Hi, Guys!
Today finally the weather settled down enough for flying, and I was eager to test the new Litchi v 2.0.0 (iOS) auto pano feature, and the option to stitch the pano right in the device.
My findings so far:
1) yes, it works quite well, despite marked as beta;
2) it does the pano quite fast and with fever photos as I used to do manually (it takes 9-8-5 photos in rows and 1 nadir);
3) sometimes, it leaves some black gaps, but, I convinced, it has more to do with birds ability to hold its position despite winds, and depands on the AGL heigth as well (je higher AGL, je easier to keep the relative frame movement in acceptable limits).
Stiching:
1)After completing the pano sequence, the low-res versions of images are downloaded to device while bird still in air (not too long);
2) Because of warning in litchis manual and of common sense, I didn’t tried to stich panos with bird airborne (but, theorethically, it is possible and on reasonable fast device takes not too much time (on my 9,7” iPad Pro about the same amount of time that for downloading the lowres images);
3) The lowres version is quite OK for quick sharing, and You can choose Tiny Planet or sphere view (the latter you can move with fingers or choose using the devices sensors).
Limitations (as far I encountered in two batteries long test):
1) You can’t use SD card reader adapter for downloading the images to Litchi for stitching (so, You need to fire up Your bird for that).
2) The non-auto panos I took I wasn’t able to stitch in Litchi (maybe too much data, or the +20 deg. first row setting). After pano sequence, bird shows “downloading”, then stops, and, after landing, I didn’t succeed to d/l images to device and stitch in Litchi, too.
3) Seems, the file format for Sphere/Tiny planet is JPG despite of DNG marked as photo format (and, it makes sense - it is not an easy task even for computer to stitch 23+ DNG images and create an composite RAW file).
4) it takes some time to find the heigth sweet spot for particular scene.
So, conclusions:
Very, very good addition to a allready good product.
And, w/o doubts, after it reaches the release condition (currently the stitching is marked as beta), it will be even better.
What I missed - the ability to edit photos before to stitch them (in current state, I’ll need to change my habit to shoot flat images with lowered contrast, sharpness and saturation settings - so, in genral, it is my, not the apps fault
For sake of illustration, one of auto-created and in-app-stitched tiny planets (I don’t consider it being any good because the murky weather conditions - bad light results in bad photo - no surprises there):
Gear used: P3A+iPad pro 9,7”+iOS 11.2.1 + Litchi 2.0.0
I assume, that You need aconsiderable amount of free memory space available on device for doing the stitching as well.
Today finally the weather settled down enough for flying, and I was eager to test the new Litchi v 2.0.0 (iOS) auto pano feature, and the option to stitch the pano right in the device.
My findings so far:
1) yes, it works quite well, despite marked as beta;
2) it does the pano quite fast and with fever photos as I used to do manually (it takes 9-8-5 photos in rows and 1 nadir);
3) sometimes, it leaves some black gaps, but, I convinced, it has more to do with birds ability to hold its position despite winds, and depands on the AGL heigth as well (je higher AGL, je easier to keep the relative frame movement in acceptable limits).
Stiching:
1)After completing the pano sequence, the low-res versions of images are downloaded to device while bird still in air (not too long);
2) Because of warning in litchis manual and of common sense, I didn’t tried to stich panos with bird airborne (but, theorethically, it is possible and on reasonable fast device takes not too much time (on my 9,7” iPad Pro about the same amount of time that for downloading the lowres images);
3) The lowres version is quite OK for quick sharing, and You can choose Tiny Planet or sphere view (the latter you can move with fingers or choose using the devices sensors).
Limitations (as far I encountered in two batteries long test):
1) You can’t use SD card reader adapter for downloading the images to Litchi for stitching (so, You need to fire up Your bird for that).
2) The non-auto panos I took I wasn’t able to stitch in Litchi (maybe too much data, or the +20 deg. first row setting). After pano sequence, bird shows “downloading”, then stops, and, after landing, I didn’t succeed to d/l images to device and stitch in Litchi, too.
3) Seems, the file format for Sphere/Tiny planet is JPG despite of DNG marked as photo format (and, it makes sense - it is not an easy task even for computer to stitch 23+ DNG images and create an composite RAW file).
4) it takes some time to find the heigth sweet spot for particular scene.
So, conclusions:
Very, very good addition to a allready good product.
And, w/o doubts, after it reaches the release condition (currently the stitching is marked as beta), it will be even better.
What I missed - the ability to edit photos before to stitch them (in current state, I’ll need to change my habit to shoot flat images with lowered contrast, sharpness and saturation settings - so, in genral, it is my, not the apps fault
For sake of illustration, one of auto-created and in-app-stitched tiny planets (I don’t consider it being any good because the murky weather conditions - bad light results in bad photo - no surprises there):
Gear used: P3A+iPad pro 9,7”+iOS 11.2.1 + Litchi 2.0.0
I assume, that You need aconsiderable amount of free memory space available on device for doing the stitching as well.
