Here's another tip for the drone pilots among you. who the DJI Mavic Air owns, knows for sure that it is capable of shooting 360-degree panoramas. A number of pictures are taken by the drone in the air and put together directly "on the fly". The finished panorama then lands on the SD card in the 100MEDIA folder. With a size of 8192 x 4096 pixels, it's also big enough for Facebook and Co, but unfortunately the DJI software "stitches" the photos together rather moderately well.
Here is an example that I took a few days ago. The transitions in heaven are just the obvious problem. In the houses and bushes you can also see ghost images and the like, which can only be seen when enlarged accordingly.
The panorama composed by the Mavic Air shows a lot of problem areas that cannot be repaired afterwards (Photo: Sir Apfelot).
The best solution to get an attractive and above all error-free panorama is to save the individual images as DNG (RAW data from the camera) and then later on the computer with panorama software (Autopano, PTGui, PanoramaStudio or similar) of its own choice to assemble. This has worked well so far, because the DNG data for a panorama usually end up in the "PANORAMA" folder and there in a subfolder that is created according to date and time. I then have 25 files with the names “PANO0001.DNG” to “PANO0025.DNG”.
This is what the PANORAMA sub-folder with the individual DNG files should look like - but it didn't work for me. :-(
Problem: DNGs are not backed up
But now comes the reason why I'm actually writing this post, because in my case I was on the road, photographed a panorama and afterwards didn't find a corresponding folder in the main folder "PANORAMA" - and therefore I was missing all the individual images for the panorama. That means I only had the unsatisfactory JPG that the Mavic Air assembled for me.
A bit of reading in forums has shown me that I am not alone and that other people have had the same problem. The solution for this is also relatively simple: In the DJI GO 4 app, you briefly switch the memory to "internal memory", then exit the menu again. Then put it back in and set it back to "SD card".
In the DJI GO 4 app, first click on the settings on the right, then on the gear wheel at the top.
After clicking on the cogwheel, you will come to a list of options where you can search for "location" at the bottom.
In the item "Storage location" you can switch between internal memory and the SD card. Once this has been changed and reset, the DNG raw data of the panorama are saved individually again.
By the way, you can find the menu item if you click on the button for the photo/video settings on the right. Then the gear at the top and in this menu relatively far down there is the item "Storage location". By the way, the item "Save unmerged panos" has nothing to do with this problem. This only applies to incomplete panoramas. In my case the option is switched off and I still get all DNGs on the SD card.
Test and panorama successful
After I tried the suggested solution, I of course had to test it directly to see whether it worked. So out into the fresh air, flew once over the field and shot a 360 degree panorama. Lo and behold: there is another folder on the SD card with the corresponding DNG data! That's how easy it can be…
Have fun flying and stitching!
By the way: If you are still looking for one, you will find the right article here SD card for the Mavic Air are.
Jens has been running the blog since 2012. He appears as Sir Apfelot for his readers and helps them with problems of a technical nature. In his free time he drives electric unicycles, takes photos (preferably with his iPhone, of course), climbs around in the Hessian mountains or hikes with the family. His articles deal with Apple products, news from the world of drones or solutions for current bugs.
Convert image file on Mac: Possibilities with macOS tools
