- So you just got your DJI Mini 2 and you're super excited to fly, so you take it off and then this happens. (drone buzzing) So in this video, I teamed
up with my buddy Aldryn and we're going through
some of the biggest mistakes that new pilots make starting out. All right, guys, let's get into it. (upbeat music) The DJI Mini 2 is such
an awesome little drone. It's tiny, it's lightweight, but you can get some
awesome photos and videos. So I've teamed up with my buddy Aldryn. He has a channel called FlytPath which is a great resource for anything and everything drone related. And I highly suggest you
guys go check out his channel after you finished this video. Now me and Aldryn also did
another video, just like this, the biggest mistakes that new
pilots make around the Mini 1, but all those same mistakes also apply to you as a Mini 2 owner. So between these two videos, there is a ton of tips
to help you guys out, especially those of you
who are first-time flyers. So I'm gonna pass off to Aldryn and he's gonna start
with the first mistake. (light music) - Now, when you first get
the drone up in the air, one of the mistakes I
see a lot of people doing is not taking into
account your surroundings. Now, the reason why your
surroundings is so important is because if you've ever had to press that return to home button, you wanna make sure that
their return to home height is higher than anything around your area. Right here, I have a
really tall light post right here to the left. I have some power lines also
on the right-hand side here, I have a lot of hillsides. Now the reason why you wanna make sure that return to home is
set higher than that because if you ever had to press or if the drone had to return to home, what it's gonna do is it's
gonna go to that height and then start making its way back home. So if your drone is set to a lower height than some of these obstacles,
then you definitely will risk having that drone run right into it. Then if you wanted to pause
or stop that return to home, just press that pause button. And there you go, it'll stop right there
in the middle of the air, and then you can actually manually, which I like to do is
manually fly it back in. And then same thing, the wind is coming in my back right now. If I wanted to catch this, all I do is come up,
place my hand underneath and safely land in your hand. (light music) - So mistake number two
is not paying attention to what time of day you're filming at. So if you shoot midday and the sun is right up
there high in the sky rather than a little bit lower in the sky. Right now, the sun's kind
of getting towards sunset. If you shoot midday, your images are just kind
of very bland looking and kind of bluish, especially with the sensor on this drone. And it just doesn't have that pop that you wanna see from really
good-looking drone footage. So if you pay attention to time of day and you shoot closer to
sunrise, closer to sunset, you can get some really
good-looking footage out of this drone and
the colors look amazing. You just don't wanna put the drone up in the middle of the day and expect to get the
best looking footage. So think through when
you're planning to shoot, think through when you
wanna get those shots and where the sun position is gonna be. And if the sun can be a
little bit lower in the sky, you'll see you can get
some really awesome footage with this little tiny drone. (light music) - Now when you first get your drone, I know a lot of people get really excited. They wanna get out there and fly and they'll pull over to a parking lot and try to get this thing up in the air as quick as possible. And what I see a lot of new fliers do is that they'll take their
drone out of their car, place it right here on top of their hood, and then try to take off. Now even have the hood or the roof might seem
like a nice flat surface to take off from 'cause that's
what you're gonna want to do, the problem is the metal in the hood or the roof of your car might cause some magnetic interference
on the drone itself. Now, if you do try to take
off from the hood of your car, where there's a lot of
magnetic interference, it will affect the GPS in your drone, and that's something you
definitely do not wanna do. You want to have solid GPS lock. You wanna have a lot of
satellites connected to it. And if you try to take
off around something that has a lot of metal in it, you're gonna have some
compass calibration issues with your Mini 2. (light music) - This mistake is not paying attention to what mode you're in. So on your controller in the center, you have Cine, Normal, and Sport mode. Now you wanna use these interchangeably depending on the situation
that you're shooting in. And you don't wanna just
flip it into Sport mode and then fly trying to
get good-looking footage with the Sport mode because if you push the throttle too fast, this is what happens: the drone will dip because the propellers are moving faster; it's trying to get more speed, so the angle of attack is gonna change, which basically causes the drone to dip and your camera dips as well. Now there's definitely times where you're gonna wanna
flip it into Sport mode to get those super fast shots, but just know that your
camera's not gonna be as stable when you're flying in the Sport mode. You wanna use Normal or the Cine to get the most stable
footage out of this drone. (light music) - Now hand launching and hand catching is a little bit more of an advanced move. So if this is your very
first time flying it, I definitely would not
recommend trying it right away. However, it's definitely
one of those things that you're gonna wanna learn mainly because of the fact, you're not always gonna
have an ideal place to take off and land from. Now the one mistake a lot of new flyers do is that they don't take into consideration where the wind is coming from. Now, of course, here
for this demonstration, there's no wind today, but what wanna do is you wanna make sure that wind is normally
coming towards your back. That way, if your drone
is gonna hand launch and hand catch from your hand, the wind is gonna be
pushing it away from you and not towards you. I've seen a lot of videos online when people try to hand
launch and hand catch and the drone will take off and then kind of blow right
into or towards their face. So the one thing you wanna
do, don't make the mistake, is make sure that that wind
is coming from behind you and pushing your drone away from your body and not towards you. Press that button for takeoff. And then it'll say
