2d options for 1 square mile (640 acres) photo

[Name: John]

I'm not sure if this would be called an orthophoto or a photomosaic but I'm looking to create an overhead 2d image of a golf course community that is around 1 square mile. This is to create a pretty photo that will be used for marketing, it does not need to be a large file size that can be zoomed in on to see fine detail or for any survey purposes. I also have a Mini 3 Pro if that would be easier.

I did a 36 image panorama in Lightroom as a test which came out great. Covered an area of about 1/2 mile wide at 400 feet of altitude. Very little overlap, maybe 10%, flying manually. Automating the flight and photo taking would be great to remove the chance for user error. My other concern is maxing out Lightroom's panoramic merging capabilities once I move to a larger area, or at least my computer's hardware abilities. I could do it in stages though if needed. I'm wondering if anyone has any insights for a good workflow for this little project. I've heard dronelink might be a good option.

 

[Felix le Chat]

Or you could divide the target area into four, or six discreet grids, shoot a manual panoramic sequence for each with the camera set to 48mp mode, construct each individual grid section pano.... and then make a super-pano from those pano's.
Use this technique frequently and apart from occasional minor alignment errors that usually disappear if you take a second run at it from scratch, the results 9/10 are excellent.

 

[zhillz]

Using dronelink and setting up your flight plan to cover around 20-30% overlap would be ideal for stitching. And panoramic stitching software like PTGui or AutoPano is more robust for handling large numbers of high-res images. Alternatively, Photoshop has powerful photomerge capabilities that might handle larger datasets better than Lightroom