Mini 3 - Auto panorama angled gimbal?

[Cymru]

Is anyone else seeing this problem?
On the Pano mode (in this case wide angle, the 3x3) when its going off to the side im getting a slanted horizon on the images.



The end result of this is the DNGs themselves are seriously slanted so merging them together in post results in a very curved image which is unusable.



Previous drone behaviour the horizon stayed level so stitching was fine.


It makes this mode pretty much unusable.


(and yes, gimbal is calibrated and normally level, it only happens in pano mode. No tilt elsewhere)

 

[mroek]

I have noticed that the gimbal is tilted when the drone creates a panorama, yes. However, I haven't tried stitching it together myself, so I assume the onboard stitching accounts for this, because the JPEG panos come out fine.

 

[scro]

Looks like it's doing a spherical projection of the panorama (ie fisheye, straight lines become curves) rather than a rectilinear (straight lines stay straight, corners get distorted/pinched). Not sure what software youre using but perhaps you could tweak the output to be more rectilinear?

Still, doesn't justify why the gimbal is tilting for the corner photos in the 3x3 set.

 

[Cymru]

I have noticed that the gimbal is tilted when the drone creates a panorama, yes. However, I haven't tried stitching it together myself, so I assume the onboard stitching accounts for this, because the JPEG panos come out fine.

Correct onboard comes out OK (but obviously gives you a much more limited, lacking jpg as a final result).

 

[Cymru]

Looks like it's doing a spherical projection of the panorama (ie fisheye, straight lines become curves) rather than a rectilinear (straight lines stay straight, corners get distorted/pinched). Not sure what software youre using but perhaps you could tweak the output to be more rectilinear?

Only got Adobe (PS and LR) currently and they all fail to get rid of that curvature. Manually levelling before merging and there isnt enough overlap to stitch correctly.

Not got PTGui to try but im struggling to believe this is a new feature improvement...

 

[globetrotterdrone]

Only got Adobe (PS and LR) currently and they all fail to get rid of that curvature. Manually levelling before merging and there isnt enough overlap to stitch correctly.

Not got PTGui to try but im struggling to believe this is a new feature improvement...

Actually, Adobe PS and LR really lack proper implementation of projections. Yes, they have rectangular, sphere or cylindrical, but these are very basic and mostly produce baloney with to high degree fields of view (especially close to 360°/180°).

They really should improve on this with more settings.
You could try out Hugin, but I am not a fan of it, although it's free and very mighty but somehow always messed up my pictures.

Microsoft ICE was very straight forward and decent but development stopped a long time ago (still worth a try but most likely feed it with TIF rather than the DNG, where it often cannot process them properly).

PTGUI is another proofed alternative, though I feel, it's a bit dated with the interface.
Just enter panorama software 2022 into your prefered search machine and you get a good overview within the first results.

 

[Cymru]

ICE i use for 360s but all of my previous other DJI drones have levelled the gimbal for the pano shots meaning ACR and everything else, including phone software was capable of merging them together into a correct panorama.

This is the first ive seen that produces an unusable curved image due to the gimbal not being levelled.

If its a bug then fair enough but if its deliberate it means the auto pano option is completely unusable for me.

(That said, with the return of portrait mode i'll likely shot a LOT more manual panos using that instead).

 

[ssvdh66]

I am having exactly the same issue with pano's ,I am about to send mine back for repairs ,the pano's are unusable , even with manual stitching.I have tried lightroom , photoshop , ICE , PTGUI and manual stitching , all to no avail.I calibrate the gimble before every flight on a level surface , it makes no difference.

 

[scro]

The mavic 3 and a few other recent dji drones seem to behave in the same way for 3x3 panoramas. This is firmware related so sending your drone in for repairs won't fix it, it'll just mean you don't have your drone to play with for a while.

You may find that if you start with the camera pointing straight forward at 0deg pitch the corner frames won't be rotated, but when you pitch the camera down to get more ground/less sky the corner shots get progressively more rotated.

In the mean time, have some patience, upskill, and shoot manually so you get what you want rather than what DJI want you to want.

