Looking over the fields at Benholm, Scotland - stitched pano

Benholm - stereographic pano

Holy smoke - that is a major half-pipe!

I thought the same thing. Nice picture.

Nice pano, well done!

Eric13 Posted at 2018-5-19 13:12
Holy smoke - that is a major half-pipe!

Hehe - it does rather look like one!

Hurley1718 Posted at 2018-5-19 19:11
I thought the same thing. Nice picture.

Thank you  

DJI Thor Posted at 2018-5-19 20:23
Nice pano, well done!

Thank you Thor!

G Davidson Posted at 2018-5-19 22:46
Thank you Thor!

Aloha G D,

     Nice image!  The half-pipe effect is interesting and what a glorious day!

     BTW, I just shot a PANO in the mountains behind my house and it came out to 32 MB.  How did you get your PANO down to 1 MB?  Mahalo in advance for the help!

Aloha and Drone On!

Cetacean Posted at 2018-5-20 00:32
Aloha G D,

     Nice image!  The half-pipe effect is interesting and what a glorious day!

Thank you The weather was perfect yesterday; glorious sun, just enough wind to keep cool and luscious greens all around. My only regret was only charging two batteries and finding myself walking much further than planned, giving up opportunities to fly whilst looking for a better shot. Rather like Polly in the film Skycaptain seeing all sorts of wonders and only having one shot left in the camera ;)

I have to break the illusion and say the fields are flat, the effect arising from the way its stitched. I tried it in black and white too but it looked a bit "meh"....

I downscale/resize all the images in Photoshop (usually to 2048pix wide) when posting them in the forum. For 360s I create a small image and then link them to whichever site is hosting the large version, often resizing them to meet their specfications too.
Here's how the fields really look - click image to look around

360

https://roundme.com/tour/273299/view/838684

G Davidson Posted at 2018-5-20 01:04
Thank you  The weather was perfect yesterday; glorious sun, just enough wind to keep cool and luscious greens all around. My only regret was only charging two batteries and finding myself walking much further than planned, giving up opportunities to fly whilst looking for a better shot. Rather like Polly in the film Skycaptain seeing all sorts of wonders and only having one shot left in the camera ;)

I have to break the illusion and say the fields are flat, the effect arising from the way its stitched. I tried it in black and white too but it looked a bit "meh"....

Aloha Graeme,

     Mahalo for the tips!  I guess my PANOs will have to be for my desktop for now.

Aloha and Drone On!

Cetacean Posted at 2018-5-20 02:08
Aloha Graeme,

     Mahalo for the tips!  I guess my PANOs will have to be for my desktop for now.

You're very welcome! If you have a windows PC, you can resize the image in MS paint and save it as a jpeg.

There's a tutorial at https://www.wikihow.com/Resize-an-Image-in-Microsoft-Paint that might help. For the image size, I'd select the pixels scaling option instead of percentage and save it at around 2000 pixels wide.

Worth a try!

G Davidson Posted at 2018-5-20 08:57
You're very welcome! If you have a windows PC, you can resize the image in MS paint and save it as a jpeg.

There's a tutorial at https://www.wikihow.com/Resize-an-Image-in-Microsoft-Paint that might help. For the image size, I'd select the pixels scaling option instead of percentage and save it at around 2000 pixels wide.

Aloha Graeme,

     Not a problem downsizing, I have been using photo editors for decades but once in a while a real large reduction occurs that leaves me baffled because the quality is still real good.  Maybe that is what you are saying about the pixel vs percentage reduction?  If anything, I will try to bring it in at just under 2 MB.

     I guess we are still hostage to the hosting sites that will display our full PANO images.  Oh well, I had not given it that much thought.  We are still on the cutting edge of the technology, so I guess we have to be patient for the market to catch up.  If I can get one of my PANOs down to below 2 MB, I will post it here for a test.  The weather is getting better and I shot a bunch of PANOs today from various altitudes.  Obviously a new toy!

     Mahalo again for the help!

Aloha and Drone On!

