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Manually Shooting a Six Panel Pano Shooting Straight Down

Can I ask what mapping app you used for this?
That was DroneDeploy for the flight planning and doing the actual flying and image acquisition and Agisoft Metashape for the image stitching.
 
Using the onscreen grid line as a guide, do you think an overlap of 1/3 between the consecutive pictures in the first raw; and then an overlap of 1/3 between rows and columns in the next raw (s) would be enough? That would make shooting a little easier. For a 3X2 pano for example, this overlapping by a third technique will give us 6 pictures with overlaps like this (excuse the crude drawing; numbers designate sequence of shooting, shaded areas represent overlapping areas between pictures)

View attachment 90762
I would try to get 50% overlap and then if you end up short then you’ll still be ok.

Another thing to keep in mind is the edges usually don’t come out straight and you’ll need to either crop it or LR/Camera Raw will give you the option to stretch the edges to fit but this will obviously distort the edges. It’s better to shoot wide and crop small. Since you are adding more photos to do this there is no negative impact on resolution. At any rate you’ll have plenty of resolution anyway.

Certainly might take some practice to do while flying manually. The nice things about DroneDeploy and others like it is this is all figured out for you.
 
I thought recently that I would take panos of large geologic structures by flying sideways and take overlapping photos. As it turned out the photos did not align in photoshop and the pano was useless. So I just left my Mavic 2 pro hovering and moved the camera while pausing to take photos from the right to the left of the drone position. These photos stitched very well and gave me the pano photo that I wanted.
 
If you wanted to stitch together a six panel pano shooting straight down, how would you go about doing it? M2P.

I have a request from a client who wants an aerial shot of a construction site looking straight down onto the property. But because I am in a Class D airspace near the local airport I can only fly to an elevation of 100'. But at one hundred feet I can only get about 1/6 of the project into a single frame. So I was thinking about trying to stitch together six frames but I have no idea of how to go about lining up the drone and over lapping each frame by 30% so that either LR or PS can stitch them together.

Your thoughts?
MapsMadeEasy (It's free), or just fly it manually and stitch with any number of free stitching programs. Don't hit the tower cranes!
 
I got confused while reading this thread and other online information. Some online information says that if I have a Mavic 2, and I point the gimbal straight down, and then tell the drone to take a "Horizontal Panorama" then it should be able to do all the work for me and take the 3x3 grid for me. The middle frame will be where the gimbal starts.

Is this wrong?

My Mavic 2 is on the way to me, so I can't try it out myself.
 
I got confused while reading this thread and other online information. Some online information says that if I have a Mavic 2, and I point the gimbal straight down, and then tell the drone to take a "Horizontal Panorama" then it should be able to do all the work for me and take the 3x3 grid for me. The middle frame will be where the gimbal starts.

Is this wrong?

My Mavic 2 is on the way to me, so I can't try it out myself.

As far as I've seen in any panorama mode the Mavic 2 ignores the current gimbal position and always moves it to a horizontal position then starts the panorama from there.
 
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I have the same issue and thought I'd just revive this thread as opposed to starting a new one.

Basically I used to do horizontal Pano with the Mavic 1 with the gimbal looking down. I want to do the same with mavic 2 pro but like the above poster mentioned, I believe the Mavic 2 ignores the gimbal position and moves it horizontal.

Is there any other options that could get the Mavic 2 to shoot Pano looking down.

I use the crystal sky so haven't tried to see if you can use mapping apps (such as litchi etc) but hoping theres a workaround for the DJI go app. I don't do this often so I just want to be able to take a quick birdseye Pano when height is a restricting factor to fit the subject all in one shot.

Can anyone advise?

Thank you!
 
Meta4, I was hoping of a solution that is more automated as opposed to manually flying. Like I did with the Mavic 1 on panoramic mode.

What do you mean painted myself into a corner with crystal sky?

Also goes to show my lack of experience/knowledge with using mapping apps.
 
Meta4, I was hoping of a solution that is more automated as opposed to manually flying. Like I did with the Mavic 1 on panoramic mode.
If you are just doing a couple of acres, you can do it manually without much trouble.
If you are looking at >5 acres, you would benefit from one of the dedicated mapping apps like DroneDeploy.
What do you mean painted myself into a corner with crystal sky?
Crystalsky doesn't accept loading 3rd party apps.
But your drone would easily handle mapping missions with a regular phone or tablet.

A mapping app helps you plan, fly and acquire images in a precise grid with precise overlaps, like this example of a small mapping project - 13 acres and 84 images with overlaps of 70%.
T5-L.jpg
 
Okay thanks for your reply meta 4.

Actually I don't need to map out a site anywhere near 5 acres.

I'm just after getting a full birdseye view of a property which doesnt fit the composition of the maximum height of my drone.

I was hoping a horizontal 3X3 panorama shot with the gimbal looking down would do the job but everytime I tilt the camera down and take the Pano shot, the camera automatically moves to horizontal position.

In theory if the Pano shot looking down stays looking down and the 3X3 Pano works without moving horizontal then the whole property will fit.

Am I missing or doing something wrong?

I remembered with the Mavic 1, if you tilted the camera looking down and set the panoramic shot, it would take the shots based on where your camera was facing.
 
Okay thanks for your reply meta 4.

Actually I don't need to map out a site anywhere near 5 acres.

I'm just after getting a full birdseye view of a property which doesnt fit the composition of the maximum height of my drone.

I was hoping a horizontal 3X3 panorama shot with the gimbal looking down would do the job but everytime I tilt the camera down and take the Pano shot, the camera automatically moves to horizontal position.

In theory if the Pano shot looking down stays looking down and the 3X3 Pano works without moving horizontal then the whole property will fit.