 

[test2000Anafi]

Agree, that no repair will fix it as it is software related.
with Affinity Photo I believe there’s options to correct it

 

[MaximusCZ]

Workaround: Use the other panorama.
Yesterday I noticed this too, and was confused. There's also a second panorama that makes 5x3 photos (instead of 3x3), and doesn't angle the camera. I can't fly the drone right now and selecting Pano gives me "not in flight error", so can't show now, but I can at least show the results from yesterday:

raw from 3x3 pano, 5th photo (middle left), clearly showing tilt:

raw from 5x3 pano, 5th photo (middle, second from left), no tilt:

The workaround isn't perfect, tho:
1. The 3x3 pano jpeg, even tho its using less photos, has bigger file size: 16 MB for 3x3 and 12 MB for 5x3 (but the raws are the same)
2. The 5x3 pano takes longer to take, obviously
On the other side, you get more picture area with 5x3, so you can more easily crop in post

Here you can see both finished panoramas straight from drone. First is 3x3 that used tilted raws, second is 5x3 that used straight ones:

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[test2000Anafi]

Workaround: Use the other panorama.
Yesterday I noticed this too, and was confused. There's also a second panorama that makes 5x3 photos (instead of 3x3), and doesn't angle the camera. I can't fly the drone right now and selecting Pano gives me "not in flight error", so can't show now, but I can at least show the results from yesterday:

raw from 3x3 pano, 5th photo (middle left), clearly showing tilt: View attachment 148948

raw from 5x3 pano, 5th photo (middle, second from left), no tilt:View attachment 148949

The workaround isn't perfect, tho:
1. The 3x3 pano jpeg, even tho its using less photos, has bigger file size: 16 MB for 3x3 and 12 MB for 5x3 (but the raws are the same)
2. The 5x3 pano takes longer to take, obviously
On the other side, you get more picture area with 5x3, so you can more easily crop in post

Was that taken with the mavic 3 instead of mini 3 pro??

 

[MaximusCZ]

Was that taken with the mavic 3 instead of mini 3 pro??

No, the drone used is Mini 3 pro. No editing either

 

[miemo]

+1 confirmation on this for the 3x3 pano. JPG out of the drone is corrected, but the individual shots have a strong tilt which is very visible on LR-merged panorama. Didn't see anything like this with Mavic 2 Pro.

 

[Kilrah]

They started doing it this way with the mini2 IIRC.

 

[ssvdh66]

The mavic 3 and a few other recent dji drones seem to behave in the same way for 3x3 panoramas. This is firmware related so sending your drone in for repairs won't fix it, it'll just mean you don't have your drone to play with for a while.

You may find that if you start with the camera pointing straight forward at 0deg pitch the corner frames won't be rotated, but when you pitch the camera down to get more ground/less sky the corner shots get progressively more rotated.

In the mean time, have some patience, upskill, and shoot manually so you get what you want rather than what DJI want you to want.

I tried this solution today & your right ! this fixed the problem & saved me not having a drone for a while.

 

[Cymru]

Certainly the 180 doesnt do it for me, only the 3x3.

Ultimately its unusable so i'll have to use the 5 x 3 and crop or just do it manually.

None of the Phantoms, my Mavic pro 1 or Mavic 2 Pro showed this behaviour.

Another odd thing is the 360s, despite having a gimbal that can go up to 60 degrees allowing full sky coverage the gimbal only appears to go upwards 15 degrees or so. Seems a waste.

 

[globetrotterdrone]

Another odd thing is the 360s, despite having a gimbal that can go up to 60 degrees allowing full sky coverage the gimbal only appears to go upwards 15 degrees or so. Seems a waste.

That's what I concluded in my short flights too and concluded here.
The panorama functions are heavily underused with this drone.

It seems, they've just copied over from the older ones.
But I guess, we should consider ourselves lucky, the Mavic 3 only got panorama after a couple of weeks of introduction.

Not sure if I would bet, that DJI will tweak this especially for the great gimbal of the Mini 3 Pro though.

 

[Cymru]

The M2P didnt use full gimbal for panos either.

My suspicion there is they dont want the difficulty stitching together plain blue or plain white sky with no obvious common features. The higher the gimbal the more the likelihood.

(But the M1P had no issues going higher !)

 

[Drone Pilot192]

I would just fix the horizon in software or do your own panos. I use Kolor autopano giga to sort all my 360. It's very good software if a little hard to get. It can straighten horizon problems.