with the camera pointed up then increase your altitude slowly whilst tilting your camera down to keep your subject in the frame. Just because you can fly high doesn’t mean you should!

EXP Settings

Finishing up our list of best settings for your Mavic or Phantom, we need some nice manual control settings for the drone so we can fly smoothly. Again, out the box, these drones seem set for tearing up the skies which is great fun but of zero value for filmmakers. We love Tripod Mode as it deadens the sensitivity of the drone making it a dream to control for slow manoeuvres. However, sometimes you don’t want to fly that slow but you still want control so we are trying to find that sweet spot in manual mode between smoothness and manoeuvrability. Track down your EXP Settings in the Advanced Settings at the bottom of the Main Controller Settings menu and set them as you can see in the picture below. It’s a little difficult to explain the nature of these graphs in writing so we’ll let you watch the video for this. In a nutshell though, the centre of the three graphs controls the ‘jumpiest’ of your drone’s motions, the yaw. Get this dialled all the way down to 0.1 on the Mavic or 0.2 on the Phantom and trust me, you’ll love the difference!