M2P Panoramas curving straight lines?

[PC1134]

I am struggling to get any answers on how to overcome this phenomenon I'm experiencing with my Mavic 2 Pro in Horizontal pano mode where any close to drone horizontal lines are being curved toward the drone, example attached.
I'm trying to achieve a photo realistic panorama like I would get with my standard camera, ie without such dramatic distortion.
I am merging the RAW images in Lightroom and have even tried to fix this issue in Photoshop Adaptive Wide Angle tool, without success. It's doing my head in, so really need a fix please [emoji5]

 

[Robert Prior]

Looks like you are shooting nearly 180°. With such a wide angle there will be distortion no matter what you do.

What projections have you tried stitching the panorama with? I find that Vedutismo (or Pannini) often looks best.

Projections - PanoTools.org Wiki

wiki.panotools.org

 

[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

Perhaps you could show us a land-based, DSLR pano that is so wide, yet has no such distortion.

 

[Dobmatt]

I am struggling to get any answers on how to overcome this phenomenon I'm experiencing with my Mavic 2 Pro in Horizontal pano mode where any close to drone horizontal lines are being curved toward the drone, example attached.
I'm trying to achieve a photo realistic panorama like I would get with my standard camera, ie without such dramatic distortion.
I am merging the RAW images in Lightroom and have even tried to fix this issue in Photoshop Adaptive Wide Angle tool, without success. It's doing my head in, so really need a fix please [emoji5]

These are "in-the-app" cooked stitches, right? I never tried 3-pc horizontal mode, but even 3x3 stitches baked by DJI app are delivered with unrealistic distortion trying to maintain straight lines. By all means try to shot RAW 3x3 panos instead, pointing the camera at main target. Batch render DNG files into a non-compressed 8-bit TIFF without any corrections applied and stitch them in any decent soft (i.e. PTGui) into the same type TIFF, experimenting with various projections and centre point position to your liking. Crop the most distorted parts out in PS, edit and grade in Camera Raw Filter ...

 

[Thomas B]

Try taking 8-10 photos and etching together in post.

 

[Dobmatt]

Try taking 8-10 photos and etching together in post.

But ... isn't what I just said above ?

 

[Thomas B]

But ... isn't what I just said above ?

Thought you shot in pano mode.
I’m talking about hovering, taking 8-10 photos, then stitching into pano in post

 

[Dobmatt]

Thought you shot in pano mode.
I’m talking about hovering, taking 8-10 photos, then stitching into pano in post

Correct, but what's the advantage of shooting manually rather than using a perfectly executed automatic 3x3 sequence and work with stored DNG files later?

 

[Thomas B]

Correct, but what's the advantage of shooting manually rather than using a perfectly executed automatic 3x3 sequence and work with stored DNG files later?

No distortion of images. Try it.

 

[Dobmatt]

No distortion of images. Try it.

I will. Right away. If you're right, a bottle of a good scotch is your ...

 

[Thomas B]

I will. Right away. If you're right, a bottle of a good scotch is your ...

No need... hope it does what you are wanting.

Nbombay and tonic is my poison of choice anyway.

 

[Dobmatt]

No need... hope it does what you are wanting.

Nbombay and tonic is my poison of choice anyway.

Well, the bottle stays home ... You're wrong, although - knowing notoriously bizarre ways of DJI's interpretation of worldwide standards - I was expecting surprises. Fortunately there's no difference whatsoever between DNG image pulled from automated pano sequence or shot as a single image. Therefore manual shooting of panorama provides no benefit. It's a waste of precious flight time instead ...

 

[boblui]

...a photo realistic panorama like I would get with my standard camera, ie without such dramatic distortion.

You can get such picture only if you move back and use a tele lens. With the M2P, you can get the tele lens effect by cropping.

Another choice is doing distortion correction in post-processing but I have not tried that by myself.

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[PC1134]

Okay, what about this for an idea then to overcome panorama distortion?
Set the drone to create a vertical 3 shot pano. Then fly sideways so there is a 30% overlap with the first pano, and create a second vertical pano. Keep repeating until you have the desired width.
Then, take all the .dng's into Lightroom or a similar pano program to stitch.
I haven't tried this but it could work. Any thoughts on this idea? Has anyone tried this?

