I have this issue when using DGN on pano mode, jpg works fine but I need DNG.

Are you running Auto mode or manual, I would suggest going into manual mode to lock the aperture.

Otherwise nice shoot!

videoeditman Posted at 11-12 05:44
Are you running Auto mode or manual, I would suggest going into manual mode to lock the aperture.

it's about the square on the image with different colors.

videoeditman Posted at 11-12 05:44
Are you running Auto mode or manual, I would suggest going into manual mode to lock the aperture.

He's flying a Mini 2 which has no controllable aperture.

What a shame - such a great shot

Mine does it too. Attached is a file from a test shoot in the garden (DNG exported as JPEG to reduce it's size). It happens whether I import the JPEGS with the DNGs or if I import just the DNGs. It does not happen with single shot or AEB DNGs. The JPEG files for pano are a quarter of the resolution of the RAW files (2000x1500 vs 4000x3000) and I can't help feeling that this has something to do with this error.

This is extremely frustrating as I love to take DNG panos with my Mavic Pro and wish to carry on with my Mini 2. If it can't do them correctly, it is not fit for purpose and will be returned. This will be sad as I really like it otherwise.

Here is a link to somebody else's pano DNGs and you can see the same issue again. I imagine all Mini 2's are like it. I need reassurance from DJI that this will be sorted with a firmware update

GoAround Posted at 11-12 08:02
Mine does it too. Attached is a file from a test shoot in the garden (DNG exported as JPEG to reduce it's size). It happens whether I import the JPEGS with the DNGs or if I import just the DNGs. It does not happen with single shot or AEB DNGs. The JPEG files for pano are a quarter of the resolution of the RAW files (2000x1500 vs 4000x3000) and I can't help feeling that this has something to do with this error.

This is extremely frustrating as I love to take DNG panos with my Mavic Pro and wish to carry on with my Mini 2. If it can't do them correctly, it is not fit for purpose and will be returned. This will be sad as I really like it otherwise.

DJI need fix this ASAP

well it looks really bad, surely this will be fixed in firmware update, let's hope it will be soon. and hopefully the pano would support the full 12mp resolution. That is what i was wondering why have they done it with such strange resolution in pano mode? Hopefully is not for the ease of processing.

Will surely get fixed with an update

are you stitching dng files in lightroom/photoshop or the built in  dji software ?

It could be an auto white balance issue or even exposure... Turn off auto for WB and use manual and lock the exposure. You are shooting into the sun with one side of the pano and the other is cloud so the light changes dramatically between shots.

Rule #1 when capturing panoramic sequences is to lock everything: exposure (ISO, shutter speed, aperture) and white balance. If this will deliver different WB for each DNG file, then something is wrong indeed ...

itsdavesdrone Posted at 11-12 12:06
It could be an auto white balance issue or even exposure... Turn off auto for WB and use manual and lock the exposure. You are shooting into the sun with one side of the pano and the other is cloud so the light changes dramatically between shots.

its a single image, its issue with the dng file.

Matthew Dobrski Posted at 11-12 12:26
Rule #1 when capturing panoramic sequences is to lock everything: exposure (ISO, shutter speed, aperture) and white balance. If this will deliver different WB for each DNG file, then something is wrong indeed ...

its a single dng issue.

Pixexid Posted at 11-12 12:41
its a single image, its issue with the dng file.

It's not a single photo though. A panorama shot is multiple shots stitched together. You see it as one once it's stitched it but it is taking multiple photos...

To answer questions above and provide further thoughts:

1) It does not happen with single/AEB dng files, only pano dng files
2) I am using the latest Lightroom
3) When viewed with Windows photo viewer, there is no problem.
4) With DNGs, the 'develop' info is 'baked in' rather than a separate XMP file being used. I think that, when the drone processes the 2000x1500 JPEG as part of the pano creation, it accidentally 'bakes in' some 'develop' info to the DNG which ruins the DNG when it is read by a program that understands this extra information (like Lightroom). What is very noticeable is that one quarter, or 2000x1500 looks OK and the rest looks badly processed. The more I think about it, the more it must be a firmware error in the Mini2 regarding it's process in making the jpeg.
5) Can some more people please take panos with the jpeg & raw setting, import the resulting raw images into Lightroom (or any raw editor) and see what happens. We need many more people posting her so DJI will listen.

