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

 

[swoermck]

Using dronelink and setting up your flight plan to cover around 20-30% overlap would be ideal for stitching.

yes, I would recommend Dronelink for the planning as well. Unfortunately there is no sdk for third part apps, so Dronelink is not able to control the Air 3. What I usually do: recreate the flight path from Dronelink in Litchi, export it as CSV file, convert it with "Litchi Waypoint Mission to DJI Fly Waypoint Mission" to a KMZ file and import it into the controller. Sounds a bit complicated, but if you did this several times it's quite handy. Already a while ago, I described the whole process here:

Dronelink to Waypoint Missioin

Bonus for you: with a waypoint mission you can always repeat the process (e.g. photos from different seasons)

 

[Robert Prior]

You shouldn't have to worry too much about hardware limits. I regularly shot gigapixel panoramas on my old MacPro (the one that looks like a space heater) and they rendered fine — just took 15 minutes to stitch the output file! I use PTGUI Pro so can't speak to Lightroom's limits.

I would set the drone for timed shots and fly with a 30% overlap if doing it manually. Better to have too many pictures than not enough.

A repeatable waypoint mission would be great if you want to go to the trouble.

 

[swoermck]

I would set the drone for timed shots and fly with a 30% overlap if doing it manually. Better to have too many pictures than not enough.

So I guess you do your flight manually? I also use Timed Shots, but for my waypoint mission, as I don't want to end up with a waypoint at every place where a photo should be taken. I let Dronelink calculate the photos needed for a given altitude, and then divide the total flight time (from the waypoint mission) by the number of photos as calculated by Dronelink to set the timed shots accordingly.

For rendering of the ortophoto and other models, I use WebODM (running locally on my iMac M3 - enough power for my work).

A repeatable waypoint mission would be great if you want to go to the trouble.

yes, sounds like a bit of work first, but serves me well meanwhile: last time when my first DJI Air 3 started to get blurry photos in the upper left corner, I created a waypoint mission to take exactly the same photo at the same spot with the replacement DJI Air 3 I received (and the replacement Air 3 I received by DJI is working fine ;-)

 

[Robert Prior]

So I guess you do your flight manually?

Yup. I feel nervous about turning over control. (I also drive a manual car.)

I know I should get over the nervousness and learn how to do waypoints, but I don't fly that much (only 100 hours on my ticket) and honestly need to practice my manual skills. I also don't do shots where waypoints would be useful, so my motivation to learn them has been lacking. (I shoot mostly panoramas.)