Hi everybody

I'd really like to create a few HDR-Panoramas (for 3D lighting) and it would be so cool to have the bracketing-shooting-options in the panorama modes.

Is there a trick or is this just not (yet I hope) supported?

Thanks for any ideas

John

Yes, I do this all the time.
It is time consuming.
BUT
Totally worth it.
Here is one I made recently

Montfrooij Posted at 2018-9-10 23:29
Yes, I do this all the time.
It is time consuming.
BUT

very nice... but you are creating 3-5 different single panos with different exposures and combine them in post right?

Montfrooij Posted at 2018-9-10 23:29
Yes, I do this all the time.
It is time consuming.
BUT

Wow this looks so awesome. Could you explain how you did that?

My process:
1. Set drone in manual mode.
2. Expose for about the brightest part of the panorama and over expose a bit.
3. Put camera in portrait mode. (only Mavic Pro)
4. Set shooting mode to AEB 5
5. Fix focus (Mavic Pro)
6. Start shooting your panorama by hand. (turning only left / right, and up / down if you don't have portrait mode)
7. Make sure you make a 'in between' shot if you do another pano, otherwise you will end up looking for the start of a new pano sequence later.
8. Transfer files to your PC (mac)
9. Make HDR merges from every stack of 5 images (I found this way to give the best results) and store your HDR preset for the next stack. (I use Affinity Photo for this, almost as good as Photoshop, but much much cheaper)
10. Save all the stacks like 001.jpg, 002.jpg etc. and move the original pictures you have merged to a separate folder (not needed, but that way I keep things organized)
11. Now use your panorama stitching software to create a panorama (I use Autopano Giga for this) from the merged pictures (001.jpg, 002.jpg etc.) .
12. Make final adjustments in your photo editor.  

Autopano Giga does a (much) better job than the other stitching software I have tried (photoshop, affinity photo, dji editor, MS ICE) but is a bit expensive.

photoholic Posted at 2018-9-10 23:32
very nice... but you are creating 3-5 different single panos with different exposures and combine them in post right?

No, that was my first workflow. If found a better way. Look at my second reply.

saviour Posted at 2018-9-10 23:32
Wow this looks so awesome. Could you explain how you did that?

Yes, I just did in post #5

Montfrooij Posted at 2018-9-10 23:39
Yes, I just did in post #5

Thanks man. I'm on a MA but should be working for that, too. So basicly the difference is, you take the photos manually and also create a manual HDR of each individual photo which is then later on merged together to the panorama.

I will definitely try it out.

saviour Posted at 2018-9-11 00:07
Thanks man. I'm on a MA but should be working for that, too. So basicly the difference is, you take the photos manually and also create a manual HDR of each individual photo which is then later on merged together to the panorama.

I will definitely try it out.

Yes I guess so. Except for the lack of portrait mode I think.
So you will have to make 2 rows in your pano.
This way you get much less ghosting because the stitching process is never 100% the same.
So if you make 3 pano's and HDR merge them later, you get nasty alignment issues.

The inbuilt pano modes are useless anyway - you cant select a specific FOV and it centres the horizon before taking so manual is always better.

My technique is:-

Gimbal down and take photo of the ground directly below... This allows me to see the START of my panorama in lightroom.
Set exposure to slightly burn out brightest bit (+1.3 or so of sun for example).
Take panorama manually using AEB 5 and moving the camera as desired
Gimbal down single photo of ground again to see end of sequence.
Then HDR merge in LR
Then Pano merge
<end>

gnirtS Posted at 2018-9-11 02:36
The inbuilt pano modes are useless anyway - you cant select a specific FOV and it centres the horizon before taking so manual is always better.

My technique is:-

Thanks... I think with the 360 pano option from DJI you can choose the center-image... it's just the image you have in focus once you've started the process I guess.

I understand that most of you guys are going manually but this is not the way you go because it's so much fun but because DJI did not implement those functions the right way...

So DJI please read and improve ;)

Manual is always the way to go if you want the most control over the images you're creating.  Be that a drone or a DSLR.

