Terrible Exposure of Panorama

[James G]

I have had my Mavic Pro since it first came out, and have never quite got a decent panorama out of it. Whenever I shoot a panorama, the exposure goes all haywire, and the resulting image is pretty much unusable. Is there something I'm doing wrong, are there conditions under which a pano should not be attempted (such as the sun is bright), or is there something I should be doing that I'm missing somewhere? Take a look at this example from today to see what I mean. (FYI I shoot in RAW, this is a JPEG that I stitched in PTGui, the sun was behind me.)

 

[Dave Maine]

There is something very wrong with the camera focus. The exposure seems reasonable. Try doing the panorama with the camera in manual focus mode, properly focused on your point of interest.

 

[Dale D]

I have had my Mavic Pro since it first came out, and have never quite got a decent panorama out of it. Whenever I shoot a panorama, the exposure goes all haywire, and the resulting image is pretty much unusable. Is there something I'm doing wrong, are there conditions under which a pano should not be attempted (such as the sun is bright), or is there something I should be doing that I'm missing somewhere? Take a look at this example from today to see what I mean. (FYI I shoot in RAW, this is a JPEG that I stitched in PTGui, the sun was behind me.)View attachment 132128

For panoramas, using the Mavic 2 Pro, do the following;
1.turn on the grid view.
2.Take a minimum of three (3) images, with a 30% overlap
3. up load the three to four images to Photoshop.
4.Open Adobe Camera RAW (ACR)
5. open these images in RAW
6. hit CTRL+A. (select all)
7. right click on any of the images
8. select merge to panorama
9. In dialog box, adjust the parameters to remove the non-covered spaces or use content aware fill
10. Open the resultant image in Photoshop, then, re-open it in ACR again (Filter>Camera RAW)
11. do final edits on this image.

Dale
Miami

 

[Fizzbang]

See this video at 10:15. Use the exposure lock AE

 

[James G]

Thank you; @DaleD, I'll try doing as you suggest, which of course is how I'd shoot a pano with a proper land-based camera. And @Dave Maine, I don't think there's a problem with the focus, since the individual images are all focused properly.

 

[James G]

Here is an example of what happens when I merge the 21 images (from a 180-degree panorama). Why is the bit in the centre sort of muddled, when the individual image itself is not?

 

[James G]

...even in PTGui, always that 3rd image looks muddy, even though the frame itself is fine (I'm attaching an

For panoramas, using the Mavic 2 Pro, do the following;
1.turn on the grid view.
2.Take a minimum of three (3) images, with a 30% overlap
3. up load the three to four images to Photoshop.
4.Open Adobe Camera RAW (ACR)
5. open these images in RAW
6. hit CTRL+A. (select all)
7. right click on any of the images
8. select merge to panorama
9. In dialog box, adjust the parameters to remove the non-covered spaces or use content aware fill
10. Open the resultant image in Photoshop, then, re-open it in ACR again (Filter>Camera RAW)
11. do final edits on this image.

Dale
Miami

I think perhaps my error is in using DJI's built-in panorama programming, rather than shooting the images "manually". That might fix the issue, so I'll give that a try next time the conditions are suitable.

 

[Dale D]

...even in PTGui, always that 3rd image looks muddy, even though the frame itself is fine (I'm attaching an

I think perhaps my error is in using DJI's built-in panorama programming, rather than shooting the images "manually". That might fix the issue, so I'll give that a try next time the conditions are suitable.

I don't know about anyone else but the 26 exposures for the globe are worthless to me if it not done internally by the drone synthesis. I am no longer using it on the Mini 2. I will, however still use it on the Mavic w2 Pro

 

[James G]

It's worth pointing out that I'm using the original Mavic Pro, not one of the updated versions.

 

[Dale D]

It's worth pointing out that I'm using the original Mavic Pro, not one of the updated versions.

That really should not matter if you do what I said above (e.g.: take 3 photos (left, middle, right) with 30% overlap, and merge them in Photoshop or Lightroom. and merge them in Photoshop or Lightroom.

Here is an example, does with that method

Dale

 

[James G]

Thank you for all your help--I have found that by using manual exposure, rather than auto, it helps things a lot. This surprises me, since I'd have thought that the exposures would vary too much, but apparently not.