GoAround Posted at 11-12 13:33
To answer questions above and provide further thoughts:

1) It does not happen with single/AEB dng files, only pano dng files

If you want good panoramas, you never use the built-in panorama feature to do the stitching.
You use proper dedicated panorama stitching software.

I think that, when the drone processes the 2000x1500 JPEG as part of the pano creation
Your sensor is 4000 x 3000 pixels.
It doesn't create 2000 x 1500 tiles to create a panorama.

itsdavesdrone Posted at 11-12 13:20
It's not a single photo though. A panorama shot is multiple shots stitched together. You see it as one once it's stitched it but it is taking multiple photos...

man, i'm talking about the single DNG issue when shooting in pano mode, look at my image, it looks like a pano or a single frame? look at another user with the same issue.

Labroides Posted at 11-12 14:21
If you want good panoramas, you never use the built-in panorama feature to do the stitching.
You use proper dedicated panorama stitching software.

I'm sorry but you are not understanding what I'm saying.

The raw images that the Mini2 puts onto the SD card, which should allow me to make panos in Lightroom, are bugged. Some develop setting is added to them so that one quarter is OK and 3 quarters have a heavy blue colour cast. I have processed one in Lightroom to clearly show the effect, albeit exagerrated.

The drone makes 2000x1500 jpegs to make the pano. The sensor is 4000x3000, like you say, so you can see the jpegs are a quarter of the full sensor size and it's a quarter that's different on the raw images. The drone must be baking some info about the size reduction (from the conversion)  into the dng files. Thus, once imported into a raw editor, they look wrong. Viewed in a pure viewer, like windows photo viewer, they look fine as the viewer does not have the capability to read the baked in develop info.
I hope that makes it clear. I know roughly what's going on but it's quite hard to make it clear in print.

GoAround Posted at 11-12 14:44
I'm sorry but you are not understanding what I'm saying.

The raw images that the Mini2 puts onto the SD card, which should allow me to make panos in Lightroom, are bugged. Some develop setting is added to them so that one quarter is OK and 3 quarters have a heavy blue colour cast. I have processed one in Lightroom to clearly show the effect, albeit exagerrated.

If you are using manual white balance and locking your exposure and it's still happening it's a software bug... DJI will have to fix their app.

GoAround Posted at 11-12 14:44
I'm sorry but you are not understanding what I'm saying.

The raw images that the Mini2 puts onto the SD card, which should allow me to make panos in Lightroom, are bugged. Some develop setting is added to them so that one quarter is OK and 3 quarters have a heavy blue colour cast. I have processed one in Lightroom to clearly show the effect, albeit exagerrated.

Something is totally senseless here ... What's the idea behind stitching four 2000x1500 px images into one of 4000x3000 px size??? The maximum single image size this camera is capable to deliver in DNG format is  4000x3000 pixels, therefore panoramic stitch of - say - 3x3 images (I'm guessing) should be within 10000x7000 px roughly ... In this case the sequence of 9 DNG images should be stored in a separate folder after execution of automated pano shooting. Ignore JPEG versions and in-house baked JPEG stitch, focus on getting proper sequence of only DNG files for further processing in dedicated software of your choice. If these DNG files will look different in ACR, then I'm clueless ...

GoAround Posted at 11-12 13:33
To answer questions above and provide further thoughts:

1) It does not happen with single/AEB dng files, only pano dng files

Hi GoAround,

the extra information is called "white balance". Lightroom reacts on the settings of the white balans taken by the camera. Try to put white balance to a fixed value in LR, instead of "as shot".

I found the same with my Mavic 2 Pro, when I took pictures during blue hour in the morning. One dng file had a different white balance and look blueish, while a picture taken a couple of seconds later had a warmer tone.

