How to Take RAW DNG Photos on DJI Drones

Knowing how to take RAW photos is incredibly important for professional photography work and for delivering final products to clients. Check out our video where we cover what a RAW photo is, why you would want to be taking RAW photos, and how to change your settings to capture RAW photos on all DJI drones.

 

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What is a RAW photo?

A RAW photo is the image produced by all of the raw data from the camera sensor. The image is minimally processed and ideal for professional editing within applications like Adobe Photoshop and Affinity Photo. DJI drones save RAW images as .DNG files, so when you are importing images from your micro SD card that’s what you want to look for.

 

Why shoot RAW?

RAW photos typically look worse than the JPG photos from your drone. The images are flatter, have less contrast, less saturation, and are typically 4 or 5 times the file size (25MB for a RAW photo compared with 5MB for a JPG photo). So why bother shooting RAW? The answer is for professional photo work. It may seem strange professional photographers would prefer the worse-looking image, however the additional data from the camera sensor is ideal for photo editing. Applications like Photoshop can take advantage of the RAW camera data to produce higher-quality edited images, which in the end look better than the JPG files. So if you’re doing professional drone photography for clients, I highly suggest shooting in both the JPG and RAW file formats to deliver what the client is looking for.




Ok, clients want RAW photos. How do I make sure I’m taking RAW photos?

Watch the above video, or follow these 7 simple steps:

  1. Power on your DJI drone and your controller.
  2. Connect your phone and launch the DJI Go or  DJI Go 4 app.
  3. Switch from video mode to camera mode.
  4. Go into the camera settings by tapping the icon located below the shutter button.
  5. Tap the camera icon at the top of the settings screen.
  6. Tap “Image Format”
  7. Select JPG+RAW.

If you’d like to learn more, please consider enrolling in our drone training courses, or simply follow dronegenuity on our social media channels, YouTube, and subscribe to our mailing list for regular updates.

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