Mini 3 Photography quality versus Mini 2

laurent45 · 2025-04-26T14:47:51-0400

Hello,
For more than 3-4 years I have got the Mini 2.
I am thinking of upgrading to the Mini 3 (not the Mini 3 Pro).
I am doing mostly photography, and sometimes printing photos 30x40 cm (11.8 x 15.7 inch), and it is usually OK, but I feel I reached the limit... and I cannot crop.

The Mini 3 camera has a bigger aperture than Mini 2, so more light , or a bit more.
But I saw this 48 MP resolution, but I think I read it is a "artificial" higher resolution, obtained electronically from the 12 MP resolution.
So what does it mean ? will my printings be better using the 48 MP , or not as it is only electronically enhanced.
I am waiting for your feedbacks and experience as drome photographer.

Thanks in advance

Felix le Chat · 2025-04-26T16:52:27-0400

Owner of a mini 3 pro. For its limited size: the camera really surprised me. I only shoot JPG+RAW and dump the JPG's to process exclusively from DNG, so I was skeptical about the '48mp' output, but once I discovered that it can save this to memory card as an ersatz RAW: I started taking it seriously and am still impressed more than 3 years later.

Another strong selling point is the physical ability to flip the camera to portrait orientation, using the whole sensor to capture the shot.

Mrktn · 2025-04-27T06:37:46-0400

Felix le Chat said:
Another strong selling point is the physical ability to flip the camera to portrait orientation, using the whole sensor to capture the shot.

I’ve found this extemely useful. It’s something my Air 3s cannot do, other than cropping into the landscape orientation sensor at 2.7k.

Felix le Chat · 2025-04-27T07:04:47-0400

When it was introduced with the original Mavic pro: portrait orientation blew my socks off, I was really disappointed when it was dumped from the Mavic 2 onwards. Being an inveterate camera-flipper: at least 60% of the DSLR shots I grab are in portrait.

Having to crop 2/3rds of the frame away every time I wanted p/o really pissed me off until I discovered the mav.2 zoom's 'super-resolution' party piece. Far happier cropping into an 8000X6000 than butchering a 4000X3000... then along came shortarse (my mini 3 pro) and it's back to happy days.