How do you get the best footage from a beginner drone?
I have had my Potensic ATOM SE for about two months and I am comfortable flying it. My footage looks okay but it is not particularly impressive. What camera settings should I use? Are there specific shots or techniques that look good even without a lot of experience? And does post-processing help with budget drone footage?
5 Answers
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PhotographyDroner
Best Answer
Two factors have more impact on footage quality than any camera setting: timing and movement speed.
Timing: fly during golden hour
Golden hour is the first hour after sunrise and the last hour before sunset. During golden hour:
- Light is warm in color temperature (orange-gold tones) rather than harsh and white
- Light is directional -- it comes from low on the horizon and creates long shadows that give landscapes depth and texture
- Dynamic range is manageable -- the sky and ground have similar brightness, so you are not exposing for one at the expense of the other
Midday footage (10am-3pm) from any drone, including expensive DJI models, tends to look flat and harsh. The same location and same drone, shot at golden hour, looks dramatically better. Light quality is free -- you just have to be outside at the right time.
Movement: fly slower than you think you should
The most common beginner mistake: moving too fast. Fast drone movements fight EIS stabilization, create motion blur at the edges of the frame, and are disorienting to watch. Footage that impresses people is usually shot at half the speed it was captured -- and the capture speed was already slow.
A simple rule: whatever speed feels like a natural, smooth movement, cut it in half. Then cut it in half again. That is cinematic drone speed.
Best beginner shots for impressive results
- Slow vertical rise: Start at 10 feet, rise straight up to 100+ feet at minimum speed. Camera pointed at an interesting landscape feature.
- Low forward creep: Fly forward at 5-10 mph at 15-20 feet over an interesting surface (water, a field, a road winding into the distance).
- QuickShot Orbit: Use the automated Orbit mode around a landmark. The drone handles the movement while you focus on timing and altitude.
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GearReviewer_Tom
Camera settings that make a real difference on the Potensic ATOM SE and similar budget GPS drones:
- White balance: If your app allows manual white balance, set it manually rather than letting it auto-adjust. Auto white balance can shift color temperature between clips or even mid-clip, which looks bad in an edited video. Set it once per session based on the light conditions.
- ISO: Use the lowest ISO your drone supports in bright conditions. Lower ISO = less noise = cleaner image. Only push ISO up in low light when brightness requires it, and expect more grain when you do.
- Resolution: Always shoot at the highest resolution your drone supports (4K for the ATOM SE). Even if you export at 1080p, shooting 4K gives you room to crop, stabilize, or reframe in post without losing quality.
- EIS: Keep Electronic Image Stabilization on for moving shots. Turn it off for stationary hover shots to preserve maximum resolution.
TravelDroner
Movement speed is everything. Here is a calibration exercise that changed how I fly for video:
Set up a simple forward flight path -- just fly forward for 30 seconds. Do it three times: at full speed, at half speed, and at one-quarter speed. When you watch the footage back, you will almost certainly find that the quarter-speed version looks the most cinematic and is actually the most watchable.
Most pilots are surprised that what felt like a boringly slow movement looks exactly right on screen. The drone camera adds apparent speed because everything is closer than it looks through a wide-angle lens at altitude. What seems like crawling speed on the sticks often looks like confident, smooth movement in the footage.
This exercise recalibrates your speed intuition permanently. After doing it once you will naturally default to slower movements.
SkyPilot_Dave
Four beginner shot types that require minimal stick skill but produce impressive results:
- Vertical rise reveal: Start at ground level or low altitude pointing at a subject or scene. Rise slowly and straight up, revealing the wider landscape as you climb. End at 100-150 feet. The reveal moment is always satisfying.
- Forward creep at low altitude: Fly forward at 5-8 mph at 15-20 feet over an interesting surface. Water, a winding path, crop fields, a shoreline -- anything with texture and pattern. The low altitude and forward motion create strong parallax.
- QuickShot Orbit: Pick a landmark (tree, tower, building, person) and use Orbit mode. The drone circles it while you adjust altitude slightly. Looks professional with zero manual skill required.
- Top-down hover: Fly directly above a subject and point the camera straight down. Patterns, roads, geometry, natural features -- top-down drone shots are consistently striking and require only stable hovering.
HobbyistHank
Post-processing is genuinely worth doing, even with basic free tools. Budget drone footage benefits significantly from even simple color correction because the camera's auto settings tend toward slightly flat, low-contrast results.
Free tools that work well:
- DaVinci Resolve (free version): Professional-level color grading, free. Steep learning curve but YouTube tutorials make it accessible. The Color page lets you apply curves, lift/gamma/gain adjustments, and LUTs.
- CapCut (mobile): Quick color adjustments and presets that work well on phone-edited drone clips. Fast workflow for social media content.
- Adobe Lightroom (photos): For stills, Lightroom makes a dramatic difference. Add contrast, clarity, reduce highlights, add vibrance. A 2-minute Lightroom edit makes a mediocre aerial photo look polished.
A simple color grade workflow: increase contrast slightly, add a touch of warmth, lift shadows minimally, and apply a subtle film-style LUT. The result almost always looks more professional than the raw footage out of the drone. For more on what the Potensic ATOM SE can do visually, check our thread on whether cheap drones can take good photos.