AEB and other Camera Settings

[Davpmars]

I am a recent owner of the Mavic Air 2. I have owned a Spark for a few years and I just upgraded last week. I am quickly learning that the camera will do much more than I had hoped. I have watched several YouTube videos and I am looking for some confirmation of my understanding.

1) The AEB feature will take 3 or 5 photos at different exposure settings, however, in order to take advantage of this feature, I will need to use an editing software (like photoshop) to merge the 3 (or 5) photos together into one. Otherwise, I just have 3 pictures of the same thing. Is this correct?

2) RAW photos are much better but they are MUCH larger and will be hard to post to FaceBook, intagram, etc... Correct?

Thanks for the clarification!

 

[vindibona1]

In your scenario 1 the 3 or 5 photos would have to be merged into a single HDR image then saved at whatever size and resolution and format you choose. HDR allows the camera to capture and retain detail with multiple exposures beyond the the ability of a single exposure to capture that much "density" range in a single captured image. RAW images need to be processed. Perhaps for those who don't know what a RAW image is and how it works i'll explain...

When your camera is set to take a JPG image, it acts as both the capture device and the computer, capturing and PROCESSING the image into a common (jpg) format. When your camera is set to take a RAW image, it is the capture device only recording the raw data, but does not process the data. The raw data then requires some sort of computer and software to process it into a commonly useable format whether it be LR, Photoshop, Capture One, On1 Raw or a litany of other raw processing programs.

The advantage of RAW isn't so much for it's HDR capabilities which are limited, but to have control over the processing. Once the raw data is processed and saved how much you can adjust it is much more limited.