How to do Exposure Lock on 360 Pano

[Robert Prior]

500I'd be curious about the full workflow for this, including the tools you are using. Love the Iceland and Greenland shots.

Shoot the panoramas. Used do it in DNG but now JPEG because devignetting is done for me that way

Aperture 5.6, shutter speeds 1/4000, 1/1000, 1/250, 1/60 or 1/30, 1/125, 1/500, 1/2000 (depends on light and scene).

Import everything into PTGUI Pro. Let it auto-align then manually add points for every image it can't handle. Manually add and delete points until I get a reasonable stitch. This usually involves deleting points in clouds (which move too much between images). Time spent here is well worth it in fewer problems to fix later. Straighten horizon if necessary. Use masking if necessary to handle obvious issues. Export as TIF images, highest resolution. Projection is equirectangular, obviously.

In Affinity Photo fill in the missing sky for each image with a solid colour picked from the sky about 90° from the sun. Export again.

In Photomatix, process as a 360° image using tone-mapping, usually set to as natural as possible without losing detail. Apply moderate deghosting. Export as 16-bit TIF.

Run a copy of the TIF through Colour Efex and apply a touch of detail-enhancing and tonal contrast to sharpen the edges.

Import both images into Affinity Photo, unmodified image on the bottom. Mask out the Colour Efex enhancements in the sky, and adjust the transparency of that layer by eye so that the ground looks a bit sharper but not overprocessed. (Still working on this — I tend to overprocess.)

Flatten image and use the equirectangular mode in Affinity Photo to edit the nadir if necessary. Use the inpainting brush to blend the sky (the bits that were just one colour) so that it (hopefully) looks natural. If necessary, add a sun in the image using luminosity blending. Carefully inspect the entire image for ghosting, and fix. Edit out things like myself, cars and people I don't want, etc. Go back to the entire image and again carefully inspect it for more things to fix.

When finished, export as a 16-bit TIF.

Takes 2-3 hours for the sunrise/sunset panoramas, which I generally find relaxing.

Panoramas shot in gusty conditions are worse, as the aircraft moves enough that parallax errors abound and it can be quite frustrating trying to minimize them when stitching, then editing them out afterwards.

Panoramas shot in mid-day are easier, as I don't need as many exposures (sometimes just one) so not only are there fewer images but fewer opportunities for errors/motion to creep in. Half and hour to an hour for those.

Would be faster if I had a faster computer.

 

[Robert Prior]

I've been shooting 360° panoramas for years:

Robert Prior

An avid amateur photographer, Robert Prior has been shooting 360° panoramas for years, and has recently expanded to aerial panoramas as well.

roundme.com

Aerial shots are here:

Virtual Tours Made Simple

Roundme is a simple and beautiful online app that allows you to create, share and explore Spaces.

roundme.com

Some of the hardest ones I did are these, shot during a misty sunrise. Needed four brackets and the mist moved between them…

Virtual Tours Made Simple

Roundme is a simple and beautiful online app that allows you to create, share and explore Spaces.

roundme.com

 

[Coskier]

Shoot the panoramas. Used do it in DNG but now JPEG because devignetting is done for me that way

Aperture 5.6, shutter speeds 1/4000, 1/1000, 1/250, 1/60 or 1/30, 1/125, 1/500, 1/2000 (depends on light and scene).

Import everything into PTGUI Pro. Let it auto-align then manually add points for every image it can't handle. Manually add and delete points until I get a reasonable stitch. This usually involves deleting points in clouds (which move too much between images). Time spent here is well worth it in fewer problems to fix later. Straighten horizon if necessary. Use masking if necessary to handle obvious issues. Export as TIF images, highest resolution. Projection is equirectangular, obviously.

So you are loading ALL of the individual shots into PTGui or just the ones at the same exposure? I'm asking because when you go into Photomatix, I'm wondering if you are merging 3 (or more) pano files into one, or if you are just doing the tone mapping in there.

EDIT: Nevermind, I see the Pro version of PTGUI lets you load all bracketed shots at once. That’s awesome.

In Affinity Photo fill in the missing sky for each image with a solid colour picked from the sky about 90° from the sun. Export again.

In Photomatix, process as a 360° image using tone-mapping, usually set to as natural as possible without losing detail. Apply moderate deghosting. Export as 16-bit TIF.

Run a copy of the TIF through Colour Efex and apply a touch of detail-enhancing and tonal contrast to sharpen the edges.

Import both images into Affinity Photo, unmodified image on the bottom. Mask out the Colour Efex enhancements in the sky, and adjust the transparency of that layer by eye so that the ground looks a bit sharper but not overprocessed. (Still working on this — I tend to overprocess.)

Flatten image and use the equirectangular mode in Affinity Photo to edit the nadir if necessary. Use the inpainting brush to blend the sky (the bits that were just one colour) so that it (hopefully) looks natural. If necessary, add a sun in the image using luminosity blending. Carefully inspect the entire image for ghosting, and fix. Edit out things like myself, cars and people I don't want, etc. Go back to the entire image and again carefully inspect it for more things to fix.

When finished, export as a 16-bit TIF.

Takes 2-3 hours for the sunrise/sunset panoramas, which I generally find relaxing.

Panoramas shot in gusty conditions are worse, as the aircraft moves enough that parallax errors abound and it can be quite frustrating trying to minimize them when stitching, then editing them out afterwards.

Panoramas shot in mid-day are easier, as I don't need as many exposures (sometimes just one) so not only are there fewer images but fewer opportunities for errors/motion to creep in. Half and hour to an hour for those.

Would be faster if I had a faster computer.

Much appreciated, need to look into some of this.

