The Phantom 4 Pro is one of the best drones in the market for those looking for professional-grade equipment without destroying your wallet for something like an Inspire 2. Despite the age of this drone, its camera hardware will deliver some of the best images you’ll ever see, as long as you give it the right settings!



In this article, we’ll explain what those settings do while also recommending to you what we think are the best options for most use cases.



Let’s get started!



Within the DJI Go 4 app, you will find three tabs inside Settings. We’ll be focusing on the tab in the middle, the one with the camera icon.



Here we have 6 settings:



Video Size Video Format White Balance Style Color Camera Video Coding

Video Size



Here you’ll find different resolutions and framerates for you to choose, ranging from Cinema 4K to 720p. The difference between C4K (4096 x 2160) and UHD (3840 x 2160) is their aspect ratios; C4K will give you a longer image with black bars at the bottom when viewing it on a standard 16:9 screen, thus giving you a cinematic look, while UHD will perfectly fill an entire 16:9 screen.

We recommend using the highest possible settings, that is to say, C4K at 60FPS. The reason for this is simple: by using the camera’s full capacity, you can go down to 30FPS or 1080p resolution in post if you so desired, but you wouldn’t be able to do it the other way around if you went with 1080p 30FPS and decided you wanted 4K resolution.



If you want slow-motion videos, setting the resolution at 1080p or 720p gives you the option to go as high as 120FPS.

Video Format



In this setting, we have two options: MOV and MP4. MOV is also known as the QuickTime File Format. For those with Mac computers, this should sound familiar. The MOV file format is primarily supported by Apple products, but outside that, it is relatively rare.

MP4, on the other hand, is an MPEG standard widely used in the industry. Use the MP4 format, as this will ensure the video can be played on Windows, Android and Apple devices without issues. This also prevents issues with editing programs like Adobe Premiere.

White Balance



Within this tab, there are 6 presets. Let’s go through what each of them do:



Auto – automatically switches to whatever preset the software thinks its appropriate at the moment.

Sunny – sunny, clear and free of clouds, bright… Cloudy – lots of clouds, no direct sunlight, dull weather… Incandescent – candlelight or yellow light bulb light (indoor flight)… Fluorescent – neon lights, white LEDs…

Never set your white balance to Auto, the software will usually mess up and you don’t want your white balance to change mid-recording, as this is very hard to fix in post.



What you should do instead is manually set white balance, depending on weather conditions. Even if you forget to set the white balance to cloudy when you had it on sunny, this can be fixed in Adobe Premiere rather easily.

Style



Here you’ll find four presets, each with three different values. These values can range from -3 to +3. The triangle means sharpness, the circle means contrast, and the square means saturation. You don’t want to use any of the presets here. Instead, make a custom one with contrast set to -1. This way you will avoid recording in hard whites.

This will allow you to maintain a neutral profile that you can later edit yourself in post.

Color



You’ll find a ton of options in the

color profiles tab, so we’ll tell you right away, stick with D-Log. By doing this you’ll get some very good dynamic range.

You should keep in mind, D-Log locks you into ISO 500 which can add some noise to your image. After this, you can use any editing software such as Adobe Premiere Pro, or if you’re on a Mac, Final Cut Pro X. Read more about them in our article about Best video editing software for drone videos.

Camera Video Coding



Here we have two options: H.264 and H.265.

H.264 is also known as Advanced Video Codec. This is among the most widely used codecs, and you can be sure any device will be able to play it.

H.265 is known as High-Efficiency Video Codec, the successor to AVC. HEVC is still gaining adoption, so some older devices may not have support for it, but it has a huge advantage and that is its efficiency (hence the name). HEVC can store the same amount of data in 50% of the size, significantly reducing file sizes for high quality videos.



It’s generally recommended that you use HEVC, for the aforementioned reasons.



Shutter Speed



Lastly, we have shutter speed. This setting is not within the first tab, the one on the left of the camera icon. Shutter speed should be set to be the inverse double of your frame rate. For example, if you are have set a frame rate of 25FPS, your shutter speed should be 1/50.

There is an issue, though. In many light conditions, the image will be overexposed with these settings. Luckily, we have ND filters to help use with this issue.



ND Filter – necessary for drone videography!

An ND filter limits the amount of light that enters the camera without affecting color, thus allowing you to set a lower shutter speed while maintaining good exposure.



Here we have our filter recommendation for the Phantom 4 Pro: Phantom 4 Pro ND filter set



Check out our article if you would like to know more about ND filters Tutorial

Bonus Tips

Finally, we have two extra settings to enhance your experience, and these are found in the third tab, the one with the gear icon.

Use the Histogram

The histogram is a light metering system built into your DJI drone camera. It gives you a visual representation of the light hitting the camera sensor, information that is essential if you wish to make correctly exposed images on every occasion.

When a part of the histogram hits either edge, a loss of detail called clipping occurs. Shadow clipping (parts of the image that are completely black and absent of detail) happens if the graph is hitting the histogram’s left side. Highlight clipping (parts of the image that are completely white and absent of detail) occurs if the graph is hitting the histogram’s right side.

Visit our What is a Histogram and how to use it guide to learn everything you need to know about exposing correctly with this nifty tool.

Use the grid

You see this same grid many times in places like Photoshop or when uploading to Instagram. The reason we use this is the Rule of Thirds. By placing the object within the lines or intersections, you can create a subjective feeling of tension, energy, and interest in the composition than otherwise possible by simply centering the subject.

For example, which one of these two pictures would you say is better looking?

I’d say the one on the left (the one that is off-center), wouldn’t you agree?

That’s it for this article. We hope all this helped you find the best settings for your DJI Phantom 4 Pro.



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Fly Safe!

