- This is your complete beginner's guide, to the DJI Mini 2. Whether you're a first time flyer or you've flown drones before, what we're gonna go through in this video is everything that you need to know about the drone, the controller, the app, and then towards the end of this video we're gonna go through how
you get the best exposure and the color from this camera. All right guys let's get into it. (upbeat music) So I just wanna go over a quick outline of what you're gonna find
in this beginner's guide. The first thing we're gonna do is go over the drone itself and everything that's on this drone. Next we'll dig into the controller and everything that you need
to know on the controller. Then we'll go into the app and there's a lot to
learn about the DJI app. So we'll go over what every button means and what it all does. Now once we go through all of that, we're gonna go into your first flight and some things to do the first time you take your drone off and actually start flying. And then from there we'll
get into how you actually get better looking footage
through my Exposure Guide and then last we'll dig into a little bit about color grading and how you can get the best
look out of this camera. All right so let's dive
into the first section which is all about the drone itself. (upbeat music) So when you first get the DJI Mavic Mini 2 it's gonna come like this, all packaged up nice and neat. There's a strap around this drone. So all the other drones that I've worked with from
DJI don't have the strap and you take this off, it basically holds on the
propellors on the top and bottom. And when you take the strap off you're gonna wanna go through and take all the stickers
off of your drone. So you wanna fold it out. To fold out the Mini 2, you fold the front arms forward first and then the back arms down second and then on the gimbal itself, there's a little gimbal guard. So you're going to pop
this out and pull forward. Now once your drone is
completely folded out you wanna go through and just clean it up, take off all the stickers because there's stickers on the arms, on the body, on the battery compartment, on the actual camera itself just because you don't
wanna leave any of those on. So now that we have the drone
folded out and ready to go I just wanna walk through all the different components
that are on this drone and what everything is
and what everything does. So let's just look at
the top of the drone. So looking straight down we're gonna look at the propellers and these ones are attached
using a little screwdriver. So if you break a propeller you're gonna have to
have a little screwdriver to pull these off. There's no way to like click and push on the DJI Mavic Air 2
and all the other drones except for the Minis. You actually can push it in
and pop the propeller off. On these ones, you
actually need a screwdriver to make it happen. Now on the front of your
drone is your camera and your camera's gonna move in three different directions. That's how it gets stable footage and above that you're
gonna see a little strip and that's where there is
a light for your drone, and you can actually control
that in your settings. Now next to that is two air intakes. There's no sensors on
the front of this drone. The only sensors are on the bottom. So when we flip the drone to the bottom you're gonna see two sensors at the back, and these are gonna tell you how close you are to the ground. So when your drone is landing
these bottom two sensors will know how far away from
the ground your drone is, and then once it gets close, it's gonna slow down, land and turn off and you can auto take off and land and it's because of these sensors. Now also you're gonna
see some more air vents and right here on the bottom, is the button to turn on the drone. So when you're ready
to turn on your Mini 2, what you wanna do is click once and then hold until all
the lights power up. Now if you click once
it's just gonna show you how much battery you have on the battery that's currently in the drone. Now if you look on
either side of the Mini 2 you're gonna see air
vents in the back corners and then on the back, you're
gonna have your battery door. So right here is where the battery goes and underneath the battery door is a USB-C and a micro SD card slot. So you're gonna put your card in here and your USB-C that's used for, if you wanna plug this
directly into your computer. So when the drone's on, you can plug it in and you can access your files without having to take out the SD card. Now you can also use this USB-C to plug directly into a power source and you can charge the
battery that's in the drone. Right below that you're gonna see a little button with a light and that's used to link the drone, if your controller loses connection and this backlight changes colors to tell you what's
going on with the drone. Now let's open the battery compartment and you're gonna see the battery
in the back of your drone. Now to take out your battery, you're basically gonna squeeze because there's a little tab that you're gonna have to press up and then pull straight out, and just like that you have your battery. This is actually a lot easier than the original Mavic Mini, because it comes out smoother. Plug that back in you're good to go. Just make sure that you close
the battery door and lock it. Just you'll hear a click and then your drone is ready to take off. So that's everything around the drone. Now when you're ready to pack this up, you have your gimbal guard which is this little plastic clear thing. You're just gonna wanna hook the front and then clip it in and then from there, you're going to put the
back propellors down first and then swing the front propellers in, and the last step is that
you wanna put on your strap. This holds the propellers in so you don't break the propellers when you're transporting it. And there's gonna be a
little piece that hangs down and this goes towards the
bottom of the gimbal guard. So you wanna make sure
that all the propellers are underneath this
strap and then clip it, and now this is a much easier drone to take with you wherever you go. You can take this, the
controller, and your phone, and that's all you need to bring with you and you have a super
small lightweight camera anywhere that you go. Now the last thing I wanna talk about in this section is the battery bank. So if you get the Fly More pack, you're gonna get this
three battery charger. Now you can plug all three
