How to Match the Color Grading and Exposure of Different Cameras in Your Video Work

As drones and action cameras continue to permeate, well, everything, an interesting problem has become more prominent: these cameras are fundamentally different from the DSLRs and mirrorless cameras filmmakers have been using, and creating a consistent look across all that footage takes some tweaking. This helpful video will show you just how to ensure that consistency.

Unless you've bought one of those crazy (basically a helicopter) drones to carry your entire DSLR or mirrorless rig, you're probably flying one of the more standard but capable Phantom or Inspire drones. And while they're certainly very capable machines, they give much different looks than say a Sony a7S II. This video from Travel Feels shows you how to bring the two into a better harmony so as not to create an unintentionally jarring experience for your viewer. A lot of the process is simply trial and error, using back and forth comparisons to match exposure and color grading from the two (or more) cameras, and while you're not going to suddenly turn an intermediate-level drone camera's output into the quality of a professional cinema camera, with a little tweaking, it should be easy to make the difference imperceptible to the normal viewer.