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Mavic 2 Pro higher resolution

Darkabaz

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Hi guys,

I got a customer who ask for bigger resolution images than a M2Pro can handle. :-(
Images from that camera are around 5000x3000 pixels, but for customer it is too small. They need 10000 x 6000 pixels +/-.

I am familiar with the panorama and manual stitching option, but each time the photos do not merge accurately, so that details do not overlap but are separated from each other.
As a result, you get crazy things like double downspouts, double eaves etc.
These are photos of a company building...
 
Do they just need bigger MP files for printing? Because you can upscale any image. Topax Labs makes a tool called Gigapixel (go to their page and look at examples). Adobe products upscale pretty well too. Photoshop does a pretty decent job--look for tutorials to see the best methods.

Or are you saying they need a wider view? Because that would take a wider lens (like the M2Z will give you).

Maybe they need both wide and higher MP for printing ...

Panos are okay, but the DJI created ones are not so hot. I tend to save to DNG and stitch them in other applications. There are apps designed just for stitching that have a lot of parameters to change for problem shots, such as PTGui.

Chris
 
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Hi guys,

I got a customer who ask for bigger resolution images than a M2Pro can handle. :-(
Images from that camera are around 5000x3000 pixels, but for customer it is too small. They need 10000 x 6000 pixels +/-.

I am familiar with the panorama and manual stitching option, but each time the photos do not merge accurately, so that details do not overlap but are separated from each other.
As a result, you get crazy things like double downspouts, double eaves etc.
These are photos of a company building...
Lets start with the software your using for the Stitching ? Light room should give you excellent results but if you need a 1000 Pictures stitched you will need some better software , many can recommend.

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain.
 
I use lightroom, but every time i got 'ghost' diept details in the image. Edges of buildings are not straight to each other. Every time. The customer wants to have a photo from 8m width on the wall. So i need a very big picture...

I already own also the M2z and that give me the option superres, but it is jpeg and just 8k pixels.
 
I use lightroom, but every time i got 'ghost' diept details in the image. Edges of buildings are not straight to each other. Every time. The customer wants to have a photo from 8m width on the wall. So i need a very big picture...

I already own also the M2z and that give me the option superres, but it is jpeg and just 8k pixels.

The thing about panos: professional panos done with land-based cameras are done with special pano heads (on their tripod) that take these things into account. Details I won't get into, but some will understand the discussion about the nodal point, and it basically means that the whole camera / lens package rotates on an axis that is centered in the lens, not the center of the camera.

The M2P does none of that. It's nice that it's automated so it can shoot the sequence with overlaps, but when it does, it pivots on axis in the center of the aircraft, not on the point where the lens is.

The fix is to not be too close. But obviously, with a wide angle lens (and both of the M2 models are wide angle), you can't get too far away if your client wants building details. But if you moved further away as an experiment, I think you would find that you would have fewer stitching errors.

Photoshop's Photomerge is better than Lightroom's (Edit in, Merge to Panorama in Photoshop).

As mentioned, PTGui is a photo application with more features/parameters, but it does not cure everything.

In short, the Mavic is not a professional panorama creation tool.

You could shoot further away, SINGLE photo, then upscale that (see my previous post).

Chris
 
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I use lightroom, but every time i got 'ghost' diept details in the image. Edges of buildings are not straight to each other. Every time. The customer wants to have a photo from 8m width on the wall. So i need a very big picture...
There may be a way to achieve what you want, but I can't work out much about the task from your description.
Can you give more details of what you are trying to do?
Some details of what the is photo of?
How big is the subject?
Are there any constraints to work with where you are shooting?
 
I use lightroom, but every time i got 'ghost' diept details in the image. Edges of buildings are not straight to each other. Every time. The customer wants to have a photo from 8m width on the wall. So i need a very big picture...

I already own also the M2z and that give me the option superres, but it is jpeg and just 8k pixels.
If you upload the original photos to a dropbox, Google drive, or similar I’d be happy to give it a try in PTGUi for you. That’s the best software to do it in. With aerial panos it’s really important that there aren’t any objects close to the camera because there’s no way to have get a no parallax pano, so being far away and getting plenty of extra pixels around what you really want that you can crop later later is really helpful.

Otherwise I would just use Lightroom’s super resolution and enhance details upscale. I find that to be better than Topaz Gigapixel if all you need is 4x upscale.
 
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There may be a way to achieve what you want, but I can't work out much about the task from your description.
Can you give more details of what you are trying to do?
Some details of what the is photo of?
How big is the subject?
Are there any constraints to work with where you are shooting?
It is about a big company. They would like to have a big 10m wide poster on the wall. The most important thing is that the company's logo is clean and sharp. I was fly on the front of the company and took several pictures (10-12 pictures) to get everything on the photo.
The thing is, the company has quite a lofty building, so there are a lot of 'roof lines' visible. It strikes me that the lines in almost every photo do not fit tightly together, i see one roof edge above the other roof edge. Or the fence on the front of the building is double :-/
This is really amateurish and even with Photoshop it is not easy to get it straight.

Note: when i take picture, i take the next one on the middle of the first one, is that right? Maybe Lightroom is struggling with double details because i took too much photo's?
 
It is about a big company. They would like to have a big 10m wide poster on the wall. The most important thing is that the company's logo is clean and sharp. I was fly on the front of the company and took several pictures (10-12 pictures) to get everything on the photo.
The thing is, the company has quite a lofty building, so there are a lot of 'roof lines' visible. It strikes me that the lines in almost every photo do not fit tightly together, i see one roof edge above the other roof edge. Or the fence on the front of the building is double :-/
This is really amateurish and even with Photoshop it is not easy to get it straight.