You can overcome the problem using the same white balance value for all the pictures of the pano.

It doesn't pose such a problem on a single picture, but in a pano light values and white balance should be the same.

It would be preferable that DJI kept the same white balance for all the pictures shot on a pano, instead of changing the white balance on every picture.

GoAround Posted at 11-12 14:44
I'm sorry but you are not understanding what I'm saying.

The raw images that the Mini2 puts onto the SD card, which should allow me to make panos in Lightroom, are bugged. Some develop setting is added to them so that one quarter is OK and 3 quarters have a heavy blue colour cast. I have processed one in Lightroom to clearly show the effect, albeit exagerrated.

I just got my Mini 2 and doing 180's was something that was top on my list. I'm not seeing what you are. I've loaded the DNG file into Affinity Photo (Windows) and it's 100% the same exposure. In addition, I've processed them through PTGUI and it's not having an issue either. It sounds like Lightroom is the culprit.

You are correct that the DJI stitched pano is made of 2000 x 1500 JPGs. I don't know why they did that. It results in a final image of around 7000 x 1300.  The DNG files are the true 4000 x 3000 files and when stitched in PTGUI will give you almost 13000 x 2450 result.
Here is how it came out of PTGui

I am now more convinced than ever that the metadata/develop data baked into the DNG files from panos is messed up:

1) Lightroom sees a different white balance in the top quarter of the image, as clearly shown in my attachments higher up. It reads the resolution correctly as 4000x3000.
2) Windows sees 960x720 resolution in the metadata when the files are really 4000x3000. It also fails to strip personal data from the metadata.
3) Microsoft Image Composite Editor does not see the white balance issue that Lightroom does so can stitch beautifully but the resulting image is only about 1300 pixels per side on a 9 shot wide angle pano. I assume is sees that faulty metadata resolution
4) PTGUI (I used the trial) can perfectly stitch the images into a large resolution panorama, as indicated in the post above.
Before anybody says that it's my PC at fault:

1) It is a recent install of Windows 10 with latest Creative Cloud
2) I have thousands of other images from DSLRs, compacts, phones and drones. They all work perfectly in any of the software and do not exhibit the problems outlined above. The problems only exist on DNG panaroma files from the Mini2.

I'm not buying a £139 piece of software to stitch when I already own (I mean rent ...) Photoshop and Lightroom. DJI needs to fix it. If not, the drone is being returned because everything works fine on my old Mavic Pro.

GoAround Posted at 11-13 03:14
I am now more convinced than ever that the metadata/develop data baked into the DNG files from panos is messed up:

1) Lightroom sees a different white balance in the top quarter of the image, as clearly shown in my attachments higher up. It reads the resolution correctly as 4000x3000.

So Lightroom is appearing to be the culprit as I assumed. The next step I would take is to eliminate the Pano as the problem. Take a single image photo in JPEG and Raw and check the DNG file. Does it too exhibit the same 25% behavior? If nothing else, it narrows it down to the Pano functionality vs. a Mini 2 DNG issue.  



PS. I don't know much about DNG files (as a Nikon shooter) but there is clearly information in the file regarding its source. I use DXO PhotoLab to process much of my work and it won't load the Air 2 or Mini 2 DNG files because it's not supported. It's possible that LR is too smart for its own good right now and simply doesn't understand this new format that is only days old.

Single images taken in JPEG & RAW are perfect in Lightroom. However, the single images that are taken in pano mode and stored in the PANORAMA folder of the SD card do have the 25% issue in Lightroom. This definitely narrows it down to Pano modes.

Your second point may well be hitting the nail on the head. Perhaps the way the DNG is formed for panos is something Lightroom/Photoshop doesn't understand.

The 960x720 size reporting in Windows is weird but I have just checked and even my old Mavic Pro DNGs are similarly wrongly reported in Windows so I guess that is a bit of DNG metadata that Windows can't read

GoAround Posted at 11-13 15:21
Single images taken in JPEG & RAW are perfect in Lightroom. However, the single images that are taken in pano mode and stored in the PANORAMA folder of the SD card do have the 25% issue in Lightroom. This definitely narrows it down to Pano modes.