batteries into this at once and it's going to charge them, but what's cool about this product is that it has an input and an output. So on the side there's a USB output and you can actually use
this to charge other devices. All you have to do is press
and hold the power button and then it becomes a battery bank. So right now I'm charging my phone from the two extra batteries that aren't in the Mavic Mini 2. So it's great if you have
three batteries on you and you end up needing
to charge something, it's just a little bonus
thing that DJI does with their three battery charger. Now also you can use this
to charge other devices while you are charging these batteries. So you just plug this into your wall to charge the three batteries and then output to your controller. It makes it super simple, so you only have to have one
plug to charge everything. All right guys so that's
it for this section next we're gonna move
on to the controller. (upbeat music) So this is the Maverick Mini 2 controller. Your thumb sticks are
gonna be down in the bottom and on the bottom you also
have your USB-C charging port. So when you need to charge
this just plug it in here but you're gonna wanna
pop out your thumb sticks and screw them on. Now let's go over what all the buttons
do on this controller. Now on the front face you're gonna see first your two joysticks and we'll go over directionality and how these work in a later section. In the upper left-hand corner you have a button that says Fn and you can set this in the menus once we dive into the app itself. Now in the center to the left you're gonna have a Return to Home button and also a pause button. So when you press and hold this your drone is gonna Return to Home no matter where it's at. So when you take your drone
up and initially launch it it's gonna set a GPS coordinate to where the drone took off, and so when you hold this button it's gonna go into Return To Home mode and the drone is gonna fly back at you and land where it took off from. Now also there's a pause button. So if you're using one
of the automation modes like the quick shots you can click pause it in time and it's gonna stop the automation. Now in the center you have a toggle, you have Cine, Normal and Sport. So this is basically slow, medium, fast. So when you put it into Cine Mode it's going to slow down all the movements so that you can get more
cinematic looking footage. This used to be called Tripod Mode but they've switched it to Cine. Now Normal is just like normal flight. If you push the joysticks
to fast in a direction it might look a little jerky but this is also just how
you fly at a normal speed. So Sport Mode makes your
drone go super fast. Now I like to use Sport
Mode to get my drone up and fly to where I wanna go shoot. It allows you to move quicker in the air and yes you can use it to
shoot some dynamic shots. If you're going really
fast over a landscape or chasing like a car
or something like that, but one thing to note when
you're using Sport Mode is that all of your movements
will become very jerky because it's moving so fast. So you gotta learn to work
with these different modes and figure out what works best for the style of shooting that you're gonna be shooting in. And I use all three and I switch between them on every flight, because it all depends on what part of the flight I'm shooting in. Whether it's flying fast to get somewhere or flying slow. You put in the Cine Mode to really capture a slow
cinematic looking shot. Now next to that button on
the right is your power button and just like your drone
you're gonna click once and then hold until
all the lights light up and then your controller is on. And the same thing you press once and hold the controller turns off. Now in the upper right-hand corner there's a little button with
a camera and a circle icon, and this icon basically means switching from camera to photo mode. So while you're flying
you can easily switch from photo back to video, back to photo. It makes it easy, so you don't have to do
it on the app itself. Now let's look at the
top of the controller. If we're looking straight down you're gonna have on the right-hand side, your record, or take a photo button. It's the red dot or the camera icon. So that's gonna start and stop your record or it's gonna take a photo for you. It just depends on what mode you're in. Now on the left-hand
side you have a jog wheel and this jog wheel tilts
the gimbal up and down. So you use this to control your gimbal looking down and looking up it tilts, and those are the only
two buttons that you have on the top of the controller. Now in the center is
where you mount your phone so that you can see what you're shooting and connect to the app. On the front there's a little tab you're gonna wanna pull up on this and extend it out. And underneath you'll see a cable and on the cable you'll see one side has a symbol on it for the controller and the other one is blank. You pull the one that's
blank out, unwrap it and your phone is gonna
go in this top section. So you wanna have the
connector for your phone, facing the right, attach
your phone in here and then plug in the phone
to the top of the controller. Now DJI comes with different cables. I'm using an iPhone so I
have my lightning port. This is the one that comes natively built into the controller but there are other
connections like USB-C. So depending on what style
of phone you're using you're gonna need to
switch out this cable. So the only other thing on
this controller is your antenna and this piece that you pulled out is actually your antenna. So up here on the top this is where the signal comes out to control your drone and that's it for the controllers. There's not a ton of buttons physically on this controller itself. There's a lot more functionality but that's all within the app. So the next section that we're
gonna dig into is the app. (upbeat music) All right so when you first get going you need to download the DGI Fly app, and when you open this app you're gonna see this screen and from here, you're gonna
wanna connect your aircraft. So the process is turn on your drone, turn on the controller, hook in the controller using the cable, and then turn on the app. Now the first time that you connect your Mavic Mini 2 and you open up the app, it's gonna ask you to activate your drone. You're gonna need to have a DJI account. So you need to set that up first. You just have to go through