Am I missing or doing something wrong?

I remembered with the Mavic 1, if you tilted the camera looking down and set the panoramic shot, it would take the shots based on where your camera was facing.
The panorama function works with the camera staying in the same position and tilting and panning to cover the subject.
That doesn't work for mapping.
You want the camera to be (roughly) the same distance from all parts of the composite image, rather than looking off to more distant parts.
You need to fly the camera over/across the site shooting vertically from different spots and with big enough overlaps as shown in the example I gave above.
Then stitch the images using a polar projection to get what you are wanting.
 
The panorama function works with the camera staying in the same position and tilting and panning to cover the subject.
Thanks for your reply Meta4.

Yep that's all I need except I just need the panorama image to have the camera facing down.

The problem is when it's initially facing down above the property and I click to take the 3X3 Pano shot. The camera moves up to face horizontally for the first shot as opposed to starting the shot looking directly down.

Which is why I'm wondering why it does that for the Mavic 2 and not didn't for the Mavic 1?

(I don't need any sky I just want what you see on Google maps/Google earth with a bit more detail and closer of the subject property)

Hope that makes sense.
 
The problem is when it's initially facing down above the property and I click to take the 3X3 Pano shot. The camera moves up to face horizontally for the first shot as opposed to starting the shot looking directly down.

Which is why I'm wondering why it does that for the Mavic 2 and not didn't for the Mavic 1?
You cannot use the built-in automated panorama function for what you want.
You will have to manually fly the drone over/across the site with the camera pointed downwards to capture the images.

I don't have a Mavic 1 but I'm pretty sure it fly a pattern to capture downward images.
 
You cannot use the built-in automated panorama function for what you want.
You will have to manually fly the drone over/across the site with the camera pointed downwards to capture the images.

I don't have a Mavic 1 but I'm pretty sure it fly a pattern to capture downward images.
I have done it several times with the Mavic 1 using the built in Pano function and shoot looking down.

I searched on other forums and threads and read conflicting replies with some saying you can do this simply by starting the Pano shots with the camera tilting where you want it to begin and others saying they had my come across my issue (i.e. the camera automatically starts horizontal no matter where the start position is of the camera).

The manual flying over points to do this would work but Im hoping there is a more automated way. I'm afraid there would be room for error for people like me who don't often do mapping jobs and can't afford to go back out on site if the images don't work.

Thanks Meta4.

Might have to investigate this further...
 
You cannot use the built-in automated panorama function for what you want.
You will have to manually fly the drone over/across the site with the camera pointed downwards to capture the images.

I don't have a Mavic 1 but I'm pretty sure it fly a pattern to capture downward images.
I think he really just wants a pano with the center being 90 degrees down. Seems more like an issue of getting Photoshop to stitch that together correctly than anything. He doesn’t need to move the AC to get what he wants.

On another note the Crystal Sky has the pilot app which can do mapping missions and you can get litchi on the CS.
 
If he wants a simple panorama with the camera tilting and panning, that's also very easy to do by manually controlling the camera.
He doesn't need an automated process to carry out a simple task.
 
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Yes, just a simple panorama with the camera tilting 90degrees down to shoot a property that just is a little too large to fit in one composition with the max height of the drone.

Have done this with a Mavic pro and pro platinum when I was using that by what was stated above and would have assumed the Mavic 2 would be exactly the same. However, I have come across this issue of the camera always pointing horizontal when executing the simple Pano.

The Photoshop stitching is no problem if I have the shots I need. Or can use Microsoft composite image editor for this basic task. The main thing is just getting the drone to behave as I hoped it would be shooting the shots facing 90degrees down and taking the respective shots under the built in Pano function.

Thought I was missing some settings or doing something wrong with Mavic 2, hence why seeking some advise on more experienced users who may have possibly come across this.

The mapping is more than what I am after and the manual drone flying is the last case scenario, but was hoping to achieve the more automated simple built in Pano function like how it was with the Mavic pro/pro platinum.

Appreciate all the input so far though.
 
Yes, just a simple panorama with the camera tilting 90degrees down to shoot a property that just is a little too large to fit in one composition with the max height of the drone.

Have done this with a Mavic pro and pro platinum when I was using that by what was stated above and would have assumed the Mavic 2 would be exactly the same. However, I have come across this issue of the camera always pointing horizontal when executing the simple Pano.

The Photoshop stitching is no problem if I have the shots I need. Or can use Microsoft composite image editor for this basic task. The main thing is just getting the drone to behave as I hoped it would be shooting the shots facing 90degrees down and taking the respective shots under the built in Pano function.

Thought I was missing some settings or doing something wrong with Mavic 2, hence why seeking some advise on more experienced users who may have possibly come across this.

The mapping is more than what I am after and the manual drone flying is the last case scenario, but was hoping to achieve the more automated simple built in Pano function like how it was with the Mavic pro/pro platinum.

Appreciate all the input so far though.
So just do a 360 pano and delete the photos that are out of the frame you want or as as @Meta4 said just do it manually and know that more photos is better, try to get like 90% overlap and then you can’t miss.

As to why the pano function is different on the M2 and M1 I don’t know. I personally don’t remember it being about to auto pano with the center straight down but I could be wrong.
 
That's definitely not the way to do it and moving the drone won't prevent proper stitching.
Here is a part of a composite image of a 30 acre site.
The full image was created by stitching 300 individual images (with big overlaps), collected by flying the drone all over the site in a grid pattern,looking straight down.
8613_SC%20construction_6-X3.jpg
Is this a situation where 6-12 photos would easily capture the entire scene but would not stitch because of perspective shift but 300 photos minimize the shift with tons of overlaps? 300 photos into 1 is certainly not practical unless you're getting paid a fortune per photo.
 
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