Anyone doing panoramas?

[timzee]

Been over a year since my Solo has flown but we recently got a job where I'd like to incorporate some 360 aerial panoramas into a virtual tour we're creating for a client. Would appreciate any input/tips/suggestions from anyone with experience in capturing aerial images with the Solo to be used in a panorama?

 

[Zzz]

Shoot a series of overlapping frames, then stitch them together using a tool like Hugin.

 

[timzee]

Shoot a series of overlapping frames, then stitch them together using a tool like Hugin.

Gee, now that's a helpful response. I assume you're kidding...

 

[Zzz]

Missed the 360 part. I still consider a panorama less than 180 degrees. What do you mean you don't feel like hand stitching thousands of control points?

How this... Buy a Mavic Pro. Not kidding. The Solo to me is a tinkerer's project that I only use because I can change lenses on the gopro.

 

[timzee]

Missed the 360 part. I still consider a panorama less than 180 degrees.

Absolutely. "Flat" panoramas make up a large part of our work.

How this... Buy a Mavic Pro. Not kidding. The Solo to me is a tinkerer's project that I only use because I can change lenses on the gopro.

Well I can't argue with that however as we already own Solos and have a GoPro 4 w/ Peau lens it just seems more practical to use what we have now-- at least for this immediate job. I have been looking at the Mavic Pro for possible use going forward.

 

[Zzz]

If I'm not mistaken, you get 360 panos one of two ways: using a super super wide angle dome lens then consuming that footage with a special viewer. Or you use software to stitch a sequential capture in real-time, which is the Magic solution IIRC. These cameras like the rylo and GoPro 360 use discrete front and rear cameras. Seems like it's be hard to eliminate the bird. I'm curious what you come up with.

 

[timzee]

If I'm not mistaken, you get 360 panos one of two ways: using a super super wide angle dome lens then consuming that footage with a special viewer. Or you use software to stitch a sequential capture in real-time, which is the Magic solution IIRC. These cameras like the rylo and GoPro 360 use discrete front and rear cameras. Seems like it's be hard to eliminate the bird. I'm curious what you come up with.

Actually you don't really need a special lens as long as your images cover the entire sphere. Of course something like a fisheye means you need far fewer images to accomplish that. We use a fisheye lens on our DSLRs and only need 8 images for any given scene.

And yes, there are cameras such as the Ricoh that can capture a 360 with one image but their system is not anywhere near "robust" enough for our needs. There's also mounts that incorporate multiple cameras.

While a drone such as the Solo might not be able to capture the straight up view (at least with me flying!) my thinking is that as this would simply be sky, it would be the easiest to patch in later.

 

[Joe Horn]

Sorry for asking the obvious question, but have you tried using the "Pano Smart Shot" panorama feature which is in the 3DR Solo app? It works for me, using an unmodified GoPro 4 Silver. An article about how it works can be found HERE.

 

[IrishmanPDX]

If you are trying to do a 360 degree shot with a 360 camera attached to the solo, the first thing you want to do is get the legs out of the shot. So retracts are a good idea. Then you would want to mount the camera below the bird and pretty far away. I recently saw a tutorial online for removing the drone from your 360 shots and the footage seemed to work quite well. If I find it again, I'll post the link here, but I'm sure you can find it via a google search.

 

[Zzz]

Sorry for asking the obvious question, but have you tried using the "Pano Smart Shot" panorama feature which is in the 3DR Solo app? It works for me, using an unmodified GoPro 4 Silver. An article about how it works can be found HERE.

Wow, cool. Forgot that was there since using Solex. There is this detail though:

The Pano Smart Shot allows you to easily and automatically capture all the images you need to create and customize epic aerial panoramas. (You do the stitching and editing in post.)

Goto post #2

 

[IrishmanPDX]

Wow, cool. Forgot that was there since using Solex. There is this detail though:



Goto post #2

Yup, overlapping frames could work but easier with photo's than video footage? Also with the Fusion, you could just hover the drone and then turn it 25 degree's. Two 360 shots, the second allow you to remove the legs from the first shot. 3M GoPro on the top of the drone, add another Fusion, use that one to get top footage..... ok.. now this sounds like work...

 

[timzee]

Sorry for asking the obvious question, but have you tried using the "Pano Smart Shot" panorama feature which is in the 3DR Solo app? It works for me, using an unmodified GoPro 4 Silver. An article about how it works can be found HERE.

Sometime the "obvious" is where one should start to look first! Only now did I recall the pano feature but never looked into it thinking it was probably too basic or that it required proprietary software. But from that page you linked to:

Spherical: These are the most complex and interesting panos. Instead of snapping photos in a single band, as for a cylindrical pano, Solo will automatically capture a half-sphere of images. Solo will shoot photos in three bands as the drone rotates. At each interval, instead of snapping one photo, Solo will shoot three — 90 degrees (camera facing straight forward); 45 degrees; and straight down — with perfect overlap.

It also appears that along with being able to stitch the images with your own software the camera's FOV can be adjusted to accommodate the special lens on our GP4.

I'll give this a try as soon as I get a chance. Thanks much for reminding me of the "obvious".

 

[timzee]

If you are trying to do a 360 degree shot with a 360 camera attached to the solo, the first thing you want to do is get the legs out of the shot. So retracts are a good idea. Then you would want to mount the camera below the bird and pretty far away. I recently saw a tutorial online for removing the drone from your 360 shots and the footage seemed to work quite well. If I find it again, I'll post the link here, but I'm sure you can find it via a google search.

Thanks but in this case we're using a GoPro 4 with Peau lens as we need the much higher resolution obtained by stitching together multiple rows of images.

 

[kamcgough]

I have been using the Kodak SP360 4K for his sort of work. This permits two cameras to generate a true 4K full 360 video (or photo)

A bit if work is required in post production to blend the horizons together.