the process, follow the steps and it's gonna ask you to activate it, set it all up, agree to some terms and then you're good to go. And then after it's activated you're gonna end up on this home screen. And in the upper left-hand corner is gonna be the place where
you're gonna see updates. So right under where it's
gonna show your address your GPS coordinates, there's gonna be a little
box that will pop up and it will say update the drone, or update the batteries,
or update the controller. So whenever you first start flying or you haven't flown in a while, you wanna make sure to
turn this on in WiFi and make sure that you know
everything is updated properly. So once your drone is updated and you're ready to go, you wanna click the Go Fly in
the lower right-hand corner. Now from here this is the screen that you're gonna use
to control your drone, and we're gonna go through what everything means on this screen so that you can understand
what all the buttons are and what the different status updates and everything like that. So in the upper left-hand
corner this arrow that's just gonna take you
back to the home screen. We're gonna click GO FLY and go back to the fly screen. So from here let's just go clockwise. N Mode, so that shows you the mode that you're currently in. I'm in Normal Mode if I
switch it over to Cine, that's gonna turn into a C Mode. So that means Cine Mode. If you goes to the
right that's Sport Mode. So whatever mode you're in that's gonna display in
this upper left-hand corner. Now next to that it's gonna
be your status update. So my GPS is connected. So it says takeoff permitted. If you have no GPS connected it's going to tell you right there and it's gonna say not able to take off. Now when you click where
it says Takeoff permitted it's gonna pull up your
Preflight checklist. So the top it's gonna say status and mine's Normal, I'm ready to go but if there's some error
it's gonna display right here. Now next is your Auto
Return-to-Home Altitude. So when you use the controller and you click the Return-to-Home this is the altitude at which
it's going to Return to Home. So you can set this. So if you have trees
or something like that and you wanna make sure that
you're flying over those to get the drone home. So you could set how many feet or how many meters you
want the drone to fly at, to Return-to-Home before descending. Now underneath that you have
Max Altitude and Max Distance. This is the furthest that
you can fly away from you and the furthest that
you can fly above you, and you can set these depending on which country or region you're in, and you just gotta make sure
you abide by local laws. If it says you can't fly
above a certain height then you can set that as your Max Altitude so that you never fly higher than that. And now the last thing on your Preflight
Checklist is your SD card. So mine is showing that I have 94 gigabytes left of 120 gigabyte card. So if you plug in a card and it's full, you can click the format button in the little upper right-hand corner and you can format your card. So that you make sure that you have enough space to fly and capture your footage and photos. The next section over is gonna show you how much time you have
left on your flight. So you could show how much time until the camera is going to
automatically Return to Home. How much time until you're
gonna force a landing and how much time until your
battery is completely depleted. So you're just gonna wanna
pay attention to these numbers because this is telling you how much time you have left, and these three metrics are things that you need to know. You need to know how much time until it's automatically
gonna Return to Home or how much time until you're
gonna be forced to land and the drone is just gonna descend wherever it's at. And then obviously the last one, how much until you just
have no battery left. Now next to that is gonna
be your signal for your GPS. It's gonna show you how many GPS satellites
you're connected to and it's gonna show you
how strong your signal is. So mine is 11 satellites
and I have a strong signal. So it's able to update my home point. Now if you only have
a couple of satellites you're not gonna be
able to get a connection and update your home point. So your drone is not gonna know where it's at in the world, and this is important for
when you takeoff and land. And when you're using
things like Return to Home you need to make sure that your drone knows where the starting point is from. So whenever you fly you wanna make sure that you lock into GPS satellites so that you can determine that home point. Now the three dots in the
upper right-hand corner is gonna be a menu and we'll go over that after we're done with this homescreen. Underneath that is gonna be
all of your camera settings and we'll dig into those
in a minute as well. The big red button that's record and if you're in photo
mode, it's gonna be white and that's gonna be to take a photo. And underneath that the little play button that's gonna show you what files are actually on the camera and what's in your DJI Fly app. Now in the lower right-hand corner you have your auto and your
manual exposure settings. So if you click this button it's gonna switch over to manual and your manual settings are gonna pop up. So going left to right,
first you have J plus R. Mine is set to JPEG plus Raw and that's showing how much data I have left on my SD card. Now next to that is my ISO and you can adjust this depending on the situation that you're in. It goes from a hundred to 3,200 and then next to that
is your shutter speed. So you can go from four seconds all the way up to 1/8000th of a second. So you really have a lot of control when it comes to your shutter speed, to be able to dial it in for super bright settings
or super dark settings. And you can even open
it up to four seconds to let a ton of light in. And next to that is your meter and it's basically telling you how bright your image is in comparison to what the camera thinks
that you should expose to. So when you go to your auto settings you're gonna have an auto exposure. When you're in manual, it's going to let you control the exposure but it's gonna tell you
okay your one stop under, you're two stops under. It's too dark, or it's too bright. So you'll see when I
bump up my shutter speed that number is gonna change and I go to like 1/40th and it's showing that I'm
2.3 over what I should be. So you could dial it back closer to zero and you're gonna find what