Trusting a software engineer who you've never met to guess how you want an image doesnt really product satisfactory results be that a drone or a Canon 5D4.

gnirtS Posted at 2018-9-11 02:48
Manual is always the way to go if you want the most control over the images you're creating.  Be that a drone or a DSLR.

Trusting a software engineer who you've never met to guess how you want an image doesnt really product satisfactory results be that a drone or a Canon 5D4.

I do not agree (believe an engineer AND photographer).

I want to set the number of bracket-shots, exposure-steps, ISO, center shot or initial position and middle exposure value. The rest (position drone and camera and shot the desired number of times) can be made with much more precision and much much faster by an algorithm and the drone itself. It does as a sideeffect give the chance to feed pano apps like PTGui, Autopano and others with this algorithm and make the detection and align process much faster (in Autopano it's possible to create a 32bit image with bracketed shots in one process-step).

Believe me... it would be the best... I've been working a long time with the full programmable GigaPan and it's sooo much easier to let machines do the movement and shooting.

But the machine doesnt know the field of view you want with the framing and often cant tell what is and isnt going to be a decent overlap on a photo whereas with practice a human can.

When i do a pano i want to set the horizon position, i want to determine the overlap, i want a specific shot in frame, i often want to bracket exposures.  Sadly the DJI pano hasnt and still doesn't offer that.

360s are a bit different as its hard to keep track off.  360 is also fairly poor on the M2 currently as it only gimbal tilts to +15 instead of the +30 thats possible meaning  lot more blank space to stretch, fill or otherwise use.  And it still seems to ignore EV and so on in exposures when doing it in auto so you're forced manual here.

Then again AEB only giving 0.7ev between shots its often rubbish as well.

Montfrooij Posted at 2018-9-10 23:38
My process:
1. Set drone in manual mode.
2. Expose for about the brightest part of the panorama and over expose a bit.

I use similiar methods at the moment  

gnirtS Posted at 2018-9-11 03:16
But the machine doesnt know the field of view you want with the framing and often cant tell what is and isnt going to be a decent overlap on a photo whereas with practice a human can.

When i do a pano i want to set the horizon position, i want to determine the overlap, i want a specific shot in frame, i often want to bracket exposures.  Sadly the DJI pano hasnt and still doesn't offer that.

Well now I agree ;)

As I said... DJI do your homework (we need the 30 degree gimbal-up-fix) ))))

photoholic Posted at 2018-9-11 03:08
I do not agree (believe an engineer AND photographer).

I want to set the number of bracket-shots, exposure-steps, ISO, center shot or initial position and middle exposure value. The rest (position drone and camera and shot the desired number of times) can be made with much more precision and much much faster by an algorithm and the drone itself. It does as a sideeffect give the chance to feed pano apps like PTGui, Autopano and others with this algorithm and make the detection and align process much faster (in Autopano it's possible to create a 32bit image with bracketed shots in one process-step).

The panorama's that Autopano creates vary slightly, so I skipped that road. (letting Autopano create 5 panorama's and merge them later).
You get very ugly ghosting because of the misalignment on some parts of the panorama.
The manual way is the only way right now.
I know, it would be possible for sure. Not even too difficult to implement.
Maybe some 3rd party apps will come with this sooner than DJI even.

Hi, Thanks for your inquiry. I would like to ask first, what specific aircraft are you about to use and do this scenario? We can forward your suggestion to our engineers to see what we can do to make it happen. Thank you for the support.

DJI Tony Posted at 2018-9-11 14:16
Hi, Thanks for your inquiry. I would like to ask first, what specific aircraft are you about to use and do this scenario? We can forward your suggestion to our engineers to see what we can do to make it happen. Thank you for the support.

I'm using a Mavic 2 Pro... but this is something every drone would profit.

It would be cool to have an official feature-list where all users could vote and influence the developers process.

I don't want to be greedy... all my heart desires is an exposure-bracketing-feature for the panorama modes!