So late last month, I reviewed the photography prowress of the Redmi Note 11 Pro (click here to read that). I’ve been trying more to get in tune with mobile photography and better myself at the craft and most recently, I discovered that the phone can shoot RAW images in Digital Negative format.
Shooting DNG (Digital Negative) felt great. It drew me back to the days when I had to convert my original DSLR RAW files because my Lightroom app was outdated and couldn’t read my original raw file. Oh well, the files captured on the Redmi Note 11 Pro held up well. Dynamic Range was impressive and better than I expected. I was able to recover details from the shadows of the image with minimal noise interference (nothing that couldn’t be handled still in post) while dropping down the highlight presented no issues at all.
Colour grading was absolutely enjoyable. You could feel the colours shift separately between shadows and highlights rather than the mix-mash you get when trying to colour grade JPEG files and unlike the original Redmi Note 11 Pro JPEG files that have that over-sharpened look (that I just now have found out is a staple for most mobile phone cameras now… I really should do smartphone photography more), these images are natural-looking and don’t possess any form of the overly processed look popular with computational photography.
With regards to shooting indoors, the images were way better than I expected and I expected quite a lot to go wrong. All I had was the modelling lamp of a Godox V1 Speedlite (the equivalent of a mildly lit touch light) yet the noise levels were manageable (anything above ISO 400 in my experience always sees the introduction of noise but this handled all of that very well.). The level of control the professional section of the camera app offers is just incredible and as someone who’s obsessed with controlling every aspect of their image creation process, I did feel at peace.
Chances are I’d put this camera through more tests in the coming weeks but for now, It seems I’d recant my earlier rating and give the Redmi Note 11 Pro RAW imaging experience an 8 out of 10.