 

[boblui]

Okay, what about this for an idea then to overcome panorama distortion?
Set the drone to create a vertical 3 shot pano. Then fly sideways so there is a 30% overlap with the first pano, and create a second vertical pano. Keep repeating until you have the desired width.
Then, take all the .dng's into Lightroom or a similar pano program to stitch.
I haven't tried this but it could work. Any thoughts on this idea? Has anyone tried this?

If you do that, it will not be possible to stitch the photos together because of parallax issue unless all the objects are in the same vertical plane.

A Beginners Guide to Parallax and How to Avoid It When Shooting Panoramas

Sometimes even the widest wide angle lens is not enough. In those cases you have to shoot multiple images and stitch it together into one extreme wide angle shot. You can go as far as 360° around, if you want. But you have to avoid parallax errors. Shooting wide angle is fun. Almost every...

fstoppers.com

 

[Meta4]

I'm trying to achieve a photo realistic panorama like I would get with my standard camera, ie without such dramatic distortion.

Are you using a very wideangle lens for panorama shooting with the dslr?

I am merging the RAW images in Lightroom and have even tried to fix this issue in Photoshop Adaptive Wide Angle tool, without success. It's doing my head in, so really need a fix please

The wider the lens and the wider the panorama, the more complications you introduce. It is possible to do it right but you can't just drop the images into Lightroom and tell it to stitch.
There are many different stitching projections.
Start by trying some different projections.
Here are a couple of examples:

 

[Dale D]

I am struggling to get any answers on how to overcome this phenomenon I'm experiencing with my Mavic 2 Pro in Horizontal pano mode where any close to drone horizontal lines are being curved toward the drone, example attached.
I'm trying to achieve a photo realistic panorama like I would get with my standard camera, ie without such dramatic distortion.
I am merging the RAW images in Lightroom and have even tried to fix this issue in Photoshop Adaptive Wide Angle tool, without success. It's doing my head in, so really need a fix please [emoji5]

I put my M2P up in the air high enough to get the composition I need. I use an iPad and grid for my monitor.
Shoot at least 5 or 6 shots from left to right using the yaw stick, and I overlap the images about 30%.
Save all images as RAW files.
Upload the SD card to my desk top.
Open the images in Photoshop CC 2020 and then in Adobe Camera RAW. (ACR).
Right click on one of the images,
click on select all,
right click on one image again
MERGE TO PANORAMA.
Follow the prompts to complete the image.
Then you can adjust the image parameters e.g.: shadows, brightness, etc). Here is a recent image down with this technique.

 

[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

Okay, what about this for an idea then to overcome panorama distortion?

As Bob said, strong parallax issues would occur. I'll add: this would be the same problem if you tried that with ground-based / DSLR panos, even if you weren't using a wide-angle lens.

 

[Dobmatt]

Okay, what about this for an idea then to overcome panorama distortion?
Set the drone to create a vertical 3 shot pano. Then fly sideways so there is a 30% overlap with the first pano, and create a second vertical pano. Keep repeating until you have the desired width.
Then, take all the .dng's into Lightroom or a similar pano program to stitch.
I haven't tried this but it could work. Any thoughts on this idea? Has anyone tried this?

This idea is in conflict with very basic rule for successful panoramic stitch. Only PTGui Pro software version is offering some form of parallax correction, but I never had the need for such. Aerial panorama differs from tripod ones in radical way since the camera is pointing usually well below 0 deg. Therefore the bottom part of stitched image will always exhibit more distortion, most of the time to the point of being useless and cropped out. For truly high resolution, realistic panorama you'll have to employ a drone and camera with equivalent of 50mm full frame lens, i.e. Inspire 2 with X5S gimbal and 25mm lens.

 

[PC1134]

If you do that, it will not be possible to stitch the photos together because of parallax issue unless all the objects are in the same vertical plane.

A Beginners Guide to Parallax and How to Avoid It When Shooting Panoramas

Sometimes even the widest wide angle lens is not enough. In those cases you have to shoot multiple images and stitch it together into one extreme wide angle shot. You can go as far as 360° around, if you want. But you have to avoid parallax errors. Shooting wide angle is fun. Almost every...

fstoppers.com

Thankyou, really appreciate this article. Will read through it