Your second point may well be hitting the nail on the head. Perhaps the way the DNG is formed for panos is something Lightroom/Photoshop doesn't understand.

My DNG's are 960 also and I thought that was weird. Once loaded into the editor though, they showed they were in fact 4000 x 3000. Well, at least we narrowed it down. I might jump over to a LR group and see if anyone has had this issue with not just the Mini 2 files but any DNG which would imply that LR is strict on what it's looking for, vs. many other products.

Virtually every camera manufacturer has a proprietary recipe for cooking RAW files, and DJI is no exception here. I found it one of the most frustrating/annoying things in modern digital photography. So, until Sony, Canon, Nikon, Panasonic, Olympus and who knows what else start talking to each other and develop truly universal DNG format, things like that will happen. This, however, has not much to do with MM2 messed colour variables described by OP, the nature of which I'm still struggling to understand...

the dng files link on dropbox to everyone check/edit
dropbox link to the dng files with the issue, please try edit and give some feedback.

Matthew Dobrski Posted at 11-13 16:21
Virtually every camera manufacturer has a proprietary recipe for cooking RAW files, and DJI is no exception here. I found it one of the most frustrating/annoying things in modern digital photography. So, until Sony, Canon, Nikon, Panasonic, Olympus and who knows what else start talking to each other and develop truly universal DNG format, things like that will happen. This, however, has not much to do with MM2 messed colour variables described by OP, the nature of which I'm still struggling to understand...

Hi Matthew,

the nature is the white balance. I had a difference in white balance too, using my Mavic 2 Pro, in the blue hour early morning. The pictures taken early were set on a mo blueish white balance than those couple of seconds later.  The choice of white balance temperature seems to depended on the amount of light.

Less light = more blueish.  The problem is when you take a pano during early morning or late in the day, at blue hour, some parts might be darken than others and therefore another color temperature.

It would be nice that DJI would make all the pictures taken for a pano would be on a consistant white balance temperature, for example that one of the first picture taken. And no change, no matter the availability of light on the other pictures.

And about the RAW format. It is even worse than what you describe. Even within the same brand, the RAW files might differ from camera to camera, even thou they have the same file extension. Older editing programs might have problems with RAWs from a newer type.

JohnDG Posted at 11-13 19:06
Hi Matthew,

the nature is the white balance. I had a difference in white balance too, using my Mavic 2 Pro, in the blue hour early morning. The pictures taken early were set on a mo blueish white balance than those couple of seconds later.  The choice of white balance temperature seems to depended on the amount of light.

Finally we are getting closer to the same page ... The issue of inconsistent exposure/WB was noticed by myself several months ago when I attempted to shot some 3x3 panoramas with Mavic 2 Pro (https://forum.dji.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=222119). Unfortunately no one had any idea what I was talking about, and the thread died quickly for malnutrition. Your observations are identical and consistent with mine. Meantime I have found a workaround dealing with the problem, awesome PTGui does the rest camouflaging minor variables. Still, I have absolutely no idea why Mavic's DNG files are cooked this way. It's against the very core of RAW files concept ...

Matthew Dobrski Posted at 11-13 23:13
Finally we are getting closer to the same page ... The issue of inconsistent exposure/WB was noticed by myself several months ago when I attempted to shot some 3x3 panoramas with Mavic 2 Pro (https://forum.dji.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=222119). Unfortunately no one had any idea what I was talking about, and the thread died quickly for malnutrition. Your observations are identical and consistent with mine. Meantime I have found a workaround dealing with the problem, awesome PTGui does the rest camouflaging minor variables. Still, I have absolutely no idea why Mavic's DNG files are cooked this way. It's against the very core of RAW files concept ...

It is all about white balance. And it is not just the Mini 2 that has that behaviour. The problem occurs when there's less light and some parts of the pictures of the pano are in a darker or lighter area than the others.

