Phantom 3 - the panorama machine

I agree with Jeff48920. There's no doubt that the restrictions will increase as time moves on. But there will always be somewhere one can get away from it all and enjoy an interesting flight plan. I'm American but living and working in China for many years. I've got a P2/V+ and a P3. You can't imagine the crap I get from local police here on using the bird at all let alone trying to get it on a Chinese plane going somewhere domestically. But I am not going to stop flying and will find places to do so. I am actually looking forward to what I believe will be coming soon in the next 3-4 years. A world-wide licensing program. I think that after people take a qualifying test, pay a small admin fee and get a license to fly, I think it will help our hobby immeasurably.
 
Last night in NYC
ImageUploadedByPhantomPilots - DJI Phantom Forum1442392913.628043.jpg
 
All very Nice!. I've been playing with Kolor's Autopano Giga software. seems easy to use.

find it here:
Kolor | Autopano - panorama software

[Group 0]-DJI_0002_DJI_0020-19 images.jpg


My first attempt. Small off-road area in the hills around Los Angeles, California. Still in the middle of a 10 year drought :(
 
Wow. Really great shots guys. So are you keeping the P3P in one place and rotating around, or are you moving across horizontally?
 
Wow. Really great shots guys. So are you keeping the P3P in one place and rotating around, or are you moving across horizontally?
Usually rotating but for some subjects you can move the Phantom in one plane.
Since I started this thread and it's ages since I posted a panorama, here's a nice one.
941-21aa-X2.jpg


And from the same panorama - but the full 360º and rendered as a little planet
941-21LP2-X2.jpg
 
I'm so jealous of those who are allowed to fly at night. Here we're not allowed to.
I know people here DO, and it's really frustrating when unlicenced pilots just do whatever they feel like, and the licenced ones have to stick by the rules.
I'd so love to take some night time panos of my city, but there's an airport too close, and we can't fly at night, so we bomb out on both rules here :(

Yep.... The benefits of doing it yourself ! You can do it... Nobody will know.
 
I'm loving flying the P3. I've been going to some of my favourite shooting locations and this new bird really is a sweet panorama machine.

The shutter button on the controller makes it much more like using a camera and they have sped up the process so the wait between shots is minimal.
Shooting panoramas with the P2V+ was a lot of work. I would often shoot up to 21 images to stitch together but the slow shooting speed meant that the individual images were 6-10 secs apart.
I was often shooting out near the edge of signal reception and it was common to get 3/4 the way through a complex panorama only to get the lost signal - coming home message, which meant starting all over again and I'd have to hope that one was worth the effort.

What a difference it is to use the P3.
It's so precise, it's a dream to position and reposition for each image.
Being able to set the gimbal & sticks with some expo adjustment means that it's smooth and easy to make small adjustments to the Phantom's position without over-running.
The speedy buffer means I can click, click, click without having to wait so long between shots.
The lens on the new camera gives an entirely different perspective and the images are much clearer.
Being able to make bracketed shots means I have a few to choose from to counter the lighting variation across a big panorama. Still haven't got around to doing any HDR which is unusual for me as I do a lot with my regular camera.
I'm looking forward to trying the low-light ability tomorrow and have a particular subject in mind.

Here are a couple of panoramas that I've come up with in my first week on the P3.
These are all stitches from 3 or more individual images.
These big images don't show up well as tiny pics in a thread and are best viewed full screen (just view them on my photo website to see them properly).

Point Cartwright - one of my favourite photo sites
170-85-L.jpg


Looking down the sheer cliffs on Mt Coonowrin
Crookneck_1-L.jpg


A friend's house
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A big sky panorama using the upward tilt of the gimbal
115-25a-L.jpg


My first attempt at a planar panorama where I flew the P3 between individual images rather than rotating the P3 or tilting the gimbal.
267-72-L.jpg


I'm really happy with the huge step up in useability with the P3.
It's going to keep me busy till the P4 arrives with an even better camera.
fantastic pics.. well taken.
 
I've been bitten by the panorama bug, too!
However, for me, the real deal is a spherical panorama with a scrollable, zoomable, 360°x180° view.
It's a little more work, but the result is a virtual view from the P3P.
PTGui or PanoramaStudio Pro or ICE all can create the necessary output web files to share our enjoyment with others!
Since the P3P has a 90° FOV, a 50% overlap is easily achieved by shooting at 45° intervals around a clockface, using the red arrow on the map as the pointer, starting at 12, 3, 6, or 9 o'clock and rotating 45° for each new shot. 8 shots total. Start with the gimbal at horizontal (90°), shoot the 8 shots, lower gimbal to 60°, shoot the 8 shots, lower the gimbal to 30°, shoot the 8 shots, lower the gimbal to 0°, straight down, and shoot the 8 shots. That's 32 shots total. You can add a top row by elevating the gimbal to 120°, making it 40 shots if the sky is really interesting, but usually you end up cropping it out, because the props end up in part of the shot, if there is any breeze at all. Stitch the images together in PTGui or PanoramaStudio Pro or ICE, and output to web and just FTP it to your website. PTGui can use the accelerometer in the iPad or iPhone to get a virtual Street View in the air from your P3P by turning around and raising or lowering the device. I'm addicted!:cool:
 
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Larger View on 500px.

This beach and surrounding beaches were used by the US Army in 1943 and 1944 to train for the Normandy landings in WW2. Although mostly destroyed now you can still come across a piece of concrete or other debris from the training areas in the dunes.

If you like Pink Floyd the beach was also used for one of their album covers I believe and Robbie Williams walked along the beach for the music video of his song Angels.
 
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Great, great photos everyone. Pano photos are one of the reasons why I got the P3P. I shoot in RAW and stitch them in either Lightroom or Photoshop. My signature photo is a combination of just 2 such photos of our nearby 3,000 yr old hill fort.
 
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^ that pic is private Skylark if looking on flickr
 
Oh ok. I was hoping to get a better look at that pic :)
I will try to see if I can make it public. Help in this regard would be much appreciated.
 

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