Panaroma Photos

[Erk1024]

You don't lose anything by shooting panoramas manually.
If you can shoot 1 row, you can shoot more.
Like this three row panorama shot manually.

Stitched ...

Wow. Nice shot! Love the composition.

Yes I agree 100%. I generally shoot this same format: 5 wide by 3 tall. In ptGui you can drag the image up or down in the panorama edit window to fix the horizon. The biggest problem I have is that clouds move, water moves and the drone can drift a bit, and that can make stitching a challenge for some shots.

 

[fiweli]

I generally do exactly what you mentioned - shoot the photos individually turning the drone to get the next shot in the sequence. Whether the stitch has a rounded shape is a function of the gimbal angle. If you are shooting something at the same level as the drone it will appear mostly flat but if the gimbal is pointing either up or down at your subject you will get a curved shape in the stitched result before cropping. This phenomena is not unique to drones and has been well known in the camera world for decades. I was first taught this in photography classes for archaeological field school in the mid 1970's.

You have some leeway for stitching if you do this in Adobe Lightroom as you can choose cylindrical, spherical, or perspective as the stitching technique. There are other stitching applications out there as well but none of them can accurately make a flat pano out of captures that weren't level to begin with high end photo albums.

Yes, moving the drone sideways and taking overlapping photos can result in a flatter, more natural-looking panorama compared to in-place rotation. This method reduces distortion and works well for landscapes or architecture. Just make sure to keep the altitude and camera angle consistent, and overlap shots by about 30% for better stitching results. Many users have tried this with good results using stitching software like Lightroom or PTGui.