settings work best for you when you're exposing once you start flying and shooting with this camera. And that's just a little
meter that tells you, okay we're above what the camera thinks is zero or exposed properly. All right so now that we're an auto mode you don't have as many settings. You still have how much data is left on the card on the left but next to that is your
exposure compensation. So you can basically tell the camera to expose brighter or darker than what the camera
thinks is perfect exposure. So a lot of times what
I'll do is bring this down. I'll bring it down to negative 0.3 or 0.7 and basically what the camera does is it's gonna read the exposure and say this is what I
think the exposure is and then drop it by that percentage. So it's gonna make the
image a little bit darker than what it thinks is properly exposed. So you're gonna have to play with this. If you're in a super bright
setting with sunlight you might drop this down to
negative 0.3 or negative 0.7 but in different lighting situations if it's cloudy you might
actually bring this up. So if you don't wanna
manually dial in your settings but the image does look a little bright, this is what you'd use to
bring down that auto exposure so that it's not exposing so bright. Now the other tool that you have next to that is auto-exposure lock. So when you click this lock basically whatever exposure
is currently on the screen, it's gonna lock that in. So say you're pointed away from the sun and you have a properly exposed image. Well if you hold this and
then turn towards the sun you're gonna see it overexposed because it's locked on that exposure that doesn't have the sun in the frame. Vice versa if you're point
it at a super bright scene and you lock it and then
you turn away from that, everything's gonna get dark. So you could use this in different ways. Like if you don't want your exposure fluctuating from bright to dark, like if you're moving through a scene where there's different exposures. Maybe it's trees with shadows, you would find the exposure
that you think looks best for everywhere that you're
gonna fly in that shot, lock the exposure and then
it's never gonna fluctuate. It's gonna stay in that same exposure no matter where you go. I actually use this feature all the time because I don't need to necessarily dial in my manual settings. I'll just find the
exposure that looks good hit lock, and then fly a
little bit, grab the shot and then I can turn this off and find the next
exposure that looks good. Now in the center you're
gonna see the controller in relation to the aircraft. So it's just a visual way to show, hey the aircraft is at one o'clock or the aircraft is at six o'clock. And then the lower left-hand
corner is gonna be your map, and it's gonna show
that where the drone is, how high from where you
took off and how far away. So I turned this drone on in here and I walked it outside
to where the grass is and that's about 12 feet away. So you could see how this works. It actually keeps a very
accurate description of how far your drone is away from you. Now you can click on
this lower left-hand map and it's gonna pull up a Google Maps of where your drone is in the world and you can actually show it on screen. So if you double click
that so you click it twice it actually pulls up a map and it shows you where you
are and where your drone is. So this is a great way to be able to see where you're flying and if there's specific landmarks, if there's specific roads,
that you're trying to follow it's easy to look on a map
and be able to see this and you have a bunch
of options on this map. So first it's gonna show
you all the different zones and you can display these. You can turn them on and off. So things like Restricted
Zones, Authorizations Zones, Warning Zones, Approvals Zones those are just the different colors that you're gonna see on the map. Now the next button under
is going to erase the path. So as you're flying, there's gonna be a path drawn on this map and you can erase it there. Now the next button down is going to center the map over the drone or over the home point. The next button down is
gonna show you true north and then the last button down will pull up your map view. So whether it's standard
just this style of map or you could do a satellite, or you can do a mixed of both. Now the last thing at
the bottom on this screen is your Find My Drone button, and you can click this and it's basically gonna
pull up Google Maps and it's gonna show you where in the world that you're at and you can hit Start
Flashing and Beeping. Your drone is gonna flash and beep and it's going to be indicators. So if your drone fell somewhere or you can't find it you can click this. It's gonna start making noise and it's gonna start flashing. Now what you wanna do is click again in the lower left-hand corner and it's gonna pull up your main screen where you could see
what the drone has seen. Now the last button I wanna
go over on this screen is your automatic takeoff and landing. So you're gonna click this button once and you'll click and
hold this Takeoff button and when the green light fills it's gonna automatically
take off and hover. Now the same thing when it's hovering you can click that button it's gonna show you to land you can click and hold it and the drone is going to land on its own. So automatic takeoff and
landing it's super helpful makes it super easy to take off and fly. Now you can also pull
both joysticks inward and it will start the propellers and then you press up
on the left-hand stick and it will takeoff. and when you're coming
down you just hold down on the left-hand stick and it will land, and you just hold it until the propellers fully turn off. All right there's a couple more menus that I wanna go over to help you understand
how to use your drone. The first is the one that's right above the record or the photo button. This is gonna pull up the different settings for your camera. So let's start with photo. You can basically take different styles of shots in the photo mode. You can do a single photo. You can do AEB, which is
an Auto Exposure Bracket. So it's gonna take a series of photos that you can then use to create an HDR image later. Next underneath that is a time shot and when you click on it, it's gonna show you how