I set the WB in Photoshop to correct the problem. In Lightroom the default is "as taken", so you have to set it to a fixed value.

But it certainly would help us a lot, that all the pictures of the same pano would be taken with the same WB setting.

For me, the white balance issue is in 75% of the image. The other 25% is fine.  This is in Lightroom/Photoshop/ACR (all the same thing at heart). Pretty much impossible to correct. It's only in images taken for panoramas, not single images. Something in the metadata is not liked by Lightroom.

As a reminder, look at the picture at the start of this thread: the top right quarter is OK and the rest isn't. The OP did not edit this as some sort of comparison; it's how the Mini 2 made it.

If it was simply a wrong WB everywhere, it would not matter as that is so easy to correct in post. Edit: It's probably best to set the Mini2's WB to a manual setting for consistency in making panoramas (answering the posts immediately above this one)

I'd be interested in what other apps have the issue. Anybody here have Capture One or On 1?
Edit: I found out from a kind person on RCG that 960x720 are the dimensions of the thumbnail/preview of a DNG so that's why Windows reports that, rather than 4000x3000. Doesn't solve my main issue but it's nice to know!

GoAround Posted at 11-12 08:02
Mine does it too. Attached is a file from a test shoot in the garden (DNG exported as JPEG to reduce it's size). It happens whether I import the JPEGS with the DNGs or if I import just the DNGs. It does not happen with single shot or AEB DNGs. The JPEG files for pano are a quarter of the resolution of the RAW files (2000x1500 vs 4000x3000) and I can't help feeling that this has something to do with this error.

This is extremely frustrating as I love to take DNG panos with my Mavic Pro and wish to carry on with my Mini 2. If it can't do them correctly, it is not fit for purpose and will be returned. This will be sad as I really like it otherwise.

DNG's dont seem tobe available when shooting panos on the Mini 2 despite having the camera set to jpeg/dng, am I missing something ?

Yes. I did too. It's unintuitive.

I'm sure you have already set JPEG & RAW in your camera settings. However, the setting only works for single shot/AEB. To get the pano DNGs:

1) Take off
2) Select one of the pano phot modes
3) Open camera settings and discover it's only set to JPEG! Toggle to JPEG & RAW then exit settings
4) Take panos and you'll find the JPEG and GNG files in the PANORAMA subfolder on the SD card.
5) I think the setting 'sticks' for the future

GoAround Posted at 11-14 03:35
For me, the white balance issue is in 75% of the image. The other 25% is fine.  This is in Lightroom/Photoshop/ACR (all the same thing at heart). Pretty much impossible to correct. It's only in images taken for panoramas, not single images. Something in the metadata is not liked by Lightroom.

As a reminder, look at the picture at the start of this thread: the top right quarter is OK and the rest isn't. The OP did not edit this as some sort of comparison; it's how the Mini 2 made it.

" ... It's probably best to set the Mini2's WB to a manual setting for consistency in making panoramas ... "


Wait ... What you're suggesting is that setting WB to - say - Sunny isn't "manual" enough??? Hugh, that's interesting theory, investigation worthy ...

GoAround Posted at 11-14 10:37
Yes. I did too. It's unintuitive.

I'm sure you have already set JPEG & RAW in your camera settings. However, the setting only works for single shot/AEB. To get the pano DNGs:

Haha, what do ya know!? It's good to have an army of beta-testers for free, isn't, DJI?

GoAround Posted at 11-14 10:37
Yes. I did too. It's unintuitive.

I'm sure you have already set JPEG & RAW in your camera settings. However, the setting only works for single shot/AEB. To get the pano DNGs:

Thanks, GoAround!  I've been looking for a solution to this issue, but had not found it yet.  Will give this a try.

No worries, thank Rainmaker as he added this to his Mini2 review in the comments. I would never have thought to try it!

Matthew, yes, I would agree 'Sunny' is manual! When I take panos with my DSLR, I fix most parameters so I guess it makes sense to do it with the Mini2 as well. Next time I try one, I'll fix the ISO and shutter speed as well as the WB.