Panaroma Photos

[cb24nz]

I know drones can do panaroma photos and its just the drone staying on one spot and turning, this generally gives a rounded photo look.

I was wondering if it might be best to take a photo, then move the drone side ways, take another photo and keep repeating this process. Once thats done stitch them together and would this give a more flat looking photo? I havent tried this yet but curious if others have and how were the results.

 

[AlanL]

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.

 

[waynorth]

I was wondering if it might be best to take a photo, then move the drone side ways, take another photo and keep repeating this process.

No, that will not work, sorry. Because when you move the camera sideways, the perspective changes, and the stitching software can not figure out where to stitch the photos.

 

[photoshop67]

No, that will not work, sorry. Because when you move the camera sideways, the perspective changes, and the stitching software can not figure out where to stitch the photos.

IT does work, I use that technique and do post in LR or PS to complete the Pano.

 

[cb24nz]

So basically let the drone turn on the spot for each photo, then crop out the curve later in the photo?

 

[AlanL]

So basically let the drone turn on the spot for each photo, then crop out the curve later in the photo?

Correct. I have been using this technique since film days 50 years ago.

 

[Erk1024]

@cb24nz
Yes, these moving (NOT rotating) panoramas can work as long you don't get a lot of parallax on the thing you're shooting. It's described in this e-book. I also tried it as an experiment and took this test pano. It's not very artistic, but it worked fine. It's recommended that you use the perspective stitching method. This is four photos stitched together. Also the camera should be pointed straight down.

(Image removed)

 

[Erk1024]

I think a valid question is: does moving instead of rotating give the photo a better "look". I think the answer in most cases is "no". It's useful if you're going for an abstract image. It tends to make the photo look like it was taken from a much higher position.

But the rotating photos tend to give a better sense of depth, and that's a very desirable effect. So probably you want to use the "normal" rotating ones most of the time.

From wide shots, things in the foreground look big and you get a strong sense of perspective.

 

[waynorth]

So basically let the drone turn on the spot for each photo, then crop out the curve later in the photo?

Exactly. Unless you have a lens with Perspective Control, the correct way to get a perfectly stitched panorama, is to rotate the camera around its nodal point - but since a drone can not do that, it works just fine letting the drone turn on the spot. Stitiching programs are very good at correcting the small parallax errors that occurs.
Of course if everything in the photo is far away in the distance, the parallax error will be insignificant, but if you have subjects in the foreground to add more depth in the photo it is a real problem.

A Beginners Guide to Parallax and How to Avoid It When Shooting Panoramas

Sometimes even the widest wide angle lens is not enough. In those cases you have to shoot multiple images and stitch it together into one extreme wide angle shot. You can go as far as 360° around, if you want. But you have to avoid parallax errors. Shooting wide angle is fun. Almost every...

fstoppers.com

 

[GFields]

Although I rarely do panos, when I do, I just let the Fly App or Go 4 app do its thing

 

[sarahb]

@cb24nz
Yes, these moving (NOT rotating) panoramas can work as long you don't get a lot of parallax on the thing you're shooting. It's described in this e-book. I also tried it as an experiment and took this test pano. It's not very artistic, but it worked fine. It's recommended that you use the perspective stitching method. This is four photos stitched together. Also the camera should be pointed straight down.

View attachment 178783

Why would you provide this evidence of illegal flying? Or, I guess you had a wavier to fly over moving vehicles, right?

 

[Erk1024]

Unless you have a lens with Perspective Control, the correct way to get a perfectly stitched panorama, is to rotate the camera around its nodal point

You're 100% correct about parallax and rotating around the nodal point. But with drones I think the situation is actually a bit worse. When I was trying to put a breakwater in the foreground of my lighthouse shots, I'm pretty sure the drone actually drifted a bit in the wind. So that's an additional source of parallax problems.

Putting objects in the close foreground on a drone panorama might be difficult in some cases.

 

[Erk1024]

Why would you provide this evidence of illegal flying? Or, I guess you had a wavier to fly over moving vehicles, right?

Okay. I took another look at the rules and you're right. Shouldn't fly over highways. I'll be sure to not do that in the future.

 

[sarahb]

I thought we weren't supposed to fly over crowds of people.

True, and moving vehicles Read this article. Do you have your TRUST certificate? Part 107? You should know this. I see that you live in FL so you should read the FAA rules regarding airspace and where you can fly your drone

 

[Erk1024]

True, and moving vehicles Read this article. Do you have your TRUST certificate? Part 107? You should know this. I see that you live in FL so you should read the FAA rules regarding airspace and where you can fly your drone

When somebody makes a mistake (like this, I admit it) if your goal is to persuade, then maybe you could take a gentler approach. Like "FYI, flying over highways is generally not a great idea. And actually it's illegal. For future reference. Check out this article... "

Otherwise it just turns people off. Just a suggestion.

 

[Fly Petaluma]

I know drones can do panaroma photos and its just the drone staying on one spot and turning, this generally gives a rounded photo look.

I was wondering if it might be best to take a photo, then move the drone side ways, take another photo and keep repeating this process. Once thats done stitch them together and would this give a more flat looking photo? I havent tried this yet but curious if others have and how were the results.

I've been shooting panos by turning the drone side ways and am very happy with the job Photoshop does of stitching the photos together. The only problem I've found is that if I stitch more than 3 or 4 photos together, the resulting image is much longer than wide which makes the printed image long, narrow and not very tall. I've had limited success with turning the drone sideways and then lowering the gimbal angle and shooting another row photos.
I just purchased the Air 3s and am looking forward to trying its free pano option. I'm hoping it will let me get panos that reduce the ratio of width to height of the photos.

 

[Meta4]

I know drones can do panaroma photos and its just the drone staying on one spot and turning, this generally gives a rounded photo look.

I was wondering if it might be best to take a photo, then move the drone side ways, take another photo and keep repeating this process.

Either method can work but you need to know more about creating panoramas, particularly the different projections that can be used.
But for most purposes, rotating the camera from one spot is the way to go.
There's a lot more involved in creating panoramas than most in this thread understand.

 

[photoshop67]

I've been experimenting with 9 image panos on my Mini 3 and Mini 4 pro. As long as the gimbal is a 0 degrees tilt, the in camera stitching does a great job and the horizon is flat. I also compare the programmed capture to manually overlapping images by a 50% overlap... just carefully turning the camera. The limitation here is that while you can control the width of the pan by just shooting more images, you lose the up and down layers of images that are part of the drone's programming and which for some uses provide nicer images where the foreground or sky need to be captured. In this image I wanted the foreground so used the dji pano option..

 

[Meta4]

I also compare the programmed capture to manually overlapping images by a 50% overlap... just carefully turning the camera. The limitation here is that while you can control the width of the pan by just shooting more images, you lose the up and down layers of images that are part of the drone's programming

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 ...

 

[PanoVolo]

I've been experimenting with 9 image panos on my Mini 3 and Mini 4 pro. As long as the gimbal is a 0 degrees tilt, the in camera stitching does a great job and the horizon is flat. I also compare the programmed capture to manually overlapping images by a 50% overlap... just carefully turning the camera. The limitation here is that while you can control the width of the pan by just shooting more images, you lose the up and down layers of images that are part of the drone's programming and which for some uses provide nicer images where the foreground or sky need to be captured. In this image I wanted the foreground so used the dji pano option..

PanoVolo will make horizon flat automatically even if gimbal is not at 0 deg pitch. Just turn "Straighten horizon" option ON.