So happy!

We can tell...

Thanks for sharing this video and information! It will definitely be helpful for others on the forum. Have a great day! Thank You!

Hi Ian,

Great video and indeed Free Pano is amazing.

When selecting left top and right bottom of the free pano yiu might think that this is the full pano output.
It is not.

See an example of which part (18 pics in total)  is left out of the final pano output.

But, still an great pano mode !  

cheers
JJB

JJB* Posted at 11-2 01:55
Hi Ian,

Great video and indeed Free Pano is amazing.

Hey JJB

How many images were taken by the drone for that pano?

Cheers

Bussty

JJB* Posted at 11-2 01:55
Hi Ian,

Great video and indeed Free Pano is amazing.

Hi JJB
Sorry to be a bit thick; I'm not following.  I see your examples, but those screen shots don't seem to reflect what the remote would have shown when defining the area?  If you look at 2:26 on the video, you see me setting the top left of the pano area.  At 2:37 you see me set the bottom right of the pano; note the small island and ground bottom right.  The final panorama shown at 3:19 reflects both areas defined, so I'm not following how your pictures show a much wider area.  Are these what was shown using the Free Pano mode on the Air 3S for those?   Cheers, Ian

Bussty Posted at 11-2 02:13
Hey JJB

How many images were taken by the drone for that pano?

Hi,

18x

cheers
JJB

an in London Posted at 11-2 02:21
Hi JJB
Sorry to be a bit thick; I'm not following.  I see your examples, but those screen shots don't seem to reflect what the remote would have shown when defining the area?  If you look at 2:26 on the video, you see me setting the top left of the pano area.  At 2:37 you see me set the bottom right of the pano; note the small island and ground bottom right.  The final panorama shown at 3:19 reflects both areas defined, so I'm not following how your pictures show a much wider area.  Are these what was shown using the Free Pano mode on the Air 3S for those?   Cheers, Ian

yes, AIR3s 18 pictures in Free Pano mode

Final result is not using the entire coverage of the 18 seperate pics.

Just made a new pano with less than 18 pics, will check it out again.

Check this pano with 4 pics,  windmill is rotating so you can see wich picture is used in the pano result pic.
See how much top, bottem and left is not used for the output file.

Found the or my error  :-)
See 2 other screenshots, one taken at press C1 for setting start position of the free pano, second when the picture are taken.
So left and right is 'exactly' correct.To get the exact upper and lower correct is bit tricky as you cannot see that setting the cam at the desired angles.

JJB* Posted at 11-2 04:39
yes, AIR3s 18 pictures in Free Pano mode

Final result is not using the entire coverage of the 18 seperate pics.

Ah!  Right, I understand now; sorry, missed that you were talking about the individual output files as opposed to the screen.
Yes, that doesn't surprise me though; it will line up what it thinks is required to produce the panorama specified but the area of the photos will always be more, so it can then trim the inidividual photos accordingly to match what was instructed.  But of course that makes your job of stitching things together manually all the harder, but at least you have a big margin to make use of if you want to do that

Nice find Bussty.    Ian did a fantastic job on that video.  Would be nice if DJI added this feature to the Air 3 also.  

DowntownRDB Posted at 11-2 05:45
Nice find Bussty.    Ian did a fantastic job on that video.  Would be nice if DJI added this feature to the Air 3 also.

Yes Downtown that was a stunning shot Ian captured of those cliffs, FreePano made it so easy too. I really hope DJI do pass it on to the Air3 as we said right at the start it was just a software upgrade. Really looking forward to seeing some full resolution 70mm matched 24mm views as should be stunning and all photographers wanting to take their land based craft to the skies with the same quality should be very excited, as should DJI (sales!)  :-)

Burt37 Posted at 11-1 22:55
We can tell...

Yes just getting a little bit excited

Bussty Posted at 11-2 14:47
Yes Downtown that was a stunning shot Ian captured of those cliffs, FreePano made it so easy too. I really hope DJI do pass it on to the Air3 as we said right at the start it was just a software upgrade. Really looking forward to seeing some full resolution 70mm matched 24mm views as should be stunning and all photographers wanting to take their land based craft to the skies with the same quality should be very excited, as should DJI (sales!)  :-)

It's definitely a function that DJI can market but they need to get it out to their current flagships, especially since it is software dependent and not hardware.  Anyway, guess we will just wait and see if DJI also rolls it out to the Air 3.  I hope you are having a great weekend.