Cetacean Posted at 2018-5-21 00:36
Aloha Graeme,

     Not a problem downsizing, I have been using photo editors for decades but once in a while a real large reduction occurs that leaves me baffled because the quality is still real good.  Maybe that is what you are saying about the pixel vs percentage reduction?  If anything, I will try to bring it in at just under 2 MB.

Ahh, sorry I misunderstood.  Indeed, I still have to host my panos on an external site when posting here. Sometimes it’s Skypixel, Google Steetview (not so much these days since the recent change that removed the facility to add pictures to a named town on the map) and RoundMe which is rather good.

I generally upload 360 degree images at 10000 by 5000 pix to the pano sites and post a 2048 pix wide image here to click on that links back to the pano site. The size is all over the place ranging between 7MB to 35MB depending on detail in the 360!

Very nice

Those are seriously interesting pics.

Thanks for sharing them with the forum members. Awesome.



RedHotPoker

DEUCEDOG Posted at 2018-5-21 11:37
Very nice

Thank you Deucedog!

RedHotPoker Posted at 2018-5-21 11:42
Those are seriously interesting pics.

Thanks for sharing them with the forum members. Awesome.

Thank you RedHotPoker - that's very kind of you to say!

I'm glad to share my efforts - as long as I can keep finding interesting views

RedHotPoker Posted at 2018-5-21 11:42
Those are seriously interesting pics.

Thanks for sharing them with the forum members. Awesome.

Just for fun...

Upper Birnie - Little planet

That’s a real ball. Haha

Keep at it, you’ll only improve with experience over time.

I’m often amazed by the incredible abilities of the forum members.  ;-)

RedHotPoker

G Davidson Posted at 2018-5-21 10:48
Ahh, sorry I misunderstood.  Indeed, I still have to host my panos on an external site when posting here. Sometimes it’s Skypixel, Google Steetview (not so much these days since the recent change that removed the facility to add pictures to a named town on the map) and RoundMe which is rather good.

I generally upload 360 degree images at 10000 by 5000 pix to the pano sites and post a 2048 pix wide image here to click on that links back to the pano site. The size is all over the place ranging between 7MB to 35MB depending on detail in the 360!

Aloha Graeme,

     And another lesson learned yesterday!  I have to set the camera to manual exposure.  I finally had some nice weather and every time the camera would look up it would overexpose the next lower shot when it was in Auto.  So now I have to pay attention to that.  At least I have the filters to help out with my P4 Pro.  The Mavic Air is on its own.

     Any ideas on settings?  As a start, I am going to replicate the auto settings for a good exposure and then set them for manual.  You must have had to deal with that or something similar?

Aloha and Drone On!

Awesome Pics !  Well done.

Great shots.     

Superb work (as always)

Cetacean Posted at 2018-5-21 21:56
Aloha Graeme,

     And another lesson learned yesterday!  I have to set the camera to manual exposure.  I finally had some nice weather and every time the camera would look up it would overexpose the next lower shot when it was in Auto.  So now I have to pay attention to that.  At least I have the filters to help out with my P4 Pro.  The Mavic Air is on its own.

I probably spend just as much time on the exposure as I do with stitching

I’ve got the highlights warning enabled in DJI Go so that I can immediately see what is over exposed. I shoot in Auto but then use exposure compensation (right hand thumbwheel) to dial down the exposure until I’m not blowing much in the way of highlights. The technique is often referred as “exposing to the right” in that the image is exposed as bright possible without clipping the right hand side of the histogram.

A time saver in the air is to let the camera expose in Auto on the horizon 0 degrees shots (usually those are well exposed) and then press the Exposure lock button in DJI Go to lock the exposure before panning down for the next shot. Exposure lock cancels on the next shot. I keep about 15 to 20% of the Sky in shot on the 2nd row. It’s a habit I have which help guard agains stitching troubles when shooting seascapes.

Another method of changing the exposure is to tap the area of the screen you would like to expose for. I find it a bit hit and miss though.

I may even bracket the exposure on parts of the panorama if I can’t get everything exposed they way I would like and then deal with it in stitching.

Before stitching the images I will perform shadow recovery if necessary.