Takeoff, press and hold it. Let go. And there you go. Like I said, don't make that mistake of having the wind blow towards you. Turn your body, get that wind on your back and have the wind blow
to the back of the drone. That way, if it does
take off from your hand, it's gonna be going away from you and not towards your face. (light music) - Let's talk about sun
flares because depending on which way you're
positioning the camera, when the sun, the sun hits the lens, it creates this kind of
like pinkish/purplish flare, and you can see right here on the screen. Now it could look cool
to use these sun flares when you're shooting, but you don't wanna just like have a shot where the sun is always at
the same direction to the lens and you just have this
purple flare creeping in. It just doesn't look good. So just like I was talking about earlier, you wanna pay attention to
where the sun is, time of day, but you also wanna pay
attention to where the sun is in relation to the camera. If you're gonna be getting
the sun in your shot, you can let it flare, but just don't let the sun
be at the perfect angle where it has that pinkish flare because it's hard to see on the monitor. So you just got to make sure that you pay attention to where the sun is and look for those flares. Because for me, when I've been out flying, I've noticed it's hard
to see them on the phone when you're recording, but then when you get back home and you put it on the computer, all of a sudden you can
see this flare coming in and it will ruin your shot. (light music) - I don't know if we've talked about this in a previous video, but one of the things when you do pick up your Mini, I always recommend getting
the Fly More Combo, mainly because of the
fact that you get a bag and you get a couple extra batteries. And batteries are something that I know I always talk about mainly because of the fact
you don't wanna go somewhere, hike somewhere far and come to find out you only have one battery to fly. So that mistake, of course, is try not to have just one battery. Always have at least another spare. However, if you do happen
to only have one battery, the rare thing about the Mini 2 is that if you do have
a portable power bank, like I said, this one's a little big. If you have a lot of smaller ones that you would use for your cell phone, all you do is plug it in and there you go. Now you can charge while on the go. So if you did make the mistake and didn't pick up extra
batteries for your drone, bring along one of your power banks that you might have normally that you use for your cell phone, bring it along with your Mini 2, and you could charge up your battery with one of those power banks. (light music) - Another mistake is exposing too bright. So with this camera, I've
noticed when you shoot at zero, the footage tends to be
a little bit too bright, like it just doesn't look right. I found that when shooting auto, I can shoot at negative 0.3,
negative 0.7, or negative 1, and I get a much better looking
image out of this drone. Now, if you're shooting on manual, you see a dial in your settings. So definitely turn on
your overexposure warning and bring up your histogram. Those tools will help you expose properly by seeing where 100% percent
or like super overexposed is and be able to bring your
image back from there so that you can get the best
look out of this camera. (light music) - Now this one's not really a mistake. I'd say it's more of a
tip as well as something that a lot of people might oversee, so I could see it's a mistake
as far as not utilizing it. But what I like to do when I go out flying is utilize the maps a lot better. I think that's a mistake that a lot of pilots don't really do, especially when you're coming back home. Now it's pretty normal
to try to use the camera to navigate your way back
home, but what I've found is a lot of people don't
really utilize the map, which actually gives
you a really simple way to find your way straight back home. There's gonna be a lot of situations where you're gonna be out there and you might not necessarily
understand orientation-wise, so what you're seeing on the screen. However, if you click on
the bottom left-hand screen, right there on the map
and click on the map, it'll show you exactly
the route that you took as well as what is gonna be
that best route back home. So for this demo, of course, I just flew really quickly
out there straight. But as you can see here, that red line, it gives me a direct path home so that no matter what orientation I'm at, as you can see here, I'm kind of turning around left and right. If I were just to look at the image, it might be kind of hard to understand which direction I'm at. But if I look at the map right here, I could see that in order for
me to go straight back home, I just need to line up that
arrow with that home mark. I will normally throw it back in Sport, make sure I see that
there's nothing in my way, and then just head straight back and follow that red line
all the way back home. Once you hear the drone, throw it back on GPS or Normal mode. And there you go, now you
have a quick beeline back home instead of using that camera, which you might not understand
the orientation you're at. Don't make the mistake and
not use that map system that's in the very
bottom left-hand corner. (light music) - My next mistake has
to do with Quickshots and that is shooting
Quickshots entirely in 1080p and not realizing that you
can shoot in 2.7 or 4K. So this camera does allow you
to shoot 4K in Quickshots. However, to turn on 4K, it's
not where you think it is. So when you turn your Quickshots on, you have to go in the
upper right-hand corner, click the three dots, and then your 4K setting is
gonna be in the menu system under the camera settings. This is not intuitive, and I've seen some videos
out there around the Mini 2 where people are saying like, "Oh, you don't have access to
4K when you use Quickshots." Well you do, you just have to find it. It's kind of buried. This drone is a 4K drone and the 4K footage looks really good, so I highly suggest you turn on the 4K when you're using Quickshots. (light music) We're all gonna make
mistakes at some point and we can learn from those mistakes to become better pilots. Now, I just wanna say a
special thanks to Aldryn for helping me out with this video. I highly suggest you
check out his channel. But next, head over here to another video that me and Aldryn did
that's 10 more mistakes that you might make with your drone. All right, guys, I'll see you over there.
