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How to take a vertical panorama?

johndrone33

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Jan 29, 2025
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My friend own quite a large area of forrest and he wanted to have a picture of it from above.
I said i could do it with my mavic 3 pro but now that i have tried, im not happy with the result.

He said it have to look like satelite image from google maps, the same angle so the camera have to point in 90 degree angle.
The problem with this is that beccause the area is like 2x1km big, the angles on the trees will be different depending on how far they are from the camera.
The trees directly down the drown looks good but the more toe the edges of the picture you see, the more you will see the trees and ground from the side.

This looks kinda of weird i think but is it possible to avoid?
Do i have to take pictures from different points in the sky, like fly the drone 100m, take a picture, then fly 100m and take a pictrue again and to that like 10 times and then stitch the pictures together?

Here is the picture:
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Of course we can get it flat if we have to, but I think it looks much better like it is now. The '3Dness' of it makes for a much more dramatic and interesting shot.

But if flat is what we want then our camera needs to fly a waypoint mission over the land with the camera aimed straight down, and using the nearest you have to a telephoto lens that minimises perspective.
 
He said it have to look like satellite image from google maps, the same angle so the camera have to point in 90 degree angle.

Do i have to take pictures from different points in the sky, like fly the drone 100m, take a picture, then fly 100m and take a picture again and to that like 10 times and then stitch the pictures together?
It used to be easier when DJI released an SDK for their consumer drones.
That allow you to use a third party mapping app to plan the mission, fly the mission and capture the images.
Then you would use special mapping software to accurately blend the images to create an orthophoto mosaic.

You are on the right track, but there's a lot more to it.
You would have to fly a grid pattern, taking a large number of overlapping images.

To map this area of forest of approx 1 km x 0.6 km required 380 images and created an orthophoto with an Image size of 32000 x 24000 pixels.
i-8H8d9CF-4K.jpg

When the area is mostly forest, mapping is harder because the images don't have enough distinct points for the software to stitch well.
To avoid having blurry final picture, I had to use large (80%) overlaps and fly at 500 feet.
 
I always fly a pretty tight grid to get lots of overlap and tap a ton of photos then merge them in Lightroom, make sure you get photos pretty far out from the edges to avoid the warping effect in those areas.
 
It used to be easier when DJI released an SDK for their consumer drones.
That allow you to use a third party mapping app to plan the mission, fly the mission and capture the images.
Then you would use special mapping software to accurately blend the images to create an orthophoto mosaic.

You are on the right track, but there's a lot more to it.
You would have to fly a grid pattern, taking a large number of overlapping images.

To map this area of forest of approx 1 km x 0.6 km required 380 images and created an orthophoto with an Image size of 32000 x 24000 pixels.
i-8H8d9CF-4K.jpg

When the area is mostly forest, mapping is harder because the images don't have enough distinct points for the software to stitch well.
To avoid having blurry final picture, I had to use large (80%) overlaps and fly at 500 feet.
380 images? That sounds a lot!
The picture is really really good i think but i was thinking like 50 pictures or something, haha.
I dont even know if i will be able to take 380 images before the battery goes low.

My picture is 1000m up but do you still think i need hundreds of pictures even then?
Beccause 1 photo almost covers the entire area.
 
380 images? That sounds a lot!
The picture is really really good i think but i was thinking like 50 pictures or something, haha.
I dont even know if i will be able to take 380 images before the battery goes low.

My picture is 1000m up but do you still think i need hundreds of pictures even then?
Beccause 1 photo almost covers the entire area.
It all depends on what you want to achieve.
I explained how it's done when people want it done properly for commercial purposes.
 

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