Panorama by shooting straight down and moving P4P?

[eoren1]

I've done some panoramas by hand using 10 images per row x 2 rows and stitching in LR/PS with good results.

Today, I figured I would try the Litchi panorama tool and it was fine but really burned through battery life (100-50% after 4-5 pano attempts - saw something about that in another thread). At the end of the day, it was fine for creating a little planet but not any better than my free-handing it.

I'm wondering if any apps allow for shooting stills for a panorama by aiming the camera straight down and flying in a grid over an area. I would like to do this over our harbor.

It would be nice to do this with standard panoramas too. This should eliminate some of the horizon and perspective issues if the P4P could fly at 100ft and shoot in a row every (?50 feet) and then move up to 200, 300, etc.

Appreciate thoughts/recommendations

 

[Meta4]

I'm wondering if any apps allow for shooting stills for a panorama by aiming the camera straight down and flying in a grid over an area

The most common panorama technique is to leave the Phantom in the same position and rotate (and sometimes tilt) the camera. Like this:

If you look in your stitching software, it may give an option for a Planar projection.
This is what you are looking for, where all photos are taken in the same plane and the stitched panorama looks like this:

If you are shooting a small area you could just fly it manually.
But if it's a bigger area, you need help to make sure you get full coverage and enough overlap.
You can use one of the mapping apps like DroneDeploy to handle the grid flight and shooting like this:

And you get a lot of photos with a big overlap like this:

You can get Dronedeploy to stitch this as a rectified orthophoto or do it yourself with Agisoft Photoscan and the result is like this (but much bigger):

I would like to do this over our harbor.

This could be a problem if there are large areas of open water as the stitching software needs to have identifiable fixed points that it can recognise and match.
On land this is usually easy but not on water, so you'd have to have details like boats, piers or shoreline in each shot to be able to get a match for stitching.

 

[eoren1]

Thanks Meta,

I've shot aerials from a single point and gotten good results but was playing around today with Litchi's pano option and found the result less than idea with strongly curved horizons. I may need to play with the projections on 180+ degree panoramas.

I'm impressed with your shot with waves. Even on land, I've found those almost impossible to stitch.

I agree with stitching empty water but our harbor will be filled with boats in 2 months so should be easy to stitch.

Here is one of my favorite aerial panoramas taken thus far (10 images per row x 2 rows) - taken manually by rotating drone left to right then moving gimbal back and moving right to left. Sorry about the logo/watermark. Image is hosted on my website.

 

[Meta4]

I agree with stitching empty water but our harbor will be filled with boats in 2 months so should be easy to stitch.

OK .. You're in a location with lots of potential for some great shots and a harbour full of boats would look spectacular..
That's a part of the world I'd love to visit and I think my Phantom would find plenty to do there..

 

[eoren1]

Thanks Meta,

Really nice portfolio you've got there.

 

[Traveler]

DJI GS Pro, aka ground station will also do a nice job of shooting a grid straight down. You can set the amount you want to overlap and a few other settings. I can't post it, but for fun I shot my backyard at the lowest possible elevation, then stitched them together. I was attempting to get maximum detail for maximum zoom over an half acre of ground. Final jpg was about 60 megs, but got what I wanted.

The only drawback is you are limited to 99 waypoints per mission.

 

[Gemstone]

DJI GS Pro, aka ground station will also do a nice job of shooting a grid straight down. You can set the amount you want to overlap and a few other settings. I can't post it, but for fun I shot my backyard at the lowest possible elevation, then stitched them together. I was attempting to get maximum detail for maximum zoom over an half acre of ground. Final jpg was about 60 megs, but got what I wanted.

The only drawback is you are limited to 99 waypoints per mission.

Hey Traveler - I just did the same last night with a Mavic and low elevation for lots of details. But I can't find anything that will stitch the planar pano. What software did you use?

 

[Meta4]

Hey Traveler - I just did the same last night with a Mavic and low elevation for lots of details. But I can't find anything that will stitch the planar pano. What software did you use?

Look at Microsoft ICE or Kolor Autopano Giga

 

[Gemstone]

Look at Microsoft ICE or Kolor Autopano Giga

Thanks but I already own Autopano Giga and it can't do it. And I'm on a Mac so MS ICE is not really an option.

