360 degree pano.....Litchi vs DJIgo

[Peio64270]

Wow, the DJI result may be fast but sure doesn't look good. I have been using Litchi for several years and usually do 26 photos (3x8, 2 nadirs). Yes it takes some time but I typically get good results. I use Panorama Studio so the results look like this: http://www.flynathan.com/pano/tilos.html

I was almost thinking of updating my Mavic for this feature but it's not very compelling. I am still back on the .0700 firmware which works fine.

Same thing for me.
I use Litchi (most often 3 rows of 8 or 10 plus 2 nadirs with the "Legacy mode") and I obtain pretty good results.
Here is the last pano I did (RAW, 100 ISO) :

French Basque coast. Guethary at dusk end november.
(Mavic Pro, PTGui 10 days ago)

I was also thinking in updating from .0400 FW I am stuck since a long time, but the result exposed above discouraged me to go further.

 

[LivinLarge]

I agree. A filter might help.

An ND filter would result in a slower shutter speed. They are normally used for shooting video to get that smooth transition between frames that we are used to seeing in the theater. Generally you would choose an ND filter to get a shutter speed that is twice the frame rate, for example 1/60 sec for 30 fps.
For still images filters should not be needed. The Mavic has a fixed aperture of f/2.2 and a maximum shutter speed of 1/8000 sec. For a sunny day (EV15) this should give a proper exposure at ISO 100 without any filter.

 

[Qoncussion]

If anyone is interested ~ I've been working on a way to take images of the sky during a 360 shoot, to give you a full 360x180 panorama.

See here:
Figured out how to get perfect 360°x180° panorama using Mavic Pro!

I'd like to know if anyone has tried anything similar...?

 

[Qoncussion]

In the photography world, it's best to use manual settings to take any kind of panorama so the exposure doesn't change across the image. Also, on bright days, the Mavic's shutter speed may not be fast enough so an ND filter may be required. I'm not going to teach a whole photography class here (google "exposure triangle") but will instead give it a try later today and will report back.

An ND filter would result in a slower shutter speed. They are normally used for shooting video to get that smooth transition between frames that we are used to seeing in the theater. Generally you would choose an ND filter to get a shutter speed that is twice the frame rate, for example 1/60 sec for 30 fps.
For still images filters should not be needed. The Mavic has a fixed aperture of f/2.2 and a maximum shutter speed of 1/8000 sec. For a sunny day (EV15) this should give a proper exposure at ISO 100 without any filter.

I agree that an ND would slow down the shutter speed. In the case of the Mavic shooting a panorama, I think it would be better to keep the shutter speed high, as the drone and camera are in motion ~ that is out of the photographer's control.

Are you all using manual or auto-focus? I did a shoot over a small town (Litchi) where one of the frames was out of focus due to the camera facing into the sun.

Downieville, California - Fall 2017 (check the frame below and slightly to the right of the sun)

 

[LivinLarge]

I have just been creating spherical panos from video with Microsoft ICE. It's faster than shooting stills. I set exposure manually and focus once at the start. I post process in PS. Here's one from yesterday.
Lake Pano from video

 

[HoozierDroneDaddy]

If anyone is interested ~ I've been working on a way to take images of the sky during a 360 shoot, to give you a full 360x180 panorama.

See here:
Figured out how to get perfect 360°x180° panorama using Mavic Pro!

I'd like to know if anyone has tried anything similar...?

What I found was, after landing, point the camera straight up from the location of the pano and take two shots 180 degrees of each other. It worked. Also, have you tried changing your gimble settings? It will allow you to point the gimble upwards at a 30 degree angel.

 

[HoozierDroneDaddy]

Wow, the DJI result may be fast but sure doesn't look good. I have been using Litchi for several years and usually do 26 photos (3x8, 2 nadirs). Yes it takes some time but I typically get good results. I use Panorama Studio so the results look like this: http://www.flynathan.com/pano/tilos.html

I was almost thinking of updating my Mavic for this feature but it's not very compelling. I am still back on the .0700 firmware which works fine.

