I do not claim to be an expert photographer, and the solution I am about to promote is not necessarily the only solution to the problem I had.  I'm curious for the input of others.

This weekend I was taking a variety of 360 degree panoramic shots with the M3.  I save the RAWs, but I was utilizing the resulting JPG files.  I found that every one I was taking was producing a "mushy" underexposed "bottom".  The results were really crud.

Without going into my diagnostic process, I was able to identify the cause, and implement a solution (with a lot of trial and error in between).

The problem was that I was shooting in "pro", and what I had done was manually select the ISO and the apperture, and I was letting the drone change the shutter speed to account for exposure.  That was producing my "mushy" bottoms.

Where I finally landed was manually selecting the ISO and the shutter speed, and letting the drone change the apperture (auto).  I validated before taking the photo that the dimmest part of the view and brightest part of the view were still in range for the drone's apperture capabilities.

It seems that the "program" for executing the 360 panoramic was moving too fast for the shutter speed the drone was selecting for the dimmer parts of the scene.  When I was able to select a fixed/faster shutter speed (and let the drone automatically select the apperture), the JPG for the panoramic turned out really well.

When I went to full "AUTO", the picture was turning out better, but the sky was still blown out.  So full AUTO was better, but still not great.

Really you should shoot manually shutter and Aperture, so simply you need a certain SS and you use both the aperture and ISO to give you that use your use your histogram to expose for the brightest part of the image. 360s can be awkward because you’re drone is going to be facing into the Sun for some shots. Take in auto when sun is low , if you try when sun is high in the sky its going to be difficult. To perfect 360 is not easy and like you experienced auto is best also cloudy days. For other panos manual but expose for the brightest part of the image, you can easily bring back shadows but highlights are not so easy.

Hello there Charles Adams. Good day and thank you for sharing your interesting observations on 360 degree panoramas and for sharing your valued insight with regards to this matter. We will note these information for attention. Again, thank you for your support and keep flying.

Repeat after me:
“thou shalt always shoot thy panoramas in full manual”.
Nothing on auto.
Expose to the right at the brightest part of the sky (do not include the Sun itself though, these so called specular highlights are ok), and the use these settings for all frames.
You can always “pull out” the shadows.
If shooting during the bright day, consider doing HDR frames (still in full manual) and then doing so called HDR panorama.

Does anybody have instructions or a link to a video that details the workflow of using LIghtroom or Photoshop to import RAWS and turn them into a 360 degree sphere panoramic?  Every video I've found so far seems to miss some steps or be incomplete.

Charles Adams Posted at 2-1 14:57
Does anybody have instructions or a link to a video that details the workflow of using LIghtroom or Photoshop to import RAWS and turn them into a 360 degree sphere panoramic?  Every video I've found so far seems to miss some steps or be incomplete.

There should be plenty of videos.

hallmark007 Posted at 2-1 15:28
There should be plenty of videos.

https://youtu.be/WkBXOYf0udE

I am following along now as we type.  I've tried to follow along other videos, but either kept getting odd/different results or they seemed to miss a step (and I think I've tried a dozen).  This one is new to me, so giving it a go right now!

Charles Adams Posted at 2-1 15:32
I am following along now as we type.  I've tried to follow along other videos, but either kept getting odd/different results or they seemed to miss a step (and I think I've tried a dozen).  This one is new to me, so giving it a go right now!

Good Luck….

what I had done was manually select the ISO and the apperture, and I was letting the drone change the shutter speed to account for exposure.  That was producing my "mushy" bottoms.
Is this just a guess or have you looked into it seriously and found that to be the explanation?
It sounds unlikely that the shutter speed required for the lower images would be so different that it would cause a problem.
Post one of the individual mushy jpg images and I'll be able to look a little deeper into what's actually going on.

Labroides Posted at 2-1 16:11
what I had done was manually select the ISO and the apperture, and I was letting the drone change the shutter speed to account for exposure.  That was producing my "mushy" bottoms.
Is this just a guess or have you looked into it seriously and found that to be the explanation?
It sounds unlikely that the shutter speed required for the lower images would be so different that it would cause a problem.

I'm game, but ONLY the drone-stitched panoramic jpg has the "mushy" bottom.  The individual raw files (DNG) are sharp.  This happened consistently until I switched my pro settings.  I took many 360s, and kept getting blurry bottoms.  I even thought it might have been the polarized lens, and switched to the default lens cover (spoiler alert:  nope).

So I can post a 360 jpg pano if you can review that and diagnose it, but the raws are clean and sharp.

That's why I'm looking into figuring out how to merge and make my own 360s from the RAW images.

OR...  you can let me know if using the stitched 360 photo is rubbish anyways, and not worth diagnosing because it's best to create it in post anyways.  So let me know and I'll post it here (even though it won't render as a 360 pano image).

Thanks for the hint!

Charles Adams Posted at 2-1 16:29
I'm game, but ONLY the drone-stitched panoramic jpg has the "mushy" bottom.  The individual raw files (DNG) are sharp.  This happened consistently until I switched my pro settings.  I took many 360s, and kept getting blurry bottoms.  I even thought it might have been the polarized lens, and switched to the default lens cover (spoiler alert:  nope).

So I can post a 360 jpg pano if you can review that and diagnose it, but the raws are clean and sharp.

ONLY the drone-stitched panoramic jpg has the "mushy" bottom.  The individual raw files (DNG) are sharp.
The in-drone stitching will always produce something that's inferior to doing a proper stitching job yourself.
If the individual shots are sharp and properly exposed, your poor results with auto-stitching are unrelated to shutter speeds or camera settings.

This happened consistently until I switched my pro settings.  I took many 360s, and kept getting blurry bottoms.  I even thought it might have been the polarized lens
If you are attempting to shoot panoramas with a polarising filter, toss it away.
The polarising filter only works properly when it's properly aligned relative to the sun.
You cannot realign it each time you change the drone's heading, so it's going to give you all kinds of issues making panoramas.
Save them for use on the ground where you can align them correctly.
Despite their popularity with forum users, polarising filters are more trouble than they are worth for drone photography.