Glitchy artifacts in 360 Pano

[scubaddictions]

All,

Occasionally I run into this problem when shooting 360 Pano with the Mavic 2 Pro, seems like a poor stitch in the drone's software when it renders the flat combined image. Can't handle the gradient in colors in the sky where it's brightly sun-lit on one side and notably darker on the other. Strangely, they were shot in full manual with a manually selected white balance correction (not Auto) so it shouldn't have been changing exposure settings during the capture of the original images:

Conversely, this shot was stitched in Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE) from the original 26 images that made up the same 360 pano:

Note, there is still a mild jump when panning horizontally through the sky but it's not nearly as distracting.

Other than manually controlling exposure/f stop, the only other tweak is using a Polarpro 16ND/Polarizer Cinema series (adjustable polarizer), it was a bright sunny day.

Is there something I'm doing wrong during the capture, or is this just the nature of the beast with a sky that's distinctly different from one side to the other?

Or is it the nature of the polarizing filter, as it pans the light angle shifts through the polarizer?

I know I can just continue using ICE but sometimes I like to be able to dump a 360 pano directly into Facebook for an interactive immersive shot. I've seen video tutorials on using Photoshop to replicate the stretching of the sky to create the correct aspect ratio to make Facebook happy but I don't use Photoshop, I use Cyberlink Photodirector. Thus far, I've not had success in porting the Photoshop instructions over to Photodirector.

Thanks!

 

[Meta4]

Or is it the nature of the polarizing filter, as it pans the light angle shifts through the polarizer?

That's a good example of why you shouldn't use a polariser for things like that, as well as how the built-in panorama feature is not particularly at stitching.
Your polariser makes for weird changes to sky darkness as you rotate the camera toward and away from the sun.
Trying to stitch photos with blotches of different sky colour is just not going to work out.

Leave the polariser off.
Unless you want to set up a particular shot, properly align the polariser for that shot and only fly in that direction, your polariser is more hassle than it's worth.
As soon as you turn the camera, it's out of alignment relative to the sun.

 

[gnirtS]

The main issue is you're using a polariser. You really cant use them for wide angled shots.
The degree of polarisation changes with sun angle so on a wide panorama/360 you get the huge differences in exposure in the sky.

 

[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

Agree on the polariser responses.

Let us know if you still get a bit of it. There are other possible reasons (vignetting corrected with lens profiles).

Chris

 

[scubaddictions]

Many thanks, the explanation makes sense. Looks like I should get some non-polarizing ND filters.

 

[gnirtS]

Many thanks, the explanation makes sense. Looks like I should get some non-polarizing ND filters.

If you're taking stills you dont want ANY ND filters at all. NDs are for video only,, the job they're designed to do (slow the shutter to create blur) is the last thing you want for stills.

The perfect filter for a panorama or a 360 is no filter.....

 

[scubaddictions]

If you're taking stills you dont want ANY ND filters at all. NDs are for video only,, the job they're designed to do (slow the shutter to create blur) is the last thing you want for stills.

I think it's more accurate to say that NDs are usually for video, but they also serve the purpose of capturing long exposure stills in bright light, showing off the contrast between moving and non-moving objects, like this waterfall I shot last week:

 

[gnirtS]

Very rare and usually completely ineffective (theres motion blur on that outside the water btw).

The use for deliberately blurred photos are absolutely tiny. 99.999% of the time the last thing you want when taking aerial stills are things blurring (or the resulting increase in iso noise as the camera tries to counter the slow shutter by increasing iso).

So for the overwhelming majority of uses:- Video use NDs. Stills don't use an ND.
For stills, if you're not doing wide angle or panos then a CPL is useful provided its preset. If you're doing wide angle or panos, no filter is the best.