Mini 3 - Auto panorama angled gimbal?

[Aerialskape]

I gave up on Pano mode on all my drones. Now use exposure lock and manually take multiple images and stitch in Affinity Photo. If needed I can use manual lens correction before I crop. Just need to take more pics than you want to crop to help reduce curvature

 

[Cymru]

Its not fixable in software as it causes huge distortion or needs crops leaving not enough overlap - the quality suffers.

We're not talking about 360s here.

Ultimately im going to test the workarounds mentioned now and go from there.

 

[Cymru]

OK tests complete.
Ultimately its a change in behaviour vs the Phantoms and Mavics so can be worked around.

Firstly the 180 pano is fine - it centres the gimbal first which is the traditional behaviour.

The 3x3 is whats changed. Mavic and Phantoms centred the horizon before shooting. This Mini 3 doesn't. If you centre the horizon manually before shooting then there's no slant on the images.
The problem only occurs if the gimbal is angled up or down prior to starting to shoot.

So solution is to centre the gimbal manually before starting (or use the ultra wide and use the images from there).

 

[illidan2000]

what is the 5x3 Pano mode?

 

[test2000Anafi]

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.

It IS a waste, but it needs to be done because of not upsetting fanbase of older, multiple times more expensive obsolete drones. I would be pretty pissed as well as within months of buying a mavic 3, a drone with more options comes out, not to mention GPS lock in literally seconds

 

[MaximusCZ]

what is the 5x3 Pano mode?

Its a mode where the drones takes 5 collumns and 3 rows of photos to make a panorama, so 15 photos. Another mode is 3x3, where only 9 photos are taken

 

[illidan2000]

Its a mode where the drones takes 5 collumns and 3 rows of photos to make a panorama, so 15 photos. Another mode is 3x3, where only 9 photos are taken

Understood, but I meant to say: I don't see this option on Panorama modes, I only see the 3x3 (called "wide angle" in the app)

 

[MaximusCZ]

Understood, but I meant to say: I don't see this option on Panorama modes, I only see the 3x3 (called "wide angle" in the app)

When in Pano mode I can select Sphere, 180 (5[or 7?]x3), Wide-angle (3x3), and vertical

 

[illidan2000]

View attachment 148978

When in Pano mode I can select Sphere (3x3), 180, Wide-angle (5x3), and vertical

mmh.... I tried sphere and wide-angle. The sphere took 26 photos (360 degrees) and the wide angle was the 3x3

 

[MaximusCZ]

mmh.... I tried sphere and wide-angle. The sphere took 26 photos (360 degrees) and the wide angle was the 3x3

I had mistake in my previous post (edited it). The sphere is indeed a lot of photos all around, and wide angle was 3x3. The one I had success to have not slanted horizon was 180, which took 5 columns before, while today it took 7 columns.

 

[illidan2000]

I had mistake in my previous post (edited it). The sphere is indeed a lot of photos all around, and wide angle was 3x3. The one I had success to have not slanted horizon was 180, which took 5 columns before, while today it took 7 columns.

ok ok... so 180 is a 1x7?

 

[MaximusCZ]

ok ok... so 180 is a 1x7?

I thought it was 3x5, but today I tested and I feel it did 3x7, not sure which is it, but definetly one of those

For sure its 3 vertical

 

[illidan2000]

I thought it was 3x5, but today I tested and I feel it did 3x7, not sure which is it, but definetly one of those

For sure its 3 vertical

thanks! I will try it this eve

 

[miemo]

Yeah, the 180 pano seems to be on the clear regarding the issue of slanted horizon on the corner shots.

 

[CJG]

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.

View attachment 148925View attachment 148926

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.

View attachment 148924

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)

+1 @Cymru.

I have the Mini 2 and have exactly the same problem and its really annoying.

I agree with folks that you can take similar panoramas manually, but it is trickier and more time consuming: sometimes you just need the speed & ease of the auto function.

I was going to buy the Mini 3 in the hope that this problem might have been fixed: now I am not so sure….

I have a Mavic 2 Pro, which takes excellent auto-panoramas which makes the Mini 2’s inability to do this so frustrating.

2 tips for you:

1. If you play around with the 9 RAW images in Lightroom Classic, you may find you can get a usable stitched image by just using some of the images. And at least you will have a range of images that might work OK just on their own.
   
   
2. Like the Mavic Pro Original, the Mini 3 can shoot vertically. So try creating a panorama by taking a number of vertical shots and stitching them into an image that broadly recreates the dimensions of an horizontal shot. This at least gives you a bigger file to work with. And if each vertical shot you take uses the AEB function, you can get some really quite good HDR “panoramas” this may

CG

 

[Lister]

You can't expect the drone to do a good job of stitching. If you want quality results, you have to stitch in software, later. No drone has the power of Photoshop et al.

For those that have Photoshop, the OP's curved horizon is easy to fix, although that's a pretty extreme case.

1) select the entire frame (ctl - A) or drag a box surrounding the frame.
2) choose "Edit/Transform/Warp".
3) use the handles distributed around the frame edges to stretch the image until you're happy. This technique takes practice. Experiment and learn.
4) hit "enter" to accept the changes you've made to the image.

 

[CJG]

You can't expect the drone to do a good job of stitching. If you want quality results, you have to stitch in software, later. No drone has the power of Photoshop et al.

For those that have Photoshop, the OP's curved horizon is easy to fix, although that's a pretty extreme case.

1) select the entire frame (ctl - A) or drag a box surrounding the frame.
2) choose "Edit/Transform/Warp".
3) use the handles distributed around the frame edges to stretch the image until you're happy. This technique takes practice. Experiment and learn.
4) hit "enter" to accept the changes you've made to the image.

Thanks for this @Lister: I know you can’t expect the Mini 2/3 Pro to do a good job of stitching itself. The “curved horizon“ issue occurs when stitching in Lightroom Classic.

In fact, the in-drone/app stitching is pretty good in that it gets rid of the of the ”curved horizon“ issue (albeit at the expense of distortion elsewhere). Its just a shame that the output is a low quality jpeg.

I have Photoshop as part of my Adobe Creative Cloud subscription (although I have never used it; always seems too complicated). I will give your solution a go. I seem to remember reading there is also a one-click lens correction solution in Photoshop that does the same thing.

 

[illidan2000]

Thanks for this @Lister: I know you can’t expect the Mini 2/3 Pro to do a good job of stitching itself. The “curved horizon“ issue occurs when stitching in Lightroom Classic.

In fact, the in-drone/app stitching is pretty good in that it gets rid of the of the ”curved horizon“ issue (albeit at the expense of distortion elsewhere). Its just a shame that the output is a low quality jpeg.

I have Photoshop as part of my Adobe Creative Cloud subscription (although I have never used it; always seems too complicated). I will give your solution a go. I seem to remember reading there is also a one-click lens correction solution in Photoshop that does the same thing.

I transform all DNG into tiffs and then I stich them all with Microsoft ICE. Then I save the stitch and then I continue the editing on Photoshop. To get rid of vignetting you could try as suggested before converting to tiff, but I did not notice it

 

[CJG]

I transform all DNG into tiffs and then I stich them all with Microsoft ICE. Then I save the stitch and then I continue the editing on Photoshop. To get rid of vignetting you could try as suggested before converting to tiff, but I did not notice it

I'm a Mac man @illidan2000. Any suggestions for a Mac? Preferably free!!

 

[JamieK]

I'm a Mac man @illidan2000. Any suggestions for a Mac? Preferably free!!

I’ve had good luck with Hugin Hugin - Panorama photo stitcher