 

[Meta4]

Thanks but I already own Autopano Giga and it can't do it.

I'm not sure how Autopano looks on a Mac but on a real computer Planar is just one of the projection options.
I've highlighted it here:

 

[bsartist]

I'm not sure how Autopano looks on a Mac but on a real computer ...

I see what you did there. ;-)

 

[Gemstone]

I'm not sure how Autopano looks on a Mac but on a real computer Planar is just one of the projection options.
I've highlighted it here:

You seem to be getting better results than I did. I already tried Planar in Autopano Giga (the Mac version looks the same btw) with very poor results. Some quick googling showed lots of folks with the same issue. It seems Autopano Giga (at least in my case and lots of other cases I found) decides it just must warp the image. It just does not seem to want to leave the image alone and stitch on the one plane.

 

[Meta4]

You seem to be getting better results than I did. I already tried Planar in Autopano Giga (the Mac version looks the same btw) with very poor results. Some quick googling showed lots of folks with the same issue. It seems Autopano Giga (at least in my case and lots of other cases I found) decides it just must warp the image. It just does not seem to want to leave the image alone and stitch on the one plane.

It's always worked well for me so I can only guess.
Do you have big overlaps?

 

[Gemstone]

It's always worked well for me so I can only guess.
Do you have big overlaps?

35%. I was shooting as low as possible, 5m, to get as much detail in the final result as possible. Maybe that is a contributing factor to my problems

 

[Meta4]

35%. I was shooting as low as possible, 5m, to get as much detail in the final result as possible. Maybe that is a contributing factor to my problems

That's quite possibly a factor.
Shooting low, you get big changes from image to image.
Shoot from higher and you'll get better stitching

 

[Gemstone]

Shoot from higher and you'll get better stitching

Yes, but less resolution. Given my normal pano workflow uses a camera with a 50 Megapixels sensor and over 600 images per single pano, these drone panos were just an experiment. A mavic with a 12 megapixel camera is hopeless but I want to see how much details I could get if I pushed it to the limit in terms of low altitude. So far, I can't even get the image to stitch :-( So I think the experiment is over and it gets recorded as a failure.

 

[Meta4]

Yes, but less resolution. Given my normal pano workflow uses a camera with a 50 Megapixels sensor and over 600 images per single pano, these drone panos were just an experiment. A mavic with a 12 megapixel camera is hopeless but I want to see how much details I could get if I pushed it to the limit in terms of low altitude. So far, I can't even get the image to stitch :-( So I think the experiment is over and it gets recorded as a failure.

If the camera to subject angle changes too much between images, you will always have trouble stitching.
Your software is telling you that it's not stitchable.
What are you trying to shoot that takes 600 50MP images at 5 metres?

 

[Gemstone]

If the camera to subject angle changes too much between images, you will always have trouble stitching

I was using DJI Ground Station Pro and it seemed to do a good job on the 2D pano, with level flight on a grid and the camera pointing straight down, so there should not have been changes to the subject angle.

What are you trying to shoot that takes 600 50MP images at 5 metres?

The panos I normally shot are not aerials. See: www.vastphotos.com

I was just experimenting to see how a bird's eye pano might work with a drone and testing for max resolution.

 

[Meta4]

I was using DJI Ground Station Pro and it seemed to do a good job on the 2D pano, with level flight on a grid and the camera pointing straight down, so there should not have been changes to the subject angle.

The view from A is too different from the view from B to make for good stitching
But the views from C and D might stitch properly.

The panos I normally shot are not aerials. See: www.vastphotos.com
I was just experimenting to see how a bird's eye pano might work with a drone and testing for max resolution.

Very impressive

 

[Gemstone]

The view from A is too different from the view from B to make for good stitching
But the views from C and D might stitch properly.

But in my case, the camera is pointed straight down and the drone is moving horizontally on a grid, taking overlapping images. There is not one subject (green box) being photographed. And as such, there is no angle to the subject as demonstrated in your diagram. The resultant images should be no different than photocopying a large book by creating multiple images with just parts of the book on the glass and then assembling the images. All images are taken from the same angle, perpendicular to the flight path with overlap. It should be the simplest stitch imaginable.