Phantom 4 spherical panorama
- Thread starter njsarge
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After some research I don’t think this is possible. The phantom 4 pro can but not the phantom 4. I haven’t tried the hangar 360 app yet.
I've used it about a dozen times and it works pretty well. Here's an example of one. Good color balancing, blending, and easy to use. Only drawbacks are that if something fails during the upload or processing, that's it, no second shot or ability to try again. So, if it's important, you might want to take a couple of 360 sets to make sure that you get it and then only upload when you've got a solid WiFi or cellular connection. The upload from the drone to the tablet/phone takes about 8-10 minutes, so that's kind of slow, but probably unavoidable. If Hangar fails to process, you still have your photos, but you'll have to stitch them yourself. From what I've heard, PTGui works well.
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You can use Litchi for this and doing a Little Planet as well. I think that function of Litchi is still in Beta however, and may not result in professional quality depending on the light. In my experience, it’s best done with the sun directly overhead or otherwise overcast in order to not see the software stitch lines due to variances in light as the copter turns.
Just to be a little pedantic for a moment, I'm not sure how a Phantom would do a true spherical panorama because it can't pan up for the zenith without the body of the aircraft obstructing much of the camera's view upward.
Although I have heard of a few people who could somehow do loops with Phantoms. So perhaps there is hope.
Spherical is basically 360x180. 360 panos rather than spherical can be done of course, even if manually. I humbly suggest using manual exposure (EDIT: and manual white balance) and raw files when doing the shots for the pano.
PTGui has worked well for me in the past (some non-drone examples) but it's not particularly inexpensive. And it can be finicky/fidgety.
Although I have heard of a few people who could somehow do loops with Phantoms. So perhaps there is hope.
Spherical is basically 360x180. 360 panos rather than spherical can be done of course, even if manually. I humbly suggest using manual exposure (EDIT: and manual white balance) and raw files when doing the shots for the pano.
PTGui has worked well for me in the past (some non-drone examples) but it's not particularly inexpensive. And it can be finicky/fidgety.
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I used Dronepan when I had my P3P, just fly to where you want with the GO app, launch DronePan to take the photos, then back to the GO app to continue flying. You have to stitch the images together yourself. PTGui is very good, but there are some free alternatives like Microsoft ICE (Image Composite Editor)
Many people shoot the zenith handheld with the aircraft. After you land and shut the motors off, you can hold the drone so the camera is pointing straight up and take one or more shots as you may need.
OK, fair 'nuff. Though depending on what's in the zenith, I imagine that could lead to many entertaining hours trying to get the stitching to work right.
Very true. I think it would works best in an open area where you take pano shots pretty much right above the takeoff point. Also heard of people shooting the zenith with an equivalent lens length on a different camera, say a DSLR, and using that to stitch...
You could always get a DJI M-210 with the upward facing gimbal!
One of the things that the Phantoms have going for them is that the gimbal design keeps the camera's entrance pupil very close to the axis of aircraft rotation.
In my experience pretty much nothing gets PTGui more pi$$ed-off than parallax errors from the axis of rotation being several inches behind the entrance pupil, such as would be with that Matrice.
Though perhaps at landscape distances it won't matter quite as much.
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GadgetGuy
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Hangar360 has done a GREAT job. I've used it many times with great success. I've had a couple that didn't "complete" the final processing and their tech support was able to get it to complete "behind the scenes".
As stated above you want to double check your work and make sure you have a solid WiFi connection before uploading them to the Hangar server. You can wait and do this later as I've done several times. But be warned.. you don't want to go taking other pictures and messing around between the time you complete the 360 and the time you transfer them from the aircraft to the tablet. We offload them onsite and then upload them back at the office usually. If something doesn't upload/transfer correctly you no longer have the Hangar360 option and you'll have to process the images locally yourself.
We sometimes do 3 or 4 different ones at a time on the same flight.
Here's my process: (this is all done within the Application)
- Take the 360(s)
- Land aircraft and stop motors but keep everything powered on
- Transfer the files from the aircraft to the tablet (our setup takes about 2 min per 360 set)
- We then shut down the aircraft and transmitter but leave App/Tablet going
- Upload to Hangar Server. In our setup and on a good solid WiFi connection each 360 upload to the server takes about 8 minutes.
- Power everything down and put everything in it's correct place
- In a couple of hours check in the App for your completed 360's
Ours usually take about 8-10 minutes per set, so I'm surprised by how quick yours transfer. (P4P and the latest iPad mini.) Besides the occasional failed upload, this is the only other inconvenience, although a minor one.
Their app looks like it does a nice job, but as a photographer, I don't like the fact that they claim the rights to the final image, so I won't use them.