DowntownRDB Posted at 11-2 15:07
It's definitely a function that DJI can market but they need to get it out to their current flagships, especially since it is software dependent and not hardware.  Anyway, guess we will just wait and see if DJI also rolls it out to the Air 3.  I hope you are having a great weekend.

Fingers crossed!

Thanks, installing a Louvre Pergola system so having great fun :-) Hope your enjoying yours too :-)  

Bussty Posted at 11-2 15:09
Fingers crossed!

Thanks, installing a Louvre Pergola system so having great fun :-) Hope your enjoying yours too :-)

Thanks for the well wishes Bussty.  I took my jet ski out this morning and this afternoon I took my ATV for a tour around the perimeter of my property.  I'm having trouble keeping trespassing hunters off my land so I have to take a tour every once in a while until I get more surveillance cameras up.  

Bussty Posted at 11-2 14:48
Yes just getting a little bit excited

It is always nice when things go the right way with DJI...

We need more of this, positive happening...

DowntownRDB Posted at 11-2 15:20
Thanks for the well wishes Bussty.  I took my jet ski out this morning and this afternoon I took my ATV for a tour around the perimeter of my property.  I'm having trouble keeping trespassing hunters off my land so I have to take a tour every once in a while until I get more surveillance cameras up.

This is actually sounding like fun :-) Hope the rest of the weekend goes smoothly. Cheers Bussty

Bussty Posted at 11-3 00:28
This is actually sounding like fun :-) Hope the rest of the weekend goes smoothly. Cheers Bussty

It's a bit fun but can also be dangerous as these hunters carry high powered rifles so I have to be extremely careful even though I'm on my own property.  So far I've had 3 arrested and turned in trail cam photos of two others to have arrested.  

On my first drone flight this morning just before sunrise I saw some light down through the trees that resembled light from a flashlight but after zooming in I couldn't find the source.  Probably was a trespasser who heard the drone and turned off his light and made a hasty exit.  The bushes and trees are heavy in that area so my aerial surveillance at that location is somewhat hampered.  I checked the area out later and found new boot prints but lost track of them after about 50 meters.  I'm going to put up a few more trail cameras in that area.  

I wish DJI would add DNG output support because I found it's pretty  hard to assemble a panorama from bracketed DNG shots. Tried PTgui,  Lightroom and Photoshop. Nothing beats the drone itself in stitching  accuracy. It's still possible with some tinkering of course, but it's a  lot of pain lol. The current JPEG output is ok but it's hard to edit. If  DJI adds DNG support either in the Air 3s or the upcoming Mavic 4 - it  would be terrific.  
My panoramas so far: https://photostream.us/#/photos/djipano

I see an error that appears at some points in my drone at Free panorama...
If the original point is at around 10 degrees upper than 0 and the total area is over 100 degrees left right, after 1st picture the drone stops and says that is in motion and exits...
Will do a screen rec, as it seems that can be repeated as error.

DowntownRDB Posted at 11-3 05:36
It's a bit fun but can also be dangerous as these hunters carry high powered rifles so I have to be extremely careful even though I'm on my own property.  So far I've had 3 arrested and turned in trail cam photos of two others to have arrested.  

On my first drone flight this morning just before sunrise I saw some light down through the trees that resembled light from a flashlight but after zooming in I couldn't find the source.  Probably was a trespasser who heard the drone and turned off his light and made a hasty exit.  The bushes and trees are heavy in that area so my aerial surveillance at that location is somewhat hampered.  I checked the area out later and found new boot prints but lost track of them after about 50 meters.  I'm going to put up a few more trail cameras in that area.

Wow didnt realise, good thing you have a drone to help with the surveillance. Not much fun when poachers are carrying high powered rifles.

Ian in London Posted at 11-2 02:21
Hi JJB
Sorry to be a bit thick; I'm not following.  I see your examples, but those screen shots don't seem to reflect what the remote would have shown when defining the area?  If you look at 2:26 on the video, you see me setting the top left of the pano area.  At 2:37 you see me set the bottom right of the pano; note the small island and ground bottom right.  The final panorama shown at 3:19 reflects both areas defined, so I'm not following how your pictures show a much wider area.  Are these what was shown using the Free Pano mode on the Air 3S for those?   Cheers, Ian

Hi Ian,

Please try a Free Pano with the 3x lens, gimbal at start in angle +10degrees, for End use a 100 degree turn of drone and the gimbal at around -45 degrees.

