mikeon
Second Officer
United States
Offline
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I've been using Litchi for this purpose. It can do a pano in 2 different ways: PANO mode, and pano action in WAYPOINT mode. The latter is what you apparently were considering.
In PANO mode, you can set the number of rows and shots. It kind of defaults to 3 rows (0°, -30°, -60°) of 8 shots each, plus two straight down shots 180° apart. I set my first row to +10° to collect a little sky, although I have to edit the props out later. This mode doesn't work in conjunction with WAYPOINT, so you must be within controller range of the aircraft.
PTGui and Microsoft Image Composite Editor will work out the number of rows and pictures per row automatically.
In Litchi WAYPOINT mode, you can take a row of photos, then go to a waypoint nearby (even straight up a few feet), then adjust the gimbal pitch, then return to the original waypoint, take another row of shots, etc.
I see no reason to take 7 shots straight down, in fact some people wonder whether 2 are necessary and one should be the other upside down.
All of this can be done in DJI GO, just rotate the aircraft and adjust gimbal angle manually.
I use PTGui to stitch, and they want manual exposure. The problem is you get a drastically overexposed sky, and/or a drastically underexposed foreground. Been tinkering with auto exposure bracketing ±2 EV. But I've so far had the best luck with RAW format and adjusting the exposure in Camera Raw before stitching.
Most websites hosting these spherical panoramas want 2:1 ratio, corresponding to 180° x 360° field of view. Since the Phantom can't photograph straight up, this means you either have to accept a big black disk at the top of your panorama, or stretch the clouds up in Photoshop (which gives weird-looking clouds), or paste in a photo of the sky taken separately and try to stitch it, or paste in something else like a medallion. PTGui allows you to output a panorama with the upward field of view limited. I like 30° up. If you don't want to see a blank sky or fake sky, just don't look up there. But I've only been able to view it locally on my computer with a web browser. None of the hosting sites lie Skypixel will accept it. |
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