What is the resolution of DJI Mini 2’s aerial 360 photos? Is it good enough for professional use? The good news is that despite the Mini 2’s relatively low price, its aerial 360 photos (spherical panoramas) are actually quite detailed.
The DJI Mini 2 ($449 or $599 for Fly More Combo) is one of the most affordable drones to feature an automatic aerial 360 photo capture. When activated, it will rotate in the air while taking a series of photos at different angles. The photos can be stitched automatically on DJI Fly app, but the resolution will be limited to 4096 x 2048 (8 megapixels).
Fortunately, Mini 2 will also store the original unstitched photos, which you can stitch on 3rd party software such as PTGui to get the full resolution. Drone photographer Air-View 360 took an aerial 360 photo with the DJI Mini 2 and found the resolution was as high as 18,858 x 9,429, or 177.8 megapixels when stitched in PTGui. Check out his full resolution sample 360 photo here.
The photo looks much more detailed and seems to have better dynamic range than 360 photos from my aging Mavic Air. It shows that the Mini 2 is surprisingly capable for aerial 360 photos.
I do the same thing with my “old” Mavic Mini, shooting with Dronelink app and stitching with Hugin (that is free).
You can see my 180 Megapixel images here: https://www.klapty.com/profile/klapty1599568416
Dronelink is an affordable app for autonomous flight that support waypoint navigation on many DJI drones including the first Mavic Mini. In the current beta there are also 3 new flight modes: Focus, Follow and Orbit.
Hum,
Overall image quality is great but that sky is so weird.
Blue, red, blue, red, blue, red…
TBH If you look closely that color issue is everywhere.
But of course it’s most noticeable on sky, where you have less details. 😉
I havent noticed color issues everywhere other than some differences in the sky. Maybe the camera had problems capturing the actual colours because of low light.
I’ve noticed a serious problem with DNG files. And others notice it too. Most likely, DJI Mini 2 produces corrupted RAW files. Why do I think so? I did DNG file tests in Lightroom, Aurora HDR, Affinity and Luminar 4.
– Lightroom: corrupted jpg file – vertical photo is halved (you can see it clearly) left side is red and right side is blue (just slightly, but still enough to make the file useless). The panorama from Lightroom files has red and blue stripes (especially in the sky).
– Aurora HDR: it is completely unable to read the file. Huge noise plus a blue vignette and a red center. On every file.
– Luminar 4: best result, but there is a slight red tint in the center.
I don’t know how a RAW file from DJI Mini 2 can be useful at the moment. It’s rubbish for me. Especially that when taking a panorama in automatic mode, the drone does not make full resolution jpg, but reduces them by half! To make such a big panorama we are forced to use a broken DNG. Will DJI fix it? If he cares about the users, then yes. If it was just a marketing ploy – surely not.
I am sending links to the files and the zip package containing all the files. Check it out for yourself.
Aurora HDR 1: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1s4ne9Rlk7frwMLF3xnYkAKGbIM5iRnui/view?usp=sharing
Aurora HDR 2: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1stEZB4xJlXA277GGIKfYrnAs_7y1YauR/view?usp=sharing
Lightroom 1: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ab6yJU6Sd03KouYWCVyXkzgyG-Bq3E7a/view?usp=sharing
Lightroom 2: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SEilWtK03kePuPGIaIZfaXP671ykuoiI/view?usp=sharing
Luminar4 – 1: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NwGZ7ZhZl7J5M5sJez-M4zesLOOI4OoG/view?usp=sharing
Luminar4 – 2: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Opqqljy-f1IEPSBNI5RyVX9CSuRSDYUE/view?usp=sharing
Zip file (All files with DNG): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sU6Hd2NaAWpo17bcGQvUQwpKWDChpdnw/view?usp=sharing
Do you also have such problems?
Most of the time i shoot manual with 48 mp. Doesnt take long and improves the image quality. I like the way the image turned out. We can surely pixelpeep, but for a 400 dollars drone i dont think we can expect inspire 2 quality images.
Hi Christiaan, how do you shot manually a 360 panorama with Mini2 ? I am curious about that.
It means you take a photo, rotate the drone, take a photo, rotate, then rotate camera downward, take photo, etc.
Yes I know ! 😉 But do you have a system to rotate the drone exactly between the shots ? For example 30 or 40 degrees? Or do you do everything roughly ?
Hi Sergio. I didn’t measure the angles but positioned the drone roughly 45 degrees from each other in a curving zigzag.