Totally flummoxed. - where are the dng files

[lgbillman]

I’m a professional sports photographer, so know about raw and jpg files and optimal photo settings and lighting, but took my first twirl with a new Mavik 2 pro this week. I set it to shoot RAW (only). I had the card in the drone itself, not the smart controller. I was shooting at a 3:2 ratio. I (thought I) had 97 stunning aerial photos over the Chesapeake Bay just as the sun started going down. I pulled the card from the drone, put it in the SD adapter, put that in my MacBook Pro, opened up my photo ingest program, PhotoMechanic, and every single of the 97 photo files displayed as .jpg with a size of 160x112 - ZERO mp. I tried to ingest to Lightroom Classic - same result. Mac operating system, PM and LR are all the latest and greatest versions. I manually opened the SD card folder and see on .jpg files. WHERE ARE THE RAW FILES??? I’m assuming what I’m seeing are the jpg preview files, but I see no indication anywhere that there’s a dng file on the card. I’ve watched videos, read articles, read posts on this forum - these are the smallest files I’ve seen referenced anywhere. What am I doing wrong - I’m hoping it’s just operator error - I’d WELCOME that! Please advise

 

[Phantomrain.org]

I’m a professional sports photographer, so know about raw and jpg files and optimal photo settings and lighting, but took my first twirl with a new Mavik 2 pro this week. I set it to shoot RAW (only). I had the card in the drone itself, not the smart controller. I was shooting at a 3:2 ratio. I (thought I) had 97 stunning aerial photos over the Chesapeake Bay just as the sun started going down. I pulled the card from the drone, put it in the SD adapter, put that in my MacBook Pro, opened up my photo ingest program, PhotoMechanic, and every single of the 97 photo files displayed as .jpg with a size of 160x112 - ZERO mp. I tried to ingest to Lightroom Classic - same result. Mac operating system, PM and LR are all the latest and greatest versions. I manually opened the SD card folder and see on .jpg files. WHERE ARE THE RAW FILES??? I’m assuming what I’m seeing are the jpg preview files, but I see no indication anywhere that there’s a dng file on the card. I’ve watched videos, read articles, read posts on this forum - these are the smallest files I’ve seen referenced anywhere. What am I doing wrong - I’m hoping it’s just operator error - I’d WELCOME that! Please advise

Your not in the right file on the SD card most like your using the Cashe
Go back to the file structure and look for File with your Photos .

 

[Meta4]

WHERE ARE THE RAW FILES???

The SD card should have a folder called DCIM.
Inside that, there will be a folder called 100MEDIA .... that's where the actual image files are always saved.
If you are looking in any other folders, you are in the wrong place.

 

[Johnmcl7]

On my Mavic 2 Pro the normal raw file are stored as DJI_0NNN.DNG in DCIM\10xMEDIA (100MEDIA. 101MEDIA etc. depending on the volume of files) and the raw files for panoramas are stored in DCIM\PANORAMA\100_0NNN as PANO0MMM.DNG (there's a folder for each panorama).

There is a small jpeg embedded in the raw file for a preview which I thought you were perhaps looking at but it's 960x540. There are no small cache files separate on the drone's SD card but the thumbnail jpegs on the mobile device are 160x112 (stored in DJI/dji.go.v4/CACHE_IMAGE with a very long file name) which makes me wonder do you have the cards mixed up?

Alternatively, have you been recording to the drone's internal memory than the SD card? It has 8GB of internal memory which I think is the default storage location.

 

[lgbillman]

I found the DCIM folder; it has two different file types per the file names - 1/2 appear with the preface “screen_” ; these are all about 450-500 kb in size. The other 1/2 appear as “thumb_” and are between 14 and 19 kB. All are .jpg. That’s all that’s in the DCIM folder. Just to be safe, I went through the other sd card folders and found no other image files. I THOUGHT I was recording to the card, not the internal storage in the drone. I think in my desperation to find the images, I entered an instruction to copy to the sd card, thinking perhaps they were all on the internal device. Maybe if that’s where they were, they’re still there; if not, maybe when I copied them, not every folder copied over. I’ll take a deep breath and do a test based on the info you’ve all provided. Thanks to all for the input.

 

[Johnmcl7]

I found the DCIM folder; it has two different file types per the file names - 1/2 appear with the preface “screen_” ; these are all about 450-500 kb in size. The other 1/2 appear as “thumb_” and are between 14 and 19 kB. All are .jpg. That’s all that’s in the DCIM folder. Just to be safe, I went through the other sd card folders and found no other image files. I THOUGHT I was recording to the card, not the internal storage in the drone. I think in my desperation to find the images, I entered an instruction to copy to the sd card, thinking perhaps they were all on the internal device. Maybe if that’s where they were, they’re still there; if not, maybe when I copied them, not every folder copied over. I’ll take a deep breath and do a test based on the info you’ve all provided. Thanks to all for the input.