I always get a message with Movement detected, pano ended...
Seems to be a bug ?

Tks.

djifanboi Posted at 11-3 13:18
I wish DJI would add DNG output support because I found it's pretty  hard to assemble a panorama from bracketed DNG shots. Tried PTgui,  Lightroom and Photoshop. Nothing beats the drone itself in stitching  accuracy. It's still possible with some tinkering of course, but it's a  lot of pain lol. The current JPEG output is ok but it's hard to edit. If  DJI adds DNG support either in the Air 3s or the upcoming Mavic 4 - it  would be terrific.  
My panoramas so far: https://photostream.us/#/photos/djipano

Have you tried developing the DNG's first then stitching TIFF's?  That's what I normally do. When Adobe or DXO finally get some presets the quality from the developed DNGS should be even better. I think right now Adobe and Affinity will develop the DNGs but not at a preset designed for the files.  When DXO brought out the Preset for the Mini 3 Pro using the Deep Prime XD settings it seemed to be quite an improvement.

Is it even possible to render a DNG stitched Pano? From what I have DJI crops the Pano's quite a bit, it's really hard to imagine something like PTGUI would do a worse job as that software is amazing (so is Panorama Studio) Have you seen these faqs in PTGUI

https://ptgui.com/support.html#5_6

https://ptgui.com/support.html#6_5

I have found both those have helped on difficult stiches

I would be trying the develop to TIFF first then stitching.

Good luck!

I would also try downloading Panorama Studio 3 (I think) and trying out on the trial version that software can do miracles too!

Cheers

Bussty Posted at 11-3 21:51
Wow didnt realise, good thing you have a drone to help with the surveillance. Not much fun when poachers are carrying high powered rifles.

You're absolutely right about that.  I hope your week is off to a great start.  

Bussty Posted at 11-4 01:09
Have you tried developing the DNG's first then stitching TIFF's?  That's what I normally do. When Adobe or DXO finally get some presets the quality from the developed DNGS should be even better. I think right now Adobe and Affinity will develop the DNGs but not at a preset designed for the files.  When DXO brought out the Preset for the Mini 3 Pro using the Deep Prime XD settings it seemed to be quite an improvement.

Is it even possible to render a DNG stitched Pano? From what I have DJI crops the Pano's quite a bit, it's really hard to imagine something like PTGUI would do a worse job as that software is amazing (so is Panorama Studio) Have you seen these faqs in PTGUI

Thank you for the tips, Bussty! I have a similar approach. I run all DNGs through LR Denoise (it also increases sharpness if the NR value is not too high), export denoised DNGs into PNGs, and then dump everything into PTgui.

I noticed that PTgui quite often produces stitching artifacts. Theoretically I can fix them by adding control points, but that's way too much work imho Also, PTgui can get a bunch of moving cars artefacts. None in the in-drone stiched panoramas. That's why I wish for DJI to produce a lossless 12+ bit panorama image. Can be encoded as DNG, since the existing single-frame DNGs are not exactly "raw" either. We would not need to mess with manual stitching if we want an "editable" panorama. Yes, I can get a wider angle if I stitch manually, but that's not a huge deal, at least for me.

djifanboi Posted at 11-4 20:57
Thank you for the tips, Bussty! I have a similar approach. I run all DNGs through LR Denoise (it also increases sharpness if the NR value is not too high), export denoised DNGs into PNGs, and then dump everything into PTgui.

I noticed that PTgui quite often produces stitching artifacts. Theoretically I can fix them by adding control points, but that's way too much work imho  Also, PTgui can get a bunch of moving cars artefacts. None in the in-drone stiched panoramas. That's why I wish for DJI to produce a lossless 12+ bit panorama image. Can be encoded as DNG, since the existing single-frame DNGs are not exactly "raw" either. We would not need to mess with manual stitching if we want an "editable" panorama. Yes, I can get a wider angle if I stitch manually, but that's not a huge deal, at least for me.

Yep sounds like you are all over it. Are you finding this stitch issue using the 70mm?  That's becoming my intended focus for this drone creating DSLR like 24mm views using 7-9 or so stitched 70mm images. You have probably seen too that the likes of PTGUI will way more easily stitch 70mm images than 24mm.

