Hill O Garvock and Tullo Windfarm (Near Laurencekirk, Scotland) this afternoon - aerial 360.
Click image to see interactive 360 panorama (Round Me)

Hill O Garvock and Tullo Windfarm

This 'roundme' thing is super awesome.
That alone is enough to buy a drone

Montfrooij Posted at 2017-11-19 13:22
This 'roundme' thing is super awesome.
That alone is enough to buy a drone

I like creating aerial views this way - in terms of fun per megabyte, I think the interactive 360s wins out
Perhaps I’m biased though - I’m hopeless at video!

G Davidson Posted at 2017-11-19 13:52
I like creating aerial views this way - in terms of fun per megabyte, I think the interactive 360s wins out
Perhaps I’m biased though - I’m hopeless at video!

It is a whole different dimension.
One you can't get with video (at least not without 360 video) and one you can't get from the ground.
Exactly the reason why I tried (and sold) a 360 camera.
This is how I want to document some places I have visited.

Montfrooij Posted at 2017-11-19 14:18
It is a whole different dimension.
One you can't get with video (at least not without 360 video) and one you can't get from the ground.
Exactly the reason why I tried (and sold) a 360 camera.

I wonder if a drone will come on the market that can natively take full 360 by 180 images at a decent resolution, with a gimballed camera above the prop level. The upper camera wouldn’t need to be as good as the lower one as it’s generally capturing sky. It could even be based on a smartphone camera and employ HDR techniques to make up for sensor limitations.

Hard to say if there is a market there...

Post card pic, very good shot

DustMan Posted at 2017-11-19 18:18
Post card pic, very good shot

Thank you DustMan!

G Davidson Posted at 2017-11-19 14:41
I wonder if a drone will come on the market that can natively take full 360 by 180 images at a decent resolution, with a gimballed camera above the prop level. The upper camera wouldn’t need to be as good as the lower one as it’s generally capturing sky. It could even be based on a smartphone camera and employ HDR techniques to make up for sensor limitations.

Hard to say if there is a market there...

You said the right words. Decent resolution.
I had the Samsung Gear 360, but that is no good when you want to zoom in to check some detail.
The only market I see is one with a detachable camera (so I can switch between the standard camera and the 360 one).
A camera on top might just be a fish eye lens strapped on it's back.

nice panorama!

Montfrooij Posted at 2017-11-19 23:10
You said the right words. Decent resolution.
I had the Samsung Gear 360, but that is no good when you want to zoom in to check some detail.
The only market I see is one with a detachable camera (so I can switch between the standard camera and the 360 one).

I worked out I’m using about 66Mpixel just for the sky half of the image using images stitched from a fisheye on a D810. I don’t know how much that could be reduced without  too much loss of quality in the sky. In terms of stitching I sometimes rely on the ground in the sky image to get it to stitch, especially when there’s not much cloud.

So much opportunity for experimentation!

Bracco Posted at 2017-11-19 23:25
nice panorama!

Thank you Bracco!

G Davidson Posted at 2017-11-20 10:00
I worked out I’m using about 66Mpixel just for the sky half of the image using images stitched from a fisheye on a D810. I don’t know how much that could be reduced without  too much loss of quality in the sky. In terms of stitching I sometimes rely on the ground in the sky image to get it to stitch, especially when there’s not much cloud.

So much opportunity for experimentation!

Yes I can imagine.

Great job, G

ALABAMA Posted at 2017-11-20 12:27
Great job, G

Thanks Alabama!

Montfrooij Posted at 2017-11-19 23:10
You said the right words. Decent resolution.
I had the Samsung Gear 360, but that is no good when you want to zoom in to check some detail.
The only market I see is one with a detachable camera (so I can switch between the standard camera and the 360 one).

Ditto! I bought a Gear 360, and within minutes of getting it going, it was back in its box, and now sits on my workbench ready to go to eBay. I wonder how many others got caught with those things.

You did a great job of hiding yourself from the camera. I looked very closely but could not see you. I hate appearing in my shots. You didn't have a Cloak Of Invisibility did you? Oh, nice shot too.

Geebax Posted at 2017-11-20 22:09
Ditto! I bought a Gear 360, and within minutes of getting it going, it was back in its box, and now sits on my workbench ready to go to eBay. I wonder how many others got caught with those things.

Yes, that is just a toy.
It had the potential, but lacked the quality.
I guess you need at least 5 camera's to get decent resolution.

That is one amazing quality image.

Geebax Posted at 2017-11-20 22:12
You did a great job of hiding yourself from the camera. I looked very closely but could not see you. I hate appearing in my shots. You didn't have a Cloak Of Invisibility did you? Oh, nice shot too.

Thanks Geebax
I'm hidden in plain view Not very easy to find....!

Where's Wally

Dockater Posted at 2017-11-20 23:43
That is one amazing quality image.

Thank you  - I'm wringing all the detail I can out of the Phantom 4 (original version)!

Very nice shot, aerial 360 looks amazing, thanks for sharing.

G Davidson Posted at 2017-11-21 09:12
Thanks Geebax
I'm hidden in plain view  Not very easy to find....!

Devilishly cunning, disguising yourself as a sheep.  

I see you, hiding behind the sheep. Haha


"Bah bah black sheep, have you any wool?" ;-)


Good job on the 360*. . . .


RedHotPoker

DJI Mindy Posted at 2017-11-25 01:14
Very nice shot, aerial 360 looks amazing, thanks for sharing.