The files you've described are from the device running DJI Go (which is the Smart Controller I think in your case), I've just checked my DJI Go Device and in DJI\djo.go.v4\CACHE_IMAGE I have screen_ files and thumb_ files the same as you've described. I didn't know there was a function to copy from the DJI Go device to the drone's SD card but it sounds like that's what has happened if these are the files from the SD card in the drone, I don't have any of them on my drone's SD card.

If you haven't looked at the drone's internal memory yet you can do so by unfolding the drone and taking the gimbal protector off as if preparing for a flight then plugging a USB-C cable into the side of the drone and then into your PC. The port is under a cover on the front right of the drone just behind the front vent, note there's another larger cover underneath which is not the correct one. With the drone plugged into your PC it should appear as a standard mass storage device and hopefully your raw files are there.

If that is the case then once you've copied your files over you can use DJi Go to set the drone to use the SD card by default.

 

[tlap]

Don't forget, you have to first set up for taking jpg and dng pics in DJI Go setup. Then you will find it in your DCIM folder on your SD card.

 

[Cisco62]

Have you tried browsing your sd card with "calculate all sizes" enabled in the View Option (cmd J)?
This will show you the dimension of the folders of the sd card and tell you where your dng files are located.

 

[Made2Phly]

Perhaps search for “.dng” on sd card and drone internal

 

[Deleted member 114292]

I’m a professional sports photographer, so know about raw and jpg files and optimal photo settings and lighting, but took my first twirl with a new Mavik 2 pro this week. I set it to shoot RAW (only). I had the card in the drone itself, not the smart controller. I was shooting at a 3:2 ratio. I (thought I) had 97 stunning aerial photos over the Chesapeake Bay just as the sun started going down. I pulled the card from the drone, put it in the SD adapter, put that in my MacBook Pro, opened up my photo ingest program, PhotoMechanic, and every single of the 97 photo files displayed as .jpg with a size of 160x112 - ZERO mp. I tried to ingest to Lightroom Classic - same result. Mac operating system, PM and LR are all the latest and greatest versions. I manually opened the SD card folder and see on .jpg files. WHERE ARE THE RAW FILES??? I’m assuming what I’m seeing are the jpg preview files, but I see no indication anywhere that there’s a dng file on the card. I’ve watched videos, read articles, read posts on this forum - these are the smallest files I’ve seen referenced anywhere. What am I doing wrong - I’m hoping it’s just operator error - I’d WELCOME that! Please advise

It's 100% operator error, just what you were hoping for.
Assuming you had settings correct, this is where they are.I have my setting to RAW + JPG as some customers prefer one over the other.
tip: Always grab them off the card (or plug the drone in) NEVER off the mobile device

 

[brittex]

I’m a professional sports photographer, so know about raw and jpg files and optimal photo settings and lighting, but took my first twirl with a new Mavik 2 pro this week. I set it to shoot RAW (only). I had the card in the drone itself, not the smart controller. I was shooting at a 3:2 ratio. I (thought I) had 97 stunning aerial photos over the Chesapeake Bay just as the sun started going down. I pulled the card from the drone, put it in the SD adapter, put that in my MacBook Pro, opened up my photo ingest program, PhotoMechanic, and every single of the 97 photo files displayed as .jpg with a size of 160x112 - ZERO mp. I tried to ingest to Lightroom Classic - same result. Mac operating system, PM and LR are all the latest and greatest versions. I manually opened the SD card folder and see on .jpg files. WHERE ARE THE RAW FILES??? I’m assuming what I’m seeing are the jpg preview files, but I see no indication anywhere that there’s a dng file on the card. I’ve watched videos, read articles, read posts on this forum - these are the smallest files I’ve seen referenced anywhere. What am I doing wrong - I’m hoping it’s just operator error - I’d WELCOME that! Please advise

Does DNG files will be in a sub directory.

 

[Dale D]

I found the DCIM folder; it has two different file types per the file names - 1/2 appear with the preface “screen_” ; these are all about 450-500 kb in size. The other 1/2 appear as “thumb_” and are between 14 and 19 kB. All are .jpg. That’s all that’s in the DCIM folder. Just to be safe, I went through the other sd card folders and found no other image files. I THOUGHT I was recording to the card, not the internal storage in the drone. I think in my desperation to find the images, I entered an instruction to copy to the sd card, thinking perhaps they were all on the internal device. Maybe if that’s where they were, they’re still there; if not, maybe when I copied them, not every folder copied over. I’ll take a deep breath and do a test based on the info you’ve all provided. Thanks to all for the input.

Did you specify "save as RAW" in the settings?