Mavic Pro HDR photo feature.

[Flyhigh1]

I'm curious if any one has used the built in HDR mode? I just tried it today and compared the same shot HDR RAW vs single shot RAW. I didn't see much of a difference however I live in the midwest where right now it's always cloudy and being winter not a lot of colors.
To clarity I'm not trying to compare shooting in AEB and bringing them all into light room. I understand that is the best overall. However I don't have light room. I use my iMac photos program and for the most part works really well for landscape/ real estate shots.

 

[Davesworld]

I may be wrong but I thought the HDR feature only worked for Jpegs and not raw.

 

[Flyhigh1]

Interesting. I'm positive I was shooting Raw. Not sure if thats why it didn't seem to make much difference.

 

[brett8883]

I'm curious if any one has used the built in HDR mode? I just tried it today and compared the same shot HDR RAW vs single shot RAW. I didn't see much of a difference however I live in the midwest where right now it's always cloudy and being winter not a lot of colors.
To clarity I'm not trying to compare shooting in AEB and bringing them all into light room. I understand that is the best overall. However I don't have light room. I use my iMac photos program and for the most part works really well for landscape/ real estate shots.

HDR function on Mavic Pro, what I like to call “auto HDR,” takes three photos and then combines them in camera to make a composite DNG(Raw) file.

You probably won’t notice a difference until you edit with them. It does give you more dynamic range but you have to edit them to bring it out.

You said you didn’t want to compare to using AEB and compositing in Lightroom or Photoshop but this is unavoidable. With AEB method for HDR you have control over the process so you can adjust for ghosting and it does retain more info than the auto hdr method. Since you can’t control thisusing the auto hdr method you need to make sure there’s nothing moving in frame or it won’t look good. With real estate and landscape photos this isn’t an issue.

Quick note about HDRs in general; you always give up some sharpness in the photo for more range in tones and colors. If you can get the shot you want without doing HDR that is gonna always be better. With the AEB method if it turns out you don’t need to do HDR you can instead just use one of the original photos you were going to merge. With auto-HDR you don’t have that option since it doesn’t retain the original images.

 

[Davesworld]

HDR function on Mavic Pro, what I like to call “auto HDR,” takes three photos and then combines them in camera to make a composite DNG(Raw) file.

You probably won’t notice a difference until you edit with them. It does give you more dynamic range but you have to edit them to bring it out.

You said you didn’t want to compare to using AEB and compositing in Lightroom or Photoshop but this is unavoidable. With AEB method for HDR you have control over the process so you can adjust for ghosting and it does retain more info than the auto hdr method. Since you can’t control thisusing the auto hdr method you need to make sure there’s nothing moving in frame or it won’t look good. With real estate and landscape photos this isn’t an issue.

Quick note about HDRs in general; you always give up some sharpness in the photo for more range in tones and colors. If you can get the shot you want without doing HDR that is gonna always be better. With the AEB method if it turns out you don’t need to do HDR you can instead just use one of the original photos you were going to merge. With auto-HDR you don’t have that option since it doesn’t retain the original images.

Looking at this video it states the auto HDR has to be set to Jpeg

 

[Flyhigh1]

Looking at this video it states the auto HDR has to be set to Jpeg

I noticed that too in the video. I'm surprised the DJI app doesn't say anything about that when I have selected raw and HDR in the photo area. So are you saying because i was in raw and did the HDR it didn't work? Very weird that it doesn't support raw

 

[MAvic_South_Oz]

I use it very rarely, as I don't do much in the way of photos.
It does work on bringing out the darker ground pretty good in most cases.

Mostly though using normal mode we have pretty good light, but it always depends on the cene, deep gorges would be great to shoot in HDR over a normal scene where light is even.

I think with photos, you can shoot jpeg, or jpeg and raw, no option to shoot raw alone.

That's a good video on the subject.

 

[The Editor]

Very weird that it doesn't support raw

Why? It’s raw!
You capture the entire dynamic range from the sensor and then YOU decide how it’s processed and map that dynamic range into your 8 bit or jpeg output.

 

[brett8883]

Looking at this video it states the auto HDR has to be set to Jpeg

That’s not correct. I have taken DNG auto HDR photos and they are larger files than the standard DNG from the Mavic Pro.

 

[brett8883]

Why? It’s raw!
You capture the entire dynamic range from the sensor and then YOU decide how it’s processed and map that dynamic range into your 8 bit or jpeg output.

Because the dynamic range of the sensor isn’t even close to what our eye can see. Even in raw you can easily have clipped highlights and shadows in the same frame.

 

[brett8883]

I noticed that too in the video. I'm surprised the DJI app doesn't say anything about that when I have selected raw and HDR in the photo area. So are you saying because i was in raw and did the HDR it didn't work? Very weird that it doesn't support raw

It does support RAW. Take a raw photo and then take an auto-HDR photo. When you import them to your computer notice the size difference of the files

 

[The Editor]

Because the dynamic range of the sensor isn’t even close to what our eye can see. Even in raw you can easily have clipped highlights and shadows in the same frame.

Yes, but you are limited to the upper and lower range the sensor can capture.
If a raw captures the entire dynamic range of the sensor - that’s it, it simply cannot capture more information than it was designed to ‘see’ whether that’s in the highlights or the shadows.
What you can do is then manipulate that image (and combine them) to give a composite image.
The whole point of raw though is no processing is applied in camera to allow the user to output and manipulate as they want and afford them the maximum amount of information the sensor can provide unprocessed.
Nobody said anything about the dynamic range of the human eye which is generally accepted to be around 20 stops.