much time you can set before it takes a photo. Now in the video mode it's gonna show you 4k, 2.7K, or 1080P. In 4k you have 24, 25 or 30. The same settings in 2.7K. Now in 1080P you can go all the way up to 60 frames per second. Now you can do different quick shots and I'll go for those and another section, and then the last is panoramics. You can make different
styles of panoramics that basically stitch
together a bunch of photos to create a big sweeping
shot of the landscape or whatever it is that you're shooting. Now the last menu I wanna go into is in the upper right-hand corner. So you're gonna pull this up and this is where you can
dial in all of your settings. So in the safety you're
gonna see your Max Altitude and Max Distance and Auto Return to Home. You're also going to be able
to update your home point. So when your aircraft is in flight you can use this button to update where your home point is. Now next you'll see your sensors. This is where you can calibrate
your compass or your IMU. This is only if you get
a warning from the app that says you need to calibrate this. I wouldn't worry about that otherwise. Underneath that, you're
gonna have your Battery Info and when you click into your Battery Info it's gonna tell you how
much battery you have left, and it's gonna give you just more info about your batteries. Now underneath that you
have this Unlock GEO Zone. So if you're in a specific
spot that's geo-fenced you can unlock it here. Underneath that is
advanced safety features, and in the advanced safety features the first thing is signal
losses, what happens? So if you lose a signal from your controller to the drone, do you Return to Home, Descend or Hover? And you can choose that. So depending on the situation you're in, if say you're on like a
boat or something moving you don't necessarily
want it to Return to Home because your home point might be moving. So you would descend or hover. Whereas if you're just
standing in a big open field you'd probably have Return to Home just so it flies back to you. So you could set it what makes sense for the situation that you're in. Now underneath that is
Emergency Propeller Stop. So if it's in an emergency situation you pull both sticks in or out and it'll shut off the motors and then underneath that Payload Mode. So you're gonna wanna turn this on if you're using something
like your propeller guards. Now back in the safety menu, you'll see Find My Drone. That'll take you back to the map to where you can find your drone and then underneath that is
your Remote Identification, and this is where you can
set up all the information about your specific drone. Now in the control setting this is gonna control the aircraft and the gimbal everything like that. First under the aircraft, you could set up whether
you want metric or imperial. I'm in the US I use imperial but if you're somewhere else
you're gonna use metric. Now underneath that it
says Front LED Mode. This allows you to do different things with that Front LED. Now next is the Gimbal. So this is where you can set
up Follow Mode or FPV Mode. So FPV Mode is interesting because when you turn the
drone is actually gonna tilt and you're gonna see that tilt. So it feels more like an FPV drone. I don't really use that but it is an option here in the menu and if you put it in
Sport Mode and FPV Mode, it feels more like an FPV drone. Now the next is gonna be
Allow Upward Gimbal Rotation. I turn that on because the reason that you might turn it off is that you'll see the
propellers sometimes, but if you have this on you can actually tilt the camera up. So if the drone is not moving fast and it's not tilted super down you can actually get a shot
that is pointed more up rather than just straight
ahead as your limit. So next underneath that is
gonna be your Gimbal Calibration and this is where you're
gonna calibrate your gimbal. If you need any calibration of any sort that's where you do it and then we'll go into
Advanced Gimbal Settings. So this is where you can set the different smoothness of each mode. So you have Normal,
Cine Mode, or Sport Mode and it shows you, you can go through and change your pitch, speed, smoothness or your Yaw Speed and Smoothness and basically you can dial the sense. So if you want things to move faster or slower in a specific mode, you can go mode by mode and set these up to
your favorite settings. So next we go into remote
controller settings. So you can actually charge your phone if you turn this on while
your phone is connected and then under that is your Stick Mode. I always leave it on Stick Mode 2, you can use Mode 1, Mode 3, or Custom and that just sets up your controller to how your drone flies. So right now within Mode
2 which is the standard. If you push up on the
left it's gonna send, if you push down on the
left it's gonna descend. If you're going to push
left on the left joystick it turns left so it like pivots and then if you turn
right it pivots right. Now on the right stick, if
you push up it goes forward. So it moves in the forward direction. If you push down it's gonna go backwards and if you push left or right it's gonna go in that
direction kinda like sideways. So it doesn't rotate it
just moves to the side. This is how all drones come standard and then if you don't like the settings and you have a different preference you can set that up here. So the Fn customization is here. So if you tap once or you double tap you basically have two
things that you can do. You can either Recenter Gimbal
or Toggle Map Live View. So just set these up, one of them to recenter your gimbal and one of them to toggle maps, just so that they're always on. That way you can always use this button to bring your gimbal back to
center or pull up the maps. Those are the only two options
you have on this drone. Now underneath that you
have your RC Calibration. So if you need to calibrate your controller for any reason now next is your Flight Tutorial. So this is a tutorial that
DJI has set up to help you fly and then at the bottom is
to repair your app aircraft. So if for some reason, your drone is not connected
to your controller you would go in here to repair them. All right so the next tab over is camera. You have an Anti-Flicker mode. I always just leave that on auto. You have Video Subtitles and then down in the General,
you're gonna have Histogram. I always leave my Histogram on because this shows me
my exposures on a chart and you can move this
anywhere along the screen. Now I also turn on my
Overexposure Warning. So you're gonna see