How are you displaying your panos from Panorama Studio. I tried it and as near as I can tell you have to load a view and all the images? Is there a simple way to post a single file on Facebook or Youtube? Thanks in Advance

 

[HoozierDroneDaddy]

Been using Litchi for 360 panos, tried the new pano option on DJIgo today. Here are my findings:

I have Litchi set to 42 pictures, no option for that on the DJIgo app, it's set for you at 34 pics. A HUGE difference in speed, DJIgo takes a hair over a minute for 34 pics, Litchi takes a hair over 5 minutes for 42. You could set Litchi to 34 pics, but it's still going to take over 4 minutes for the whole thing. DJIgo zips through it like it's on some kind of drug! Big win for DJIgo there. I have had times I wanted to take a couple of panos with Litchi at different camera settings, but by the time I fly it to where it's going, and then get it positioned and take the first 42 pics, quite often it will run down to critical battery before the 2nd set can finish.....DJIgo TOTALLY solves this issue. (Kind of, I'll explain later.) I could take 4 or 5 panos with DJIgo in the time Litchi can do just one.

Also, when you go to download the files to stitch together, another HUGE win for DJIgo. Each pano is in it's own separate folder....simply load into stitching program and go for it. With Litchi you have to sort thru the pics and find the right 42, so again, much slower.

So it's a slam dunk, right? DJIgo is faster and simpler all the way around? Not so fast.......

The obvious problem came after I stitched the pics and uploaded them to the site I use for hosting panos. Here they are, with a minimum of editing with Photoshop. I done an Auto Tone, Auto Contrast, and Smart Sharpen on both. Here are the results: (And you can quickly see the problem!)

Litchi: LitchiPano

DJIgo: DJIGoPano

I'm not much of a photographer, so not sure of all the terms. The DJIgo app is so fast that it doesn't give the camera time to adjust to the correct settings before it snaps the picture. (Exposure and White Balance, I think?) So the DJIgo version is horribly washed out.

I even went back out and changed the settings from Auto White Balance to Sunny, and changed the ISO from Auto to Manual, but it doesn't work......everytime the camera moves it still adjusts the exposure. Maybe photographer experts can help me.....how do I solve this issue? I absolutely want to use DJIgo for panos due to the speed and ease, but how can I keep the pics from being over exposed in the process?

At this point, DJIgo is much faster and easier, but for the finished product Litchi would be the only way to go. Unless there is a way to solve the camera issues?

Anybody got any thoughts?

What altitude are you finding the best results for your panos?

 

[Qoncussion]

What I found was, after landing, point the camera straight up from the location of the pano and take two shots 180 degrees of each other. It worked. Also, have you tried changing your gimble settings? It will allow you to point the gimble upwards at a 30 degree angel.

Early on, I thought that your method was a viable solution. Living in the woods, all of my ground based "up-shots" are through the trees. I am also trying to bridge the gap between the time that the drone shoots and the time that my sky cam shoots, to capture the same cloud formations before they change.

By the time that my Mavic completed shooting this 360, the clouds had changed drastically:
Banner Mountain Lookout Tower, Nevada City, CA [v6c]

Of course I know that the gimbal cranks upward to 30° above the horizon - but that still leaves 60° of un-photographed sky. Unfortunately, two images of the sky won't give you a true 360x180. That just gives you a little filler for the top, but won't connect the horizon to the sky for stitching.

 

[Jr. Stafford]

What altitude are you finding the best results for your panos?

I usually do 200-300 feet up.

 

[Nathan Hoover]

How are you displaying your panos from Panorama Studio. I tried it and as near as I can tell you have to load a view and all the images? Is there a simple way to post a single file on Facebook or Youtube? Thanks in Advance

You have to have a website to post the output to. The output is an .html file, a couple of javascript and json files plus a directory of tiles files. Something like 16MB worth of small files (about 800 files per pano). I just blast them up to my website and it works great. Upload takes a minute or two.

 

[HoozierDroneDaddy]

Thank you. Don't have a web site, only Facebook. May have to expand to a website.

 

[Qoncussion]

Thank you. Don't have a web site, only Facebook. May have to expand to a website.

There are a number of good places to post and host 360 panoramas...

• SkyPixel - Connecting Creativity
• Stock 360 Panoramic Images and Videos for VR and more - 360Cities
  
• Momento360 | Make the most of your 360 photos and videos

 

[HoozierDroneDaddy]

There are a number of good places to post and host 360 panoramas...

• SkyPixel - Connecting Creativity
• Stock 360 Panoramic Images and Videos for VR and more - 360Cities
  
• Momento360 | Make the most of your 360 photos and videos

Thank You Qoncussion, I will look into these and see if one of them will fill my needs. Thanks Again!

 

[AAPhoto]

I did some testing and here's what I've found so far. First off, my settings:

RAW & JPG
Manual Exposure (set by moving the camera in all directions and finding an exposure that worked best for all angles)
Exposure locked
Manual focus

This is an extreme example to show the points I'm about to make. I went out at the worst time of the day with the sun about 45 degrees off the horizon. In other words, I was shooting directly into the sun in one direction.

