DJI Mini4 Pro Drone camera image quality issues

[Nikonitis]

Hi all, I hope this is an appropriate place to pose these questions. I have been using my Mini 4 pro for a few weeks now and I am noticing some differences between DNG and JPG files that I'd like some advice with. I have migrated from DSLRs to drones, as I lost interest, but see new possibilities with this aspect of photography. Whilst I enjoy making little movies, my primary drive is to create good quality images and to that end, I need a bit of advice. The drone creates 2 files one HiRes, 1 low. The colour and light/contrast between the 2 is quite noticeable and I am wondering whether this is to do with settings in the drone or the limitations of the lens. The first image is the Raw file, as it came off the microSD card and presents uneven exposure, contrast, light and colour, with a blue hue and a halo effect, whilst the second image (again right out of the drone with no post) has good exposure distribution, contrast and colour as well as a measure of in camera sharpening, I think.  The metadata is the same for both obviously. Its really disappointing as there is no way I can enlarge any of these images until I have resolved this issue. Any advice would be gratefully received.

Edited January 4 by Nikonitis

[DWright]

Hi @Nikonitis,

Welcome to the forum.

The DNG RAW image is how the sensor saw the image with not adjustments applied to it while the JPEG image has had several adjustments applied to it when it is created which is why there is a difference between them.

 

[Nikonitis]

Hi DWright, Thankyou for your reply. I have since discovered that there are 2 ways to open DNG (raw) files in Affinity 2, Serif Labs and Apple Core. See the attached screen shot. Using Apple Core opens the image the right way. 

[R C-R]

10 hours ago, Nikonitis said:

Using Apple Core opens the image the right way. 

Believe it or not, there is no one right way to "open" (develop) a RAW format file. For (much!) more about why this is, I suggest studying the RAW Actually Affinity Spotlight article.

[Nikonitis]

I should have qualified the statement when I said the right way. What I should say is it opens images in a way that requires little or no post work. Apropos that, I wonder if you might know anything about another topic, namely making panoramas using the Panorama tool. I have tried it once and found the result terrible. My multiple images were perfectly exposed, but having gone through the Panorama tool, the result was over exposed with the highlights totally clipped beyond repair. Is this something you are familiar with? I have done a bit of searching and found posts from 2020 where people expressed the same disappointment at their Panorama results. Doesn't look like anything has been done about it in the ensuing 5 years, sadly. As I understand it one can't do any level/curves or anything else whilst in the tool.