these zebras on the image where the footage is overexposing and this is super helpful. So if you're shooting a scene and something's overexposing
that's telling you that you're getting no information from that section of your image. So what that means is
gonna be bright white and it's a good indication to say okay I need to bring my exposure down. So I always use my Histogram and my Overexposure Warning to be able to dial in my settings so I can get the best
exposure when I'm out filming. Next you have Gridlines and these are just different grids that you can put on your
image as you're filming. Now next underneath that
is your White Balance. So you can either set it to auto which a lot of times I set it to auto, but if you don't want it to fluctuate or you're in any sort of changing light where it might fluctuate, you have to go in here, flip it to manual and then you can set
it to specific Kelvin. Next under that you have the option to auto-sync your HD photos and that's syncing the
photos to your phone and then last is everything
about your storage. So essentially you have your SD card. It shows you how much you have left and how much the card actually holds. You can cache while recording. So basically while you're recording it's gonna record another copy of the footage to your phone and then you can set up how much capacity you want your phone to be able to hold. So in the DJI app, it's going to record what it is that you're filming while you're recording on the drone. So if you lose the drone you actually have a backup
recording of that footage. So if the drone crashes into a lake you at least have one copy
of the footage on here but this footage is only
being transmitted at 720P. So it's a lower resolution than you're gonna be recording in camera but these shots could be used
for quick social media edits. If you just wanna do
something quick on your phone and then post it on social media. And then at the bottom here you have reset all your camera settings. All right next is transmission. So you're gonna go in here and it's gonna show your
frequency 2.4 or 5.8. I always just leave it on dual-band and it's also gonna say Channel Mode and I just leave it to auto. I've never really had to
deal with these settings but if you have some
issue with transmission maybe there's something you
can play around with in here. And then the last about
tab is gonna have a place for you to give a name to your drone. It's also gonna show you your firmware and then just some more information serial numbers and things like that. So there's one more thing
that I wanna go over. My app was just updated. So now I have zoom
functionality in the app. So this drone allows you to
zoom in 4k it's a two times zoom in 1080P it's a four times zoom. So in the app what you're gonna see right next to the record
button is this one times. Now when you click on this
just like a smartphone it's gonna go to two
times I'm in 4k right now. Now you can also hold your finger on it and be able to zoom in increments rather than all the way
from one to two times. I'm in 1080P 60 frames per second and you can see I can go to two times and I can go all the way up to four times. And then 2.7K it's the same as 4k you get a two times zoom. So you get a 24 millimeter
equivalent lens on this camera. So when you punch in two times that's a 48 so it's about a 50 millimeter lens which can create some really cool parallax moves on your drone. All right so the next section that we're gonna get
into is your first flight and some things that
you need to think about when you take your drone
up for the first time. (upbeat music) All right guys, welcome
to your first flight. You wanna make sure that you
go out into a big open field so that you have some space to be able to play around with this drone and really learn the controls. Now before you get out to the field though you wanna make sure that
you turn on your drone and connect everything at home. You wanna make sure that the controller is connected to the drone, that you can see everything in the screen when you pull up the DJI app. And then last, you wanna make sure that you can take a photo and that you can also
record with the SD card that you've put in this drone. The last thing that you
wanna do is get out somewhere and then all of a sudden realize that your card doesn't work. Now the last step before
you get out to the field is charge all your batteries. Make sure the controller is charged. Make sure all the batteries
are charged for your Mini 2 and then you're good to go. Now when you're ready to
take your first flight there's two ways that
you can have your drone take off and land. And what we're gonna do first is just have the drone come up, let it hover for a little bit and then take it back down. So the first way is just on the app. You use the button in the left-hand side you click it once and
then hold in the center and the drone is gonna
automatically take off. Now what you wanna do is just
let it hover for a second click the button again
and then hold to land, and the drone is gonna
automatically descend and land easy as that. But you wanna make sure that everything's functioning properly before you take it off and fly a distance. So you wanna bring it up, let it hover, bring it back down. Now the other way to takeoff and land is you pull both sticks inward. It's gonna start the propellers and it's just gonna sit there spinning, and then on the left joystick
you're gonna press up and the drone will takeoff and you can just keep your hands off of it and it'll just hover. Now to land manually, you just pull down on the left joystick and hold it until the
motors completely shut off. So it's gonna go through, it's gonna land and then the motors will
shut off automatically. So those are the two ways that
you can take off and land. Now after you've played around with this you're comfortable taking off and landing. Now you're going to takeoff and just do some simple motions around the field that you're in. Now the last thing that
I want you to think about is use your Cine Mode when you're flying for the first time, so that it slows down
all of the movements. You don't wanna flip it into Sport and have the drone takeoff super fast, because if you're in that mode, you could crash into a tree,
or like a fence, or something because the drones
moving at a quick speed. So I highly suggest push it into Cine and just fly around, just
do the different movements and see how the drone