(For those questioning the ND filter, the purpose is to "even out the light" on the sunny side of the image. Since the aperture is locked, the Mavic cannot compensate for the brightness by decreasing the aperture and the ISO won't be able to go any lower as it's already going to be at 100. Since the camera can't do anything further to darken the scene, the ND filter steps in to help out. By making everything darker, it allows for use of a more appropriate exposure for the darker side of the image that won't, in turn, overexpose the brighter side. In this example, I did not use a strong enough filter as I only had my ND4 with me. I can try again with the ND16 next time).

That aside, I noticed the panorama images look fine on my phone, but not when rendered into a Pano. I then took it to the computer and using Pano software, I saw that the exposure remained the same as what I had set it to - looking at the photos, not the camera settings. What I believe is causing the over-exposure is the rendering (and I could be wrong... this is just what I've experienced). When rendering the 'little planet' in this case, the images went from being properly exposed to grossly overexposed. I discovered that the JPG's are being used for the pano instead of the RAW's so everything is being compressed twice - once to make the JPG and another time for making the Pano. So much compression is throwing away a ton of data.

I took the RAW images into Lightroom and exported them at full quality to AutoPano Giga. There, I created a Pano using the higher quality JPG's and then exported to the highest quality pano. You'll see a huge difference in the examples below. Again, the angle into the sun was still overexposed because I couldn't darken the scene enough with an ND4. At least the foreground is better exposed though.

No editing was done to the photos except the last one.

This is a screenshot of the pano using the original JPG's from the Mavic before rendering the pano itself. You can see it's slightly overexposed but highlights in the foreground could potentially be recovered in post. (Note: Trying to find proper exposure using a phone screen in bright sunlight isn't easy... better to underexpose and recover shadows. Here, I thought I had a 'good enough' exposure where I thought I could recover 'some' highlights and went with it)



Here is the rendered Pano using the highest possible settings - looks a lot like the exported DJI pano and is unusable in my opinion. The level of detail is drastically reduced and exposure is awful.


And this is a pano using the RAW images exported to AutoPano and then exported to a JPG. Notice the much better exposure overall with less of the sunny side being blown out. This is how everything looked on my phone when I set it all up. Yes, it's slightly underexposed, but that can be brightened up easily in post.


Afterwards, you can edit the photo to your liking as there's still plenty of detail to work with. Another option would be to edit the RAW images before exporting them for the Pano software. If you do this though, edit the brightest photo to look good and then sync the edits to the other photos so they all retain the same exposure. Some images will be dark, but again, shadow detail can be recovered in post. Blown highlights cannot be recovered, as you see here.



Creating these types of images typically involves a lot of post editing work to get them right and I think DJI is trying to make it easy for a novice. In doing so, they're cutting a lot of corners and it's to be expected that the image will not come out perfect without some additional effort. I'll do some more tests this weekend if the weather holds up (supposed to snow... a lot).

 

[OzoneVibe]

I did some testing and here's what I've found so far. First off, my settings:

RAW & JPG
Manual Exposure (set by moving the camera in all directions and finding an exposure that worked best for all angles)
Exposure locked
.....

I've experienced, and read from others, that Manual Exposure gets overridden with PhotoSphere?
Perhaps I've not tested the last of the several 4.1.18 versions (Android, this is.)

 

[maximeeso]

I've experienced, and read from others, that Manual Exposure gets overridden with PhotoSphere?
Perhaps I've not tested the last of the several 4.1.18 versions (Android, this is.)

Version 4.1.20 (iOS, not sure about Android) corrects this issue for me. Manual exposure now locks for all 34 photos.

 

[AAPhoto]

My Go4 app started crashing again (Samsung Galaxy Note 8) so I resorted back to using Litchi. Made this the other day and added a starry background to it. The speed difference and not having the pano photos in their own dedicated folder were both missed, but I'll live.

 

[OzoneVibe]

Version 4.1.20 (iOS, not sure about Android) corrects this issue for me. Manual exposure now locks for all 34 photos.

There hasn't been a 4.1.20 for Android.
4.1.22 was released on 28/12/17 .... but I'm not sure the hospital will agree to me flying the MP around the ward to check ...

 

[Nathan Hoover]

Recently Litchi released an update that fixes the speed problem. With 2.0.0 (iOS) it works super fast and they seem to stitch just as well as with older versions. Quite nice.