Thank you Mindy, glad you liked it

Dockater Posted at 2017-11-25 01:31
Devilishly cunning, disguising yourself as a sheep.

Hehe - those were actually round bales in front of me. The field to the left did have some sheep though!

RedHotPoker Posted at 2017-11-25 01:40
I see you, hiding behind the sheep. Haha

Thank you

Haha - those are round bales Evidence that I need more resolution!

G Davidson Posted at 2017-11-25 02:26
Hehe - those were actually round bales in front of me. The field to the left did have some sheep though!

Hmmmmm, I might be a city man, but I know what a sheep looks like. Your resolution is good enough for that.

As Mailie, an' her lambs thegither,
Was ae day nibbling on the tether,
Upon her cloot she coost a hitch,
An' owre she warsl'd in the ditch:
There, groaning, dying, she did lie,
When Hughoc he cam doytin by.

Wi' glowrin een, and lifted han's
Poor Hughoc like a statue stan's;
He saw her days were near-hand ended,
But, wae's my heart! he could na mend it!
He gaped wide, but naething spak,
At langth poor Mailie silence brak.
............

Dockater Posted at 2017-11-25 02:57
Hmmmmm, I might be a city man, but I know what a sheep looks like. Your resolution is good enough for that.

As Mailie, an' her lambs thegither,

Ahh Robert Burns poetry - nice! I just had to go look up the whole poem to see how it ended
It transpired I had a little more footage to hand.

Hmmm.... I could have drawn legs on them and said it was Haggis roaming in the wild

Bales

G Davidson Posted at 2017-11-25 04:49
Ahh Robert Burns poetry - nice! I just had to go look up the whole poem to see how it ended
It transpired I had a little more footage to hand.

Dear Mr Davidson, you are of course correct, the objects portrayed are indeed not sheep. After very careful examination I agree with you they are called “bales” very different indeed to the English “bails” as known from cricket, and not of course to be confused at all with “sheep”.

However, on closer examination I find lots of sheep not far from your hiding place.


Unfortunately the Burns poem “The Death and the Dying Words of poor Mailie“ the sheep, is not a happy one.

Dockater Posted at 2017-11-25 08:31
Dear Mr Davidson, you are of course correct, the objects portrayed are indeed not sheep. After very careful examination I agree with you they are called “bales” very different indeed to the English “bails” as known from cricket, and not of course to be confused at all with “sheep”.

However, on closer examination I find lots of sheep not far from your hiding place.

That’s very true - there were indeed sheep in the field to the left
That was indeed a sad tale for poor Mallie but a worthy read nonetheless and for which I am grateful!

An alternative turn of events could have been;

“Aye, a strange sicht the field wis when the fairmer forgot his glaisses and taen the bailer intae the wrang field. We spent the rest o' the nicht cuttin twine aff a' the sheep”

Hahahaha, OK, you win.

Dockater Posted at 2017-11-25 09:39
Hahahaha, OK, you win.

One day I may even catch sight of the elusive haggis in a 360 pano!

great Panos! May I ask you how you have done that. I try to shoot 360 panos with my Phantom 4 pro +. But since the remote has is own screen there is no way to shoot 360.

aWESOME SHOT !!

mAKE YOURSELVES SHEEPS AND WOLVES WILLL EAT YOU ;)

fans666712cb Posted at 2017-12-22 10:37
great Panos! May I ask you how you have done that. I try to shoot 360 panos with my Phantom 4 pro +. But since the remote has is own screen there is no way to shoot 360.

Thank you

I just aim the camera manually giving about 20% overlap between images. It doesn’t have to be precise as long as you don’t leave any  gaps. I’ll adjust the exposure between shots if necessary.

I shoot the sky half of the image before or after the flight using a DSLR camera on the ground.

The sky and ground panoramas are stitched separately using Kolor Autopano Giga and then brought together into one image.

It can get a bit tricky....

Nebuchadnezzar Posted at 2017-12-22 11:37
aWESOME SHOT !!

mAKE YOURSELVES SHEEPS AND WOLVES WILLL EAT YOU ;)

Thank you

Haha - I think I’d give those “sheep” a wide berth!

G Davidson Posted at 2017-12-22 12:47
Thank you

I just aim the camera manually giving about 20% overlap between images. It doesn’t have to be precise as long as you don’t leave any  gaps. I’ll adjust the exposure between shots if necessary.

thanks a lot, again great job!

fans666712cb Posted at 2018-1-6 05:13
thanks a lot, again great job!

Thank you You're very welcome. Hope you find a method that works for you (I see an automated panorama mode is slowly creeping into the P4 series)

G Davidson Posted at 2018-1-6 06:49
Thank you  You're very welcome. Hope you find a method that works for you (I see an automated panorama mode is slowly creeping into the P4 series)

Pardon my curiosity, since this issue is grabbing my attention recently.  So, you're taking a series of stills rotating your drone manually in - I assume - relatively calm weather, aiming the camera level with a horizon roughly at half the frame. Than you take another series of stills with DSLR on tripod, aiming above horizon to capture sky features. To my understanding both sequences must be taken with identical frame resolution, determined WB and rock solid apertures (i.e. full opening, in a way similar to timelapse technique?). Finally you stitch both sequences in software. I'm sure there's much more involved in the process to get such stunningly consistent image.

Would it be possible, however, to shot second drone sequence with camera aiming below horizon and get much deeper stitched panoramic view? With automatic Pano feature being implemented in Go app recently this should be no brainer, I assume, but is this assembly software able to deal with such?

Lovely shot