Hi,
Just saw your question.
I always take 5 shots in AEB mode. I would prefer to only shoot 3 but the max bracketed exposure is .7 and that is not enough, so to get a range of -1.34 to +1.34 you need 5. You will be throwing out 1 or 2 shots. However I would rather do that than try to push up a shot where the shadows have gone too dark. The
Phantom 4 Pro like Mavic has a surprising amount of highlight recovery available. But since you are only given around 15-20 minutes (this accounts for getting to where I want to shoot and landing) of time to shoot, I prefer to just pull in the extra images. Cards are very inexpensive and a 32 GB to 64 GB card gets it done for me.
The raw dng files from the P4, I feel need the standard amount of work I do with most raw.
They will need a color profile assigned, currently I mainly use the new Adobe "color" one, but have also tried the Modern 7.
Lightroom/ACR (I only use Lightroom) have a great set of tools to help work an image, and you can always combine a couple in a HDR shot, however the Adobe approach to HDR/exposure blending is not my favorite method.
If you are working a pano manually, in Lightroom, combine the shots before you do any work as Lightroom drops most of the image adjustments when combining.
After I have the exposure/color where I like it will work on the shaprening, and the files will need a moderate amount, but they do sharpen up well.
Even though the files appear to have a lot of highlight headroom, I still see quite a bit of noise at times in the sky, so I will export to Adobe CC photoshop, and use a plugin on the sky (neat image).
The other thing to remember is use the histogram and try to find an exposure setting in the middle to right of the graph.
One other thing I have noticed is that the P4 Pro Vr 2.0 shows highlights being blown visually more often than my previous P4 Pro. Especially clouds, but when you view the actual raw file, you realize that you still have plenty of DR.
I try to stay in the F 4.0 to max F 5.6 aperture, always use the mechanical shutter and ISO never past 200. The noise past this range becomes just hard to work with. (I would love to shoot d-log at 100 on the P4 Pro like you can on Mavic but the P4 kicks you up to 500 and that pulls way to much noise IMO). Shutter speeds I prefer the faster the better. Even though the Phantom has a great gimbal, there all kinds of vibration, motion etc going on during flight, so 1/500, 1/250 etc. for shutter speed. If you take the aperture much past F 5.6 you will start to see diffraction set in. Some of it can be removed with sharpening but only so much.
I realize others prefer jpg, however I never use jpg for anything I shoot. I look at it this way, I would much rather control the process than have a DOS based or similar OS working on my file. Once you write to jpg the data is pretty much fixed. DJI has a noise algorithm for their jpgs and once it's applied you will never pull that detail back as well as from a raw file. This just a true with any DSLR. It's all a matter of what you are looking for in the final image. The other huge advantage to a raw file is that as software is updated, improved etc. you can rework older images with the new software and often get a much better result.
Paul Caldwell