I really would try the trial of Panorama Studio (now up to version 4) it did stitch some images I had trouble with PTGUI.

Good luck! :-)

P.S. Manual control points... yuck!!  

Bussty Posted at 11-4 21:52
Yep sounds like you are all over it. Are you finding this stitch issue using the 70mm?  That's becoming my intended focus for this drone creating DSLR like 24mm views using 7-9 or so stitched 70mm images. You have probably seen too that the likes of PTGUI will way more easily stitch 70mm images than 24mm.

I really would try the trial of Panorama Studio (now up to version 4) it did stitch some images I had trouble with PTGUI.

I'm using the 24mm equiv. camera. For some reason I never thought of trying the 70mm one It should produce huge panoramas. How's the quality of the 1/1.3" sensor? As far as I know it's also a quad bayer sensor, so theoretically DR should be acceptable @ 12Mpx, especially for bracketed shots. I'll give it a try tomorrow!

P.S. Never tried Panorama Studio. I looked it up - seems like an interesting product, will have to check it out...

djifanboi Posted at 11-4 22:56
I'm using the 24mm equiv. camera. For some reason I never thought of trying the 70mm one  It should produce huge panoramas. How's the quality of the 1/1.3" sensor? As far as I know it's also a quad bayer sensor, so theoretically DR should be acceptable @ 12Mpx, especially for bracketed shots. I'll give it a try tomorrow!

P.S. Never tried Panorama Studio. I looked it up - seems like an interesting product, will have to check it out...

Huge Panoramas and super detailed 24mm shots that only a couple of drones in DJI's arsenal can do automatically.  If you check out Hallmark's Post here:-  https://forum.dji.com/forum.php? ... D938%26typeid%3D938  I think the third shot vertical is a 70mm stitch, as you can see the quality is pretty nice and I think the only way you are getting that is stitching 70mm shots to simulate something wider. If you do the maths and it takes 7 or 9 70mm's to match a 24mm view 7x 12MP = more than a 70MB resolution file of a standard view. Love to see your tests, I have asked a few forum members if they could post a link to the 70mm DNG's that make up a 24mm view and also a single frame taken with the 24mm to compare the quality. I just want to see it with my own eyes before I buy the Air3s.

Cheers        

Bussty Posted at 11-4 23:25
Huge Panoramas and super detailed 24mm shots that only a couple of drones in DJI's arsenal can do automatically.  If you check out Hallmark's Post here:-  https://forum.dji.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=322633&extra=page%3D1%26filter%3Dtypeid%26typeid%3D938%26typeid%3D938  I think the third shot vertical is a 70mm stitch, as you can see the quality is pretty nice and I think the only way you are getting that is stitching 70mm shots to simulate something wider. If you do the maths and it takes 7 or 9 70mm's to match a 24mm view 7x 12MP = more than a 70MB resolution file of a standard view. Love to see your tests, I have asked a few forum members if they could post a link to the 70mm DNG's that make up a 24mm view and also a single frame taken with the 24mm to compare the quality. I just want to see it with my own eyes before I buy the Air3s.

Cheers

I'll try to do it either today or tomorrow.
Bracketed and regular, and will try to match FoV. I'm very curious myself.

djifanboi Posted at 11-5 08:58
I'll try to do it either today or tomorrow.
Bracketed and regular, and will try to match FoV. I'm very curious myself.

Awesome, thank you!  

Bussty Posted at 11-5 11:15
Awesome, thank you!

It was getting dark so I could only try the 70mm. Got 40 shots x 5 frames per bracket = 200 pictures @ 12Mpx. I decided to dump all DNGs into PTGui without running them through LR (i.e. no ML-based sharpening or NR applied). It worked just fine. PTGui failed to find control points in just one image. It's a pretty standard thing imho with sky / clouds. I added 3 control points, removed tone mapping, etc, flattened the output curve (so it would look like a log profile at the end), and produced a 1.6GB PSD file. Processed in LR to taste. 255Mpx panorama. Lots of details. The 24mm equiv lens would produce 8-10 images (x 5) to cover the same FoV. The only downside - it took ~10% of the charge to get this one panorama done.

