Dale, I really appreciate your taking the time to give me some feed back. I will certainly take your advice into consideration. I would really like to, and will be going back to that park to improve the story. I'd love to get a 360 panoramic view of the battleship, but at this point I don't have the confidence in my flying skills to pull that off.
I've only had the drone a few weeks and this was my first venture out of the soccer field. Flying next to the water really had my backside puckered if you know what I mean. On top of that, the area is directly in the flight path for landing on runway 06 which was the active RW that day. I was going up and down in between arriving flights as the controller kept warning me of approaching aircraft. While I was well below the altitude of the traffic, it was still quite unnerving.
Do you have any advice on how to get over the fear of losing the drone. I come here every day and read stories of crashes and fly a ways and it certainly makes me paranoid.
Thanks again for your input!
Chuck
Chuck:
In between commercials of the Bills/Patriots game I'll try to answer these;
Firstly, After having 3 drones over 3 years(Jan.18,2018 my first drone flight), (
Mavic Air 1 red,
Mavic 2 Pro,
Mavic Mini 2) I never get over my fear of flying and losing). I try to minimize it be trying to keep the drone in sight at all times(VLOS). There are times when I lose the sight, then either use the RTH (return to Home) and/or turn the little red arrow towards me and come back until I can spot it. My heart is always in my mouth, and don't let anyone here tell you otherwise. And I also gamble once in a while, and totally depend on RTH and purposely go out of sight of the drone. So far I have been lucky that my RTH gets the drone back to me. For now, just keep that sucker in view.
Secondly, you are asking for both a panorama and a circular view. I think you could get both, but not together.
First thing I would do is the easier one, which is the
panorama. I do my panoramas manually. ( I never use the automated one in the drone). I use the
Mavic 2 Pro. I cannot tell you anything about the
Mavic Air 2. I have written extensively about panoramas here. I put the drone up and get the subject in frame. I have already turned on the
grid. I take three (3) pictures. The first picture I put the battleship on the left 1/3rd of the grid and shoot a picture. The 2nd shot, I overlap 30% and take the 2nd picture with the battleship in the center of the grid. The third picture, I move the battleship to the right side of the grid and overlap 30%.
All three pictures would have 30% overlap.
I bring these three images (RAW) into software. (Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Lightroom). If you need a video for the remaining processing steps, see attached for videos by Colin Smith.
For Circumnavigating around a point of view like a battleship, either practice doing circles in your nearby park, or try the automated intelligent flight modes (I have circle in my drone). Watch You Tube videos on Intelligent flight modes for your drone model if available. Practice small circles near you first, Then progress to larger circles near you. Then graduate yourself to large circles of you point of interest. Practice all the time.
Hope these tips help you!
Dale
Go to Google and find these links.