 

[brett8883]

Yes, but you are limited to the upper and lower range the sensor can capture.
If a raw captures the entire dynamic range of the sensor - that’s it, it simply cannot capture more information than it was designed to ‘see’ whether that’s in the highlights or the shadows.
What you can do is then manipulate that image (and combine them) to give a composite image.
The whole point of raw though is no processing is applied in camera to allow the user to output and manipulate as they want and afford them the maximum amount of information the sensor can provide unprocessed.
Nobody said anything about the dynamic range of the human eye which is generally accepted to be around 20 stops.

No sensor captures the entire dynamic range of the sensor in the same frame. If you have washed out highlights the sensor didn’t capture all the information in those highlights. That’s why you have to stop down to make to bring back highlights, but then that will clip the shadows. By doing an HDR you get the benefit of different exposures in one frame and then you can draw them out in post.

just like in this photo you can see the information between black and white is increased and composited into a single frame. Now I think this one is slightly overdone but it’s the best example I could find in the 5 seconds I looked on google. My theory on HDRs is you shouldn’t be able to immediately tell it’s an HDR. It should look natural

 

[Dave Maine]

What is posted here is misleading. Sensors do have limits for the range between the lightest spot they can capture, and the darkest spot. Sensor types vary on this difference, the dynamic range. High end sensors can capture around 14 of 15 stops of dynamic range.

Many scenes do not exceed the dynamic range of the sensor used to capture them. Gray days with no strong shadows are good examples. HDR will not make any significant difference in these situations, as the complete range is captured in a single exposure.

Bright sunny days with deep shadows are a different story. Here the dynamic range will be larger that the best sensor, and you will loose some combination of lights, darks, or some of both, depending on where the base exposure is centered. HDR capture will definitely help, by capturing several images and blending them together to save all the darks and lights into a compressed image with them all.

All of this can easily be seen beforehand by looking at the histogram display, and adjusting the exposure, and choosing HDR if needed. HDR is not a choice for video, as shooting frames that quickly doesn’t allow time to shooting multiple frames and processing them into a single video frame.

 

[Greg Webb]

HDR function on Mavic Pro, what I like to call “auto HDR,” takes three photos and then combines them in camera to make a composite DNG(Raw) file.

You probably won’t notice a difference until you edit with them. It does give you more dynamic range but you have to edit them to bring it out.

You said you didn’t want to compare to using AEB and compositing in Lightroom or Photoshop but this is unavoidable. With AEB method for HDR you have control over the process so you can adjust for ghosting and it does retain more info than the auto hdr method. Since you can’t control thisusing the auto hdr method you need to make sure there’s nothing moving in frame or it won’t look good. With real estate and landscape photos this isn’t an issue.

Quick note about HDRs in general; you always give up some sharpness in the photo for more range in tones and colors. If you can get the shot you want without doing HDR that is gonna always be better. With the AEB method if it turns out you don’t need to do HDR you can instead just use one of the original photos you were going to merge. With auto-HDR you don’t have that option since it doesn’t retain the original images.

Well said Brett!

 

[Flyhigh1]

What is posted here is misleading. Sensors do have limits for the range between the lightest spot they can capture, and the darkest spot. Sensor types vary on this difference, the dynamic range. High end sensors can capture around 14 of 15 stops of dynamic range.

Many scenes do not exceed the dynamic range of the sensor used to capture them. Gray days with no strong shadows are good examples. HDR will not make any significant difference in these situations, as the complete range is captured in a single exposure.

Bright sunny days with deep shadows are a different story. Here the dynamic range will be larger that the best sensor, and you will loose some combination of lights, darks, or some of both, depending on where the base exposure is centered. HDR capture will definitely help, by capturing several images and blending them together to save all the darks and lights into a compressed image with them all.

All of this can easily be seen beforehand by looking at the histogram display, and adjusting the exposure, and choosing HDR if needed. HDR is not a choice for video, as shooting frames that quickly doesn’t allow time to shooting multiple frames and processing them into a single video frame.

I guess the part I’m still not following is people on here are saying the Mavic can’t take a HDR in raw. However why does it let me do it? Why would it give you the option? Lastly how do you know you can’t shoot HDR in raw? Thanks

 

[brett8883]

I guess the part I’m still not following is people on here are saying the Mavic can’t take a HDR in raw. However why does it let me do it? Why would it give you the option? Lastly how do you know you can’t shoot HDR in raw? Thanks

It does do HDR in RAW. Some people are mistaken

 

[Davesworld]

I may be wrong on this, but I believe the HDR mode is for Jpeg use only. Yes you can use it if you have it set to raw, but does that really do anything to the image.



Here is what DJI say



HDR (High-Dynamic Range)
Similar to AEB mode, HDR mode will take several bracketed photos to capture greater details of the composition’s elements. But unlike AEB mode, it will automatically pull the best parts of each frame and merge them to produce the final high dynamic image. Thus, it’s a good option when you don’t want to merge photos manually.



It very much looks to me that using the HDR in jpeg combines the images taken to produce a final HDR shot that does not require and further processing on your PC.

 

[Deleted member 114292]

HDR pretty much has to be JPG - you can't really process raw files they are not in an actual image format.

 

[lee82gx]

This is interesting - HDR has to be jpeg? In lightroom and any post process digitally, HDR can produced in dng format. I'm currently confused why would it be that it can't be so in the drone / camera. Yes it somewhat defeats the purpose, but why can't it just save all the bracketed raw photos and output a jpeg or a dng after combining?

Another question - If i set the drone to RAW only, and set the capture mode to HDR, does it then not save anything at all?