Hello,
I've been experimenting a little today with my new Mini 2. I've tried shooting some videos and some stills, and I'm a bit confused. I've enabled the 'JPG+RAW' function, and here's some 100% crop examples:


This is a night-time RAW, unprocessed.


Same image, in JPG

In RAW you can see a lot of noise, and the image isn't as crisp.
The JPG has a lot more contrast, and almost no noise.

I tried posting the same comparison for a daytime picture, but for some reason I'm unable to attach the pics. But the RAW is more hazy, a bit blurry and mostly has less detail on white building walls (they look too white) while the JPG looks very good, crisp and contrasted.


I assume this is due to some heavy automatic post-processing done by the drone itself, right?
Now my questions are:
- What is the point of shooting in RAW, if JPG gives a better starting point anyway?
- If I wanted to obtain the same visual appearance on the RAW files, what sort of filters should I apply?

I suppose it's obvious that I'm not a photographer, I've never touched up digital photos.
The software I have for photo-retouch (to open the RAW files) is Darktable, on Linux.

Thanks,
Cristian

You are right.
jpeg has a very optimized output.
But that has one big drawback.
If you want something 'else' than the default profile, you're out of luck.
There is little room for corrections since most of the color data is 'gone' due to compression.
That is why some people shoot DNG (RAW) only and make their own personal corrections.
This takes a lot of time and more disk space, but for some it is worth it.
I personally find the Mini 2 RAW too bad to work with.
Takes too much corrections to make it useful.
But that is my opinion.
It is for sure nice to have when you are on a critical project that you need the most headroom for correction for.

It is very likely you are not really seeing the true RAW photo. The aircraft's image processor imbeds a small jpeg image in the main DMG file so it can be previewed and that is probably what you are looking at. You need to have an app installed that can actually open DNG photos.

Geebax Posted at 11-7 14:08
It is very likely you are not really seeing the true RAW photo. The aircraft's image processor imbeds a small jpeg image in the main DMG file so it can be previewed and that is probably what you are looking at. You need to have an app installed that can actually open DNG photos.

Thanks... I know about the mini jpg embedded with the dng, but I'm actually talking about the big raw file. I open them with darktable. The night shots are very noisy, and the day ones are sort of washed out and hazy.
I understand about the colour data loss, but since I'm not actually working with these pictures, but only shooting them for fun and for my personal pleasure, I assume I won't need the dng after all. And I don't dislike the final look of the jpg files.
By the way, I noticed that applying a de-haze and a sharpen filters to the dng, I get a result not too far from the jpg file.

On a related note: when shooting aeb, does it already combine the shots in a single hdr-like picture, or does it produce two separate jpg's that I have to combine?

Thanks
Cristian

Quaxo76 Posted at 11-7 19:22
On a related note: when shooting aeb, does it already combine the shots in a single hdr-like picture, or does it produce two separate jpg's that I have to combine?

When you shooting AEB mini 2 takes 3 shots: normal exposure and 2/3 shifts up and down. You will get 3 JPEGs and 3 DNGs (if you shooting in jpeg+raw mode)

Thanks, I found them on the SD card. I also noticed that bracketed (AEB) pics don't appear in the app album.

I also noticed that in the bracketed set, the underexposed one is always the best looking one. Today I shot about two dozen pics, all of them AEB, and for all of them, the only keeper was the darkest one. The other two all had "burned" areas.
Is this only happening on my drone, or is this normal?

Quaxo76 Posted at 11-8 15:27
Thanks, I found them on the SD card. I also noticed that bracketed (AEB) pics don't appear in the app album.

I also noticed that in the bracketed set, the underexposed one is always the best looking one. Today I shot about two dozen pics, all of them AEB, and for all of them, the only keeper was the darkest one. The other two all had "burned" areas.

The main AEB creates the 3 images so that they can then be transformed into HDR images, ok, granted, they can also be used singularly but I'm not seeing the point there because you can take the correct shot using 1 image anyway.

Im not sure i know what you mean by burned? do you mean overexposed (too bright)? if so then you probably had the single image overexposed to begin with, the 3 images should be, underexposed, normal, overexposed

Bashy Posted at 11-8 20:06
The main AEB creates the 3 images so that they can then be transformed into HDR images, ok, granted, they can also be used singularly but I'm not seeing the point there because you can take the correct shot using 1 image anyway.

Im not sure i know what you mean by burned? do you mean overexposed (too bright)? if so then you probably had the single image overexposed to begin with, the 3 images should be, underexposed, normal, overexposed

Yes, by "burned" I mean I have a loss of detail in white areas because they are overexposed ("washed out").
With my Nikon DSLR, if I do the bracketing, the "middle" image is correctly exposed, i.e. the best one to look at if taken singularly. With the DJI, I noticed that I have to set a negative exposure bias to get a  pic where the whiter parts aren't washed out. Not a big deal, I was just curious if it was something happening to others too, or just a peculiarity of my specific drone...

Quaxo76 Posted at 11-8 21:11
Yes, by "burned" I mean I have a loss of detail in white areas because they are overexposed ("washed out").
With my Nikon DSLR, if I do the bracketing, the "middle" image is correctly exposed, i.e. the best one to look at if taken singularly. With the DJI, I noticed that I have to set a negative exposure bias to get a  pic where the whiter parts aren't washed out. Not a big deal, I was just curious if it was something happening to others too, or just a peculiarity of my specific drone...

The little sensor of the mini2 has a lesser dynamic range than your DSLR. Which means your DSLR can capture a wider range of darker and lighter areas.
We combine all the raw pictures in one image using software and do some editing. The result is a picture with a wider dynamic range.
But it's a personal preference to use raw or jpg. That's up to yourself.
The raw (dng) is the image the sensor captures without any correction, noise reduction, flat. Actually not to be used just like that. After editing, noise reduction, etc we get a better picture than the jpg deliverd by DJI (or any camera).
It is time consuming and you need a computer and software to edit.
But, like I said before, it is something personal if you want to do that or not.

A darker picture looks sometimes better with less burned out areas. As I photograph manual and always raw, it gives me a lot of options to edit.