Compared to the in-drone stitched jpeg - wider angle, especially vertically, significantly higher editing latitude, but blurry cars Not a huge deal. Theoretically, if merged correctly in PS, they could be avoided, or simply stamped out later. Also, the drone produced a 58Mpx panorama. So it's basically a quarter of what's possible to get @ 12Mpx.

Overall I liked this 70mm camera. Good quality for such a tiny lens / sensor.


Here's the result, ~430MB png:
https://gallery-api.medolap.com/api/file/any/7d1664fb-3c2d-43a7-bcb7-906e00530949

djifanboi Posted at 11-5 18:42
It was getting dark so I could only try the 70mm. Got 40 shots x 5 frames per bracket = 200 pictures @ 12Mpx. I decided to dump all DNGs into PTGui without running them through LR (i.e. no ML-based sharpening or NR applied). It worked just fine. PTGui failed to find control points in just one image. It's a pretty standard thing imho with sky / clouds. I added 3 control points, removed tone mapping, etc, flattened the output curve (so it would look like a log profile at the end), and produced a 1.6GB PSD file. Processed in LR to taste. 255Mpx panorama. Lots of details. The 24mm equiv lens would produce 8-10 images (x 5) to cover the same FoV. The only downside - it took ~10% of the charge to get this one panorama done.

Compared to the in-drone stitched jpeg - wider angle, especially vertically, significantly higher editing latitude, but blurry cars  Not a huge deal. Theoretically, if merged correctly in PS, they could be avoided, or simply stamped out later. Also, the drone produced a 58Mpx panorama. So it's basically a quarter of what's possible to get @ 12Mpx.

Cheers for doing this but that link is coming back with this error?

{
  "error": "Object reference not set to an instance of an object.",
  "url": null
}

Bussty Posted at 11-5 19:02
Cheers for doing this but that link is coming back with this error?

{

Thank you for finding a bug in my code
It supposed to return the original image but instead it tried to convert the image to webp using Google's SkiaSharp library. Apparently the Skia encoder fails on large files. So it's not just me lol.
Anyways, I fixed it. The link should work, and alternatively you can load the first image from https://photostream.us and press "R" twice (it will load the original 255 Mpx pano). It may take some time, my server connection is not fast.

djifanboi Posted at 11-5 21:05
Thank you for finding a bug in my code
It supposed to return the original image but instead it tried to convert the image to webp using Google's SkiaSharp library. Apparently the Skia encoder fails on large files. So it's not just me lol.
Anyways, I fixed it. The link should work, and alternatively you can load the first image from https://photostream.us and press "R" twice (it will load the original 255 Mpx pano). It may take some time, my server connection is not fast.

Managed to get to load, found it best to download to my local PC and view with ACDSee. There is a tonne of detail in that image and on quite a dark sort of a day too. Impressive! Thank you for posting.   

Bussty Posted at 11-6 02:30
Managed to get to load, found it best to download to my local PC and view with ACDSee. There is a tonne of detail in that image and on quite a dark sort of a day too. Impressive! Thank you for posting.

Awesome! Now just need to find a better place to photograph I wish I lived in NZ.

djifanboi Posted at 11-6 07:08
Awesome! Now just need to find a better place to photograph  I wish I lived in NZ.

Lol yes we are very lucky but looks like you have some very nice fall colours over there. Some NZ images you might like, some taken with Mini 3 Pro  https://andrewbusst.wixsite.com/mysite    Cheers

Bussty Posted at 11-6 12:30
Lol yes we are very lucky but looks like you have some very nice fall colours over there. Some NZ images you might like, some taken with Mini 3 Pro  https://andrewbusst.wixsite.com/mysite    Cheers

Wow, your panoramas look amazing!
IMHO NZ is one of the most beautiful places on our planet.

After looking at your 360 panoramas I think it would be really nice if DJI made a dual camera VR drone. Something that could shoot 180 degree dual fish eyes and play them on Apple Vision. Imagine your pictures in stereoscopic VR, like you’re seeing them for real.

djifanboi Posted at 11-7 02:24
Wow, your panoramas look amazing!
IMHO NZ is one of the most beautiful places on our planet.

Thank you so much, very kind! They are mostly with the little 24mm lens of the Mini 3 Pro.  

Yes that would be amazing and I think we will get there one day.

Thank goodness they have locked up a good chunk of the country as a National Park.

Cheers

what about other drones, e.g. mavic 3 pro, will there be free pano at all or can we forget about it?

That is nice!