 

[chong67]

How many exposures depends on the scene. I do a lot of sunrise/sunset panoramas, so usually end up with at least three exposures, sometimes four. Shooting midday it's one or two.

What I do is point the drone at the brightest shot, record the shutter speed for a well-balanced shot, repeat with the darkest (usually straight down). Then dial in that setting and shoot a pano, adjust the shutter speed by two stops, shoot another, and repeat until I've covered the range.

As a shortcut I have a set series of speeds that I use on a cheat sheet. Sometimes I end up with an unnecessary panorama, but that's better than realizing that you don't have the exposure you needed when you start post-processing.

Can you do this if you shooting 25 DNGs and varying the Exposure. That would be wild when you stitch it, the variance in all the Exposure Value. No?

 

[GadgetGuy]

The AUTO setting, the Exposure varied. When I put those 25 DNG photos together, I see the different contrast.

When I put in PRO mode (not AUTO), all the exposure are the same. When I see the 25 DNG photos that are stitched by PTGui, the Exposure are now even.

This is how I verify visually. I am sure the Photo Properties METAdata will tell you the same too.

Seeing a difference in contrast isn't determinative. Unless you can verify your chosen Pro settings are actually in the metadata of the saved individual images that are shot, you are likely only seeing a difference in how PTGui stitches vs. how DJI stitches. The stitching programs are designed to even out any varying under or over exposure that results from using the same exposure for all 26 images. Are you truly comparing apples to apples and creating the same stitch in PTGui with both sets of images? For the exposures to all appear the same, the settings would have to vary, as there are some of the 26 images that will be underexposed and some that will be overexposed using the exact same settings for all 26 images. So which is it?

 

[GadgetGuy]

Shoot the panoramas. Used do it in DNG but now JPEG because devignetting is done for me that way

Aperture 5.6, shutter speeds 1/4000, 1/1000, 1/250, 1/60 or 1/30, 1/125, 1/500, 1/2000 (depends on light and scene).

Import everything into PTGUI Pro. Let it auto-align then manually add points for every image it can't handle. Manually add and delete points until I get a reasonable stitch. This usually involves deleting points in clouds (which move too much between images). Time spent here is well worth it in fewer problems to fix later. Straighten horizon if necessary. Use masking if necessary to handle obvious issues. Export as TIF images, highest resolution. Projection is equirectangular, obviously.

In Affinity Photo fill in the missing sky for each image with a solid colour picked from the sky about 90° from the sun. Export again.

In Photomatix, process as a 360° image using tone-mapping, usually set to as natural as possible without losing detail. Apply moderate deghosting. Export as 16-bit TIF.

Run a copy of the TIF through Colour Efex and apply a touch of detail-enhancing and tonal contrast to sharpen the edges.

Import both images into Affinity Photo, unmodified image on the bottom. Mask out the Colour Efex enhancements in the sky, and adjust the transparency of that layer by eye so that the ground looks a bit sharper but not overprocessed. (Still working on this — I tend to overprocess.)

Flatten image and use the equirectangular mode in Affinity Photo to edit the nadir if necessary. Use the inpainting brush to blend the sky (the bits that were just one colour) so that it (hopefully) looks natural. If necessary, add a sun in the image using luminosity blending. Carefully inspect the entire image for ghosting, and fix. Edit out things like myself, cars and people I don't want, etc. Go back to the entire image and again carefully inspect it for more things to fix.

When finished, export as a 16-bit TIF.

Takes 2-3 hours for the sunrise/sunset panoramas, which I generally find relaxing.

Panoramas shot in gusty conditions are worse, as the aircraft moves enough that parallax errors abound and it can be quite frustrating trying to minimize them when stitching, then editing them out afterwards.

Panoramas shot in mid-day are easier, as I don't need as many exposures (sometimes just one) so not only are there fewer images but fewer opportunities for errors/motion to creep in. Half and hour to an hour for those.

Would be faster if I had a faster computer.

How much better are the results than the Hi Res 60MB stitched pano that the M3 creates in 35 seconds after the 40 seconds to shoot the images, generating a very detailed 360x180 pano, with a cloned in ceiling every 75 seconds?

DJI uses some pretty fancy algorithms from Hasselblad color science in their in camera stitch, resulting in no visible noise in the dark sky, even in 360° Pano stitches shot at night.

When I run the same 26 DNG images through Panorama Studio 3 Pro, the results are inferior to the in camera DJI stitch, so I just import the HiRes 60MB DJI stitch into PS3P and convert to web files for viewing on the web, with an interactive map and hyperlinks to other nearby panos.

 

[Robert Prior]

So you are loading ALL of the individual shots into PTGui or just the ones at the same exposure? I'm asking because when you go into Photomatix, I'm wondering if you are merging 3 (or more) pano files into one, or if you are just doing the tone mapping in there.

All. PTGUI stitches them all and lets you export the separate exposures.

It can be hard when images are completely underexposed or overexposed, because theres nothing to set control points. I've found that in that case just linking the black/white image to another exposure by the corners works well enough.

 

[Robert Prior]

Can you do this if you shooting 25 DNGs and varying the Exposure. That would be wild when you stitch it, the variance in all the Exposure Value. No?

No. PTGUI will compensate for that — there's a setting in the exposure tab for panoramas shot in auto-exposure mode. It will then adjust the exposure of each individual shot.

The results can be decent, depending on the scene. I prefer to bracket exposure when shooting and process as HDR, but I've used autoexposure with good results.

I will note that philosophically I agree with Michael Freeman: if someone says "nice HDR" then I overdid it, if they say "how did you manage to get that dynamic range" then I did it correctly.

Michael Freeman Photography

Michael Freeman Photography

www.michaelfreemanphoto.com

I really recommend his books - I've been a fan for nearly five decades…