Note: when i take picture, i take the next one on the middle of the first one, is that right? Maybe Lightroom is struggling with double details because i took too much photo's?
If you are trying to photograph the facade of the building, it might be best to fly the drone across the subject, possibly shooting several rows, depending on the size of the subject.
Like this:
T2-XL.jpg

This is the technique used for mapping, except for a vertical subject.
You would need to have big overlaps and stitch the images with a polar projection or even use mapping software to do the stitching.
 
Thanks for your input. What i did was i stay at the same position but just rotate the drone every time a bit. Because the company is a very wide company, the photo is almost a 180° photo. The problem i walk in were that the photo's not 'connecting' to each other, but just have a bit different what causes double pipe lines, not 1 but 1,5 doors and so on. Frustrating! OK there was a bit wind, but not that kind of much that this would be a problematic thing.

I took also a top picture (24 pictures) and the software just stitch them together. At one photo, the wall is just straigt and on another one it is just not straight. You see a bit of the side wall from the top.
So i took the drone to one point, and just rotate the camera around to take more photos. The problem with that is that you see the feets of the drone :-/

I was looking around, but why does the mavic air 2 (cheap drone) 48mp? I know it is software, but why do they not put the option into the M2P? It is a better drone and sensor, so little bit frustrating.
 
Thanks for your input. What i did was i stay at the same position but just rotate the drone every time a bit. Because the company is a very wide company, the photo is almost a 180° photo.
That's only going to give you distortion for a project like that.
The distant parts of each image will look smaller than closer parts that are the same size.
What would be the approx length x height of the subject area?

To get good results, you need to tackle like a mapping exercise which will give a flat image where every element was shot at the same distance from the camera.

Here's how it's done with a horizontal mapping exercise over a much bigger subject.
The drone flies along and back over a grid, collecting about 300 images with an overlap of approx 70%.
Screenshot_2018-04-10-13-34-51-XL.png

All images are captured at the same distance from the subject, looking in the same direction.
When blended in mapping software, the composite image is flat with no distortion and has huge detail.
It's about 30000 pixels across.
i-44jgWF8-X2.jpg

And here's some detail from a small part of the image.
SS_detail-XL.jpg
 
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That looks very tight.
Unfortunately you can't zoom in further via the forum, but I'm curious about the sharpness at 100%!

How I took the top photo:
I just flew manually over the entire surface at a height of 50 meters and took new photos halfway through. The terrain is 215x215 meters in total.
What you describe here, is this a standard option of the GO 4 app? This would solve the top photo, but the mega sharp panorama would still be a challenge.
 
That looks very tight.
Unfortunately you can't zoom in further via the forum, but I'm curious about the sharpness at 100%!

How I took the top photo:
I just flew manually over the entire surface at a height of 50 meters and took new photos halfway through. The terrain is 215x215 meters in total.
What you describe here, is this a standard option of the GO 4 app? This would solve the top photo, but the mega sharp panorama would still be a challenge.
Now I'm confused.
I thought you were trying to shoot a vertical surface, but noow it sounds like you want to map the company site.
That's easy to do with a mapping app like DroneDeploy, or since it's just a small site you could even shoot it manually, but you'd have to have big overlaps.

Then use a stitching program that can do a polar projection to produce the composite image or a mapping program like Agisoft Metashape.

The detail will be as good as what's in the original images that go into the composite.
 
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Topaz and others do not actually produce higher resolution images. They do produce larger pixel dimension images, but the individual detail is simply an interpolation of the image information present in the original resolution shot. AI and other techniques can be used to trick the eye into the perception that there is more detail. That may be good enough for the client’s needs.

Composite images made up from multiple overlapping images do increase the actual resolution, but take considerable finesse to execute.
 
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If you are taking vertical mapping you can get this done with the Dronelink facade.
 
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Now I'm confused.
I thought you were trying to shoot a vertical surface, but noow it sounds like you want to map the company site.
That's easy to do with a mapping app like DroneDeploy, or since it's just a small site you could even shoot it manually, but you'd have to have big overlaps.

Then use a stitching program that can do a polar projection to produce the composite image or a mapping program like Agisoft Metashape.

The detail will be as good as what's in the original images that go into the composite.
Haha, no. I want a horizontal panorama, with sharp lines and good blend. Now it is not.
The top photo, was also a question from the customer. But i have cancel that job, only panorama.
 
This sounds like a pretty daunting assignment - shooting for an 8 to 10 meter wide print. 10,000 pixels / 360 inches = 28 pixels / inch approximately. If the resulting print is viewed from a distance it could look great, but if a viewer approaches the print (say it’s on a wall in the company entryway) it will look pretty pixelated quite soon. Is it possible for you to communicate with the printer directly? Sometimes that can provide a much better plan for recording the image than working through the ultimate customer as a middleperson.

If the printer plans to produce the final artwork as a mosaic of prints then you both might coordinate the original images effectively. If the final is to be a single piece then the printer’s requirements might be different?

Howard
 
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Hi guys

Again i just lose 2 potential drone jobs because of the resolution of the mavic 2 pro is too low, as they said....
One customer choose for a - dont laugh - company who fly with a Mavic Air 2. He told them they get a ultra sharp 8000px image.
It's painful to hear this kind of things.. also with the new m3 the resolution is still a bit low.

What did you guys want to advice me? Kind of cowboys with a MA2 could not be better than a m2p, i think.... 😑
 
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