Disappointed - New Pano Mode

ddodell · Dec 11, 2017

As some other posters have commented, the new pano mode while "fast" ... doesn't give enough time for the camera to compensate for exposure ...

Just got back from a trip to Northern California. Flew my Mavic out over the SS Palo Alto. Now I'm a new pilot, and still a little cautious on every flight (not a bad thing) ... but this was my first time flying it off a cliff and over the ocean.

First, glad I've been reading this forum for a long time, and understood that my vertical height was from the take-off point, not over the area I was flying. I took off about 100 feet from the cliff from the picture, and so probably was 300 plus feet about the ocean ..

So first question ... how do you know how high you are above the terrain you're flying ... educated guess since the app/drone is not telling you.

Second question ... as you can see the exposure is absolutely horrible from the speed the Mavic pano mode is taking images ... I recently have purchased the Lichi app ... but haven't used it enough to feel comfortable flying it in this situation since this was my first time outside of flat Arizona. So anyway to "slow" down the Pano mode so it has time to adjust for the exposures?

Horrible results below ...

SS Palo Alto

Simmo · Dec 11, 2017

Mate what did you have the exposure set at? Auto or manual.?
The whole thing looks over exposed. What direction did you start shooting? (what were you looking at at the start..)

ddodell · Dec 11, 2017

Simmo said:
Mate what did you have the exposure set at? Auto or manual.?
The whole thing looks over exposed. What direction did you start shooting? (what were you looking at at the start..)

I agree, the whole thing is very over-exposed. I had the exposure set to Auto ... it was a very bright hazy afternoon about 4 pm, with the sun setting over the ocean to the west ... not a lot of good contrast.

While watching the drone going through the automated pano mode, I could see that it was not spending enough time waiting for any of the auto-exposure to kick in, and had a feeling it was going to be horribly over-exposed.

Now, please remember my first comment, this was my first time flying over an ocean, and at different altitudes from take-off, etc ... so my first concern was flying, not photography ... I was hoping some of the automated exposure would kick in to give me some decent, not ideal as I learn more and more control.

Just wish there was some way to slow down the automated pano mode so it had time to do some auto-exposure adjustment in this type of situation. As I already expressed, from my little exposure to Litchi, it does have some way to delay the timing assuming to allow for the exposure etc.

Thank you.

Simmo · Dec 11, 2017

Yeah I'm hearing ya but the auto exposure should work a lot faster than you think...
I'm sorta leaning toward that we weren't even in the ball park to start with??
Like we should perhaps take a well exposed shot, then take the pano????
(Please, I am not doubting you about the speed that it takes the 34 shots, I'm just throwing ideas out there??)

ddodell · Dec 11, 2017

Simmo said:
Yeah I'm hearing ya but the auto exposure should work a lot faster than you think...
I'm sorta leaning toward that we weren't even in the ball park to start with??
Like we should perhaps take a well exposed shot, then take the pano????
(Please, I am not doubting you about the speed that it takes the 34 shots, I'm just throwing ideas out there??)

Very possible, and the reason I posted ... because I want to learn from this. I actually started with the camera facing face down at the ship and that probably is the best "exposed" part of the picture. Everything was in "auto-mode" ...

I could have switched to manual, but the exposures were so varied due to the location of the sun, reflection off the water, etc ... that there probably wasn't an "ideal" overall manual setting, and therefore my hope that the auto-exposure would compensate for this.

And perhaps, I just picked an impossible situation to get good pictures due to the sun angles, reflections, etc ... and without doing each shot manually exposed, never would have gotten anything decent?

Again, still learning this all and I know I'm far from being competent with the photography aspect of this whole thing ...

I was just thrilled I didn't crash into the ocean or anything else along the flight path ...

David

RayOZ · Dec 11, 2017

I found the same issue. Try taking a couple of pano shots and see if they are the same. I did manage to get 1 good shot that is not overexposed, on second attempt. Another thing you could try, which I haven't done it myself yet, is to adjust the exposure compensation to something more -ve. It should make it a bit darker.

Haloweenhamster · Dec 11, 2017

Flick it into manual, ISO 100, set shutter speed & wb

As its going up & down it's no surprise exposure can't keep up, would if thought that it would lock itself

My first one

second (manual)

Latest

Qoncussion · Dec 11, 2017

This is why I continue to shoot with Litchi. You can actually set a pre and post delay ~ before and after each shot ~ giving the camera a moment to settle in. I watch the screen while it's shooting and adjust focus as needed (yes, you can) [emoji12] Shot this recently on Litchi:

Same image here (VR):
Banner Mountain Lookout Tower, Nevada City, CA [v6c]

Haloweenhamster · Dec 11, 2017

Only tried it once with litchi & it was awful, wasn't much wind but because it took so long it had drifted so it didn't work

JJG · Dec 11, 2017

Qoncussion said:
This is why I continue to shoot with Litchi. You can actually set a pre and post delay ~ before and after each shot ~ giving the camera a moment to settle in. I watch the screen while it's shooting and adjust focus as needed (yes, you can) [emoji12] Shot this recently on Litchi:

Same image here (VR):
Banner Mountain Lookout Tower, Nevada City, CA [v6c]

Crikey,,, how do you do that ? That looks great

Lapeer20m · Dec 11, 2017

When you are near the surface you can see your distance above the ground on the bottom of the display, but this only works to about 25' or 30'

Qoncussion · Dec 11, 2017

JJG said:
Crikey,,, how do you do that ? That looks great

Thanks... I stitched using Autopano Giga - do a little touch-up in CS6 - then I use an Android app on my phone, VR Media Player, to play with the shape of it. Believe it or not ~ those are just screen shots ~ like this one...

RayOZ · Dec 11, 2017

Qoncussion said:
Thanks... I stitched using Autopano Giga - do a little touch-up in CS6 - then I use an Android app on my phone, VR Media Player, to play with the shape of it. Believe it or not ~ those are just screen shots ~ like this one...

The DJI Go 4 app is supposed to do that automatically (tiny planet and rabbit hole images), if they aren't so overexposed.

MQuinn · Dec 11, 2017

ddodell said:
Very possible, and the reason I posted ... because I want to learn from this. I actually started with the camera facing face down at the ship and that probably is the best "exposed" part of the picture. Everything was in "auto-mode" ...
David

It will keep the exact same exposure settings from where it started the Pano. Reason why is because its basically impossible to stitch a pano together with multiple exposures at different stages without some heavy vignetting or blockiness . Personally I have only played with the pano mode and found it to be kinda gimmicky and was very disappointed in the results verse what I can do manually for a pano for dynamic range. Like this 5 image pano using the 5 stop Auto Exposure Bracketing on each one.

Simmo · Dec 12, 2017

Nice. So 25 images there MQuinn? Do you make each set of 5 into a HDR then stitch 5 HDR's together??

MQuinn · Dec 12, 2017

Simmo said:
Nice. So 25 images there MQuinn? Do you make each set of 5 into a HDR then stitch 5 HDR's together??

Photomerge each one by Exposure, Then photomerged them into Panorama. Painstaking and tedious but ya get quicker after 100's of um.

curso88 · Dec 12, 2017

The app have a bug with the exposure in sphere pano mode

Bernard · Dec 16, 2017

@curso88: +1
All my sphere panos are over exposed with DJI GO4. They are OK with Litchi... DJI, please,learn from them! What we need is not high speed but good result!

angusc · Dec 16, 2017

Here is a great tutorial on using other apps to stitch up the pano shots to make the globe without any line and then be able to share the globe with others.