It can be a lot to think about in the air, especially when shooting the pano entirely manually. All to easy to miss a shot out of the pano sequence!

Spacetrakker Posted at 2018-5-21 23:08
Awesome Pics !  Well done.

Thank you

A CW Posted at 2018-5-22 02:07
Great shots.

Thank you!

Montfrooij Posted at 2018-5-22 02:56
Superb work (as always)

Thank you! Not had much opportunity to get out flying lately but last Saturday was a cracking day!

G Davidson Posted at 2018-5-22 07:22
I probably spend just as much time on the exposure as I do with stitching

I’ve got the highlights warning enabled in DJI Go so that I can immediately see what is over exposed. I shoot in Auto but then use exposure compensation (right hand thumbwheel) to dial down the exposure until I’m not blowing much in the way of highlights. The technique is often referred as “exposing to the right” in that the image is exposed as bright possible without clipping the right hand side of the histogram.

Aloha Graeme,

     After my last couple exposure disasters, I figured you were doing something much more involved.  You just confirmed it!  I hope the others on this forum appreciate what it takes for you to get those wonderful PANOs you create.  

     What you have explained is somewhat familiar to me but will require a lot of work on my part before I can even pick up a candle to hold toward your work!  You certainly have my appreciation.  I have copied your comments to a WORD file so I can work on it.

     My first PANOs were shot under mostly cloudy conditions facing away from the sun and now I know why they came out easy, nice and properly exposed for the most part.  This inspired me to try the spheres.  My spheres were shot under partly cloudy conditions and an exposure disaster.  At least now I understand why they were disasters!

     Mahalo for the help!

Aloha and Drone On!

Cetacean Posted at 2018-5-22 12:33
Aloha Graeme,

     After my last couple exposure disasters, I figured you were doing something much more involved.  You just confirmed it!  I hope the others on this forum appreciate what it takes for you to get those wonderful PANOs you create.  

You're too kind!
I did a cloudy overcast 360 once and never again - it was awful and the end result was depressingly gloomy! If there's a fair percentage of blue sky and slow moving cloud, I'll have a go.

I've attached a screen shot of what I typically feed the stitcher after working on the exposure. If each image looks reasonably exposed before stitching, the end result stands a good chance.

Thumbnails

Here's one of my cloudier examples - the lack of direct sunshine certainly gives a flatter less exciting look;
https://roundme.com/tour/211391/view/578697/

G Davidson Posted at 2018-5-22 13:15
You're too kind!
I did a cloudy overcast 360 once and never again - it was awful and the end result was depressingly gloomy! If there's a fair percentage of blue sky and slow moving cloud, I'll have a go.

Aloha Graeme,

     Well, I still stand by my earlier statement.   You do make good argument and show the way for improvements over mistakes I have not even made yet, but it is all good direction.

     Mahalo again for the help and great examples!

Aloha and Drone On!

G Davidson Posted at 2018-5-22 07:24
Thank you! Not had much opportunity to get out flying lately but last Saturday was a cracking day!

You're welcome.
I'm waiting for my repair....
So also no flying here.

Cetacean Posted at 2018-5-23 00:24
Aloha Graeme,

     Well, I still stand by my earlier statement.   You do make good argument and show the way for improvements over mistakes I have not even made yet, but it is all good direction.

I'm glad to have given you some food for thought. The best advice is to try and try again and learn from the inevitable failures that litter the path to success. I’ve had many mishap but better that than not to try at all

Montfrooij Posted at 2018-5-23 01:37
You're welcome.
I'm waiting for my repair....
So also no flying here.

Sorry to hear your drone is in for repair. Hope it’s a quick turnaround.

I’ve been really lucky with my Phantom 4 standard bought early 2016 with no troubles at all. There, I’ve jinxed it now!

G Davidson Posted at 2018-5-23 10:56
Sorry to hear your drone is in for repair. Hope it’s a quick turnaround.

I’ve been really lucky with my Phantom 4 standard bought early 2016 with no troubles at all. There, I’ve jinxed it now!

Yes, it should be.
As far as I know it will be delivered today.
(I'm not home, so I hope my wife will be....)