moves in a controlled space where you're not gonna hit anything. That's why I suggest
going to a big open field. Play around with it, have it go up down, do some different movement patterns and just get comfortable
using the joysticks. So I wanna go over one more thing when it comes to your first
flight with the Mini 2 and that is quick shots. So you have five different quick shots. You have the boomerang,
the helix, the rocket, the droney, and the circle. Now quick shots you can
shoot at all the resolution and to change your resolution, you'll go into the upper right-hand corner to the three dots. You'll go to the camera setting and then there'll be
an option that pops up that allows you to change your resolution for the quick shots. Now all of these are great and they can get you really good shots. The best way to practice these automations is to again, be in a
big open field like this and play with each one and try all the different heights. So the best way to
learn how to use a drone is to try everything in the drone. So how the quick shots work is when you turn it on,
it's gonna set the distance you want the drone to move away from you, and then from there you just
have to select the person or the object that's gonna
be the center of frame. So you see I clicked on me here and now when you hit go the shot's gonna automatically record and it's gonna automatically create this really cool effect. Now you can control your
exposure on these shots just as you normally
would with your drone. In the next section, we're
gonna go over exposure and how do you get the best
look out of this camera. (upbeat music) Let's talk about how you
get the best exposure and colors out of this camera. Now something to think about is that there isn't a whole lot of options when it comes to color. You have one profile. So basically you have to
work with that one profile to get the best look out of the camera. Now when it comes to
exposure you do have access to control your shutter
speed and your ISO. Now your ISO is basically
how bright the image is and not to get too technical about what ISO is basically
a boost the signal. So the higher number that your ISO is the brighter your image is gonna get. Now the one downside
about boosting your ISO is that the higher the number gets the more noisy your footage is gonna be. Now shutter speed is basically how long your sensor is exposed to light and the faster that your shutter speed is the more jittery your
footage is gonna look. Now we're not gonna dig too deep into shutter speed and ISO in this video. I'll put links down
below in the description if you really wanna learn
what those concepts are but all you really need to know is you don't wanna boost your ISO too high and then with your shutter speed you're gonna use that to
control your exposure. Now this drone also shoots in auto and with auto you have
exposure compensation and how that works is when you're in auto, your camera sees what it
thinks is perfect exposure. And that exposure compensation is you telling the camera that it needs to expose
0.3 brighter or 0.3 darker than what it thinks is the best exposure. So the settings that I've
used a lot when filming is negative 0.3, negative
0.7, and negative one and I'll flip between those to get the best looking exposure, because a lot of times when
it's super bright outside and you have it at zero there are parts of your
image that gonna overexpose and you can't really do anything about it. So when something over
exposes in your footage, it's white, it's completely blown out and you can't bring that back
when you're in your editing. It just has that bright
look like, look up here. That's bright, the sun is right over there so that's all overexposed. Now you can control this especially when you're
shooting drone footage with this exposure compensation. So I'll drop it down to 0.3 or 0.7 and then I use the button
to the right of that, which is your exposure lock, which means that whatever
exposure is currently set it's gonna stay there until
you turn off the lock. Now there's two tools
that the Mini 2 gives us to be able to judge our exposure. Number one is your Histogram. So you go into your menu setting, you go into your camera and you turn on your Histogram. Now right next to that is
your Overexposure Warning and I think this is a
better tool than Histogram because it puts zebras on your image as soon as the exposure is overexposing. So you know that that part of your image is gonna be completely white and you're not gonna be able
to color grade that back and if you're not color grading and you're just using the footage as is that part of your image is gonna be completely
overexposed and white. And you definitely can
let things overexpose, you just wanna know
when you're overexposing especially if you're gonna go through and color grade later. So when I'm flying with the Mini 2 my goal is to not let anything overexposed because I know as soon
as it's overexposed, I can't bring it back and I always do color
grading on this footage because there's only one color profile. So you have to tweak it a little bit to get better looking
footage of this drone. It looks great as is at a camera but you can actually make
it look a lot better. So what I do is I make sure that nothing's overexposing. I use the Overexposure Warning and I use my Exposure Compensation or I flip it into manual
and control my lights so that nothing has zebras on it flashing. Now that sets me up so that I can be able to
edit this footage later. On the other side of things you don't wanna have
your footage too dark. So if parts of your foreground
are completely black you're not really gonna be
able to do much with that when you get into your editing software. It's gonna be super noisy if you try to brighten that up. The key is with this camera that you don't wanna have
anything overexposing and you don't wanna
have anything too dark. So you can use your Histogram to make sure that your exposures are sitting somewhere in the middle. The problem with this camera, is there's only one color profile and it's very contrasty. So they basically built this profile so that you could take
this footage straight out, upload it, it's gonna look good and yeah it does look good out of camera but you can make it look much better. So you really have to work with the overexposure and underexposure and make sure things
aren't too dark, too bright so that you can get into post and do some color grading with it and really make this footage pop. Now one more thing about
flying with direct sunlight. You wanna make sure
that when you're filming that you're filming with
some contrast in your scene. So if the sun is blasting your footage it's gonna look like this. It's just gonna be completely exposed and it just doesn't have
the best look to it. Whereas if you shoot from the side where the sun is coming from over here, you're gonna have a much
better looking image, a much more balanced looking image, because you have contrast in the scene. You have bright spots
and you have dark spots and so something to think
about when you're filming you're gonna get the best looking footage if you shoot closer to
sunrise or closer to sunset. When the sun is high noon everything is gonna be bright. Everything is gonna have
lots of light on it. So yes you can get good
footage at that time but it's just something to think about. You know, if you're shooting
closer to sunrise or sunset you're gonna get much prettier footage. All right so the next section we're gonna talk about color grading. So if you wanna use the
footage as is, that's great but if you wanna take it a step further I highly suggest you
color grade your footage and that's how you're gonna be able to get different looks rather than what's straight out of camera. (upbeat music) So out of camera this is
what the footage looks like. This footage does look good out of camera but you'll see you could
do just a few minor tweaks and you can really make
it look that much better. Now I shot this in daylight and I set it to daylight Kelvin but it still has kind
of this blue tint to it. And that's one thing
with some of these drones like the DJI 2 Zoom, had the same kind of look to the drone. The DJI 2 Pro has more of like
a cinematic quality to it. It has to do with the sensor. Now you can definitely change this and make this a little bit better and that's done through color grading. So we're gonna do some minor tweaks. The tools that I'm gonna use are found in most editing softwares but no matter what
software you're working in, the things that we're
gonna tweak are exposure and we're gonna tweak
the color a little bit. So the editing software that
I use is Final Cut Pro X and I have a bunch of tutorials around Final Cut on this channel. So if you wanna dive
deeper into the software or the color grading tools that we're gonna talk about. I'll put links down
below in the description to some other videos for
you guys to check out, but I just wanna show you
guys the basic workflow and how I treat this footage and then depending on
whatever software you're using you'll have the same tools available. So let's jump into Final Cut. Let me just show you what I do. All right so this is the
shot straight out of camera and it looks pretty good as is however I'm gonna make a few tweaks. So in my color tools I have my master which is your overall
exposure, your highlights, your midtones, and your shadows and I'm gonna pull up my Luma Waveform So this is a graph that
shows all of your exposures from the top which is white all the way down to the
bottom which is black and you can see it's
a very balanced image. This footage out of camera already has contrast built into it. So you're gonna see exposure values fringing from the top,
all the way to the bottom and this is why when you're shooting you wanna make sure that you have your overexposure meter on, because if you're shooting too bright and parts of it are
overexposing like here, then that's gonna turn
white in the footage. So I shot making sure
that I have an exposure at every part of my image
and nothing was overexposing. So for me this footage
just feels a little flat. So what I typically do is
I'll bring down my mid-tones and that's the mid range of the image and you could see some of the foreground is gonna start going really dark. And then to combat that, I'm gonna bring up my shadows a tad. Now I'm also gonna pull
down some of my highlights. So what I'm doing is I'm
making it less contrasty but I'm also bringing my
mid-tones kinda further down. So it has a darker feel on
all of the foreground elements and I'll just play around
with that till my liking. So you can pull up your shadows and make it less contrasty or you can pull them down and really darken up those
parts of your footage. I usually put mine right
around here somewhere. Now in terms of the color this is a little bit blue. So I add a little warmth into my footage. So I'll take my temperature and I'll push my slider
a tad into the warm and you can see more of the yellows and the greens are
gonna start popping out. Now also there's a lot of
saturation in this footage. So I might take out a tad of saturation depending on what I'm actually
gonna use this footage for. You could also bump it up if
you want it really saturated. So it just depends on the
look you're going for. I want a little bit more of a cinematic so I'm gonna bring that down a tad and now let me show you a before and after of this quick color grade. So with just a few minor
tweaks to your shadows, your mid-tones, and your highlights and then playing around
with your color temperature will really make this footage pop. And you don't have to
do a lot to this footage because out of camera this footage already has contrast, saturation and it's already exposed properly, if you're using the tools
that are built-in camera to expose for your
highlights and your shadows. Now if you wanna dig deeper into creative color grades, I'll put some tutorials in the description to some cinematic styles
that I like to create when I'm playing around with my footage. And basically you'll take
this footage out of camera, do a few minor tweaks
and then you'll be able to start doing some creative
looks just right away. So guys I hope this
beginner's guide was helpful on your journey to get up and flying fast. Now if you liked this video and you wanna see more videos like this please leave me a comment
down below in the description. Let me know if you're a first time flyer and what type of content
that you want to create using your Mini 2. Also make sure you hit
that subscribe button and turn on those bell notifications because I'm gonna do more
videos about the Mini 2. Now guys I highly suggest you check out this video
right here it dives deeper into how you can get some more creative control around your image and do some really cool stuff
with your Mini 2 footage. All right guys, I'll see you over there.
