Vertical Photographs

[rockville]

Still deciding what set up to buy and help would be appreciated.

I looked at the Gopro 3 with the Zenmuse gimbal but the vision seems a simpler proven all round solution. Apart from having fun with it taking videos etc I need to take a series of images pointing straight down to combine and overlay over OS maps.

Can the camera point vertically down? The main reason I moved from the idea of the Gopro was the lens distortion of the super wide lens, though rumour has it the Gopro 4 is going to have interchangeable lenses. How does the Vision cam images look after they are corrected?

Thanks

 

[Pull_Up]

The stock camera cannot be pitched down to vertical. The only way is to retro-fit a third-party brushless gimbal like Rotorpixel or Dronexpert (both plug and play) or 3D Power (requires soldering and some basic electronics/electrical experience).

Also depending on how far up you intend to go to get your overlay note to stay legal in the UK you must keep the aircraft in unaided visual sight - which in most conditions is going to be an absolute max of about 1000ft in ideal conditions.

 

[SlackerATX]

The fish eye effect is pretty significant with the P2V, There is a lens profile for adobe and I think looks excellent after corrected.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbiKe86qbLA

The default center on the vision stock "gimbal" points well below the horizon line. Way too low in my opinion, but after lens correction there is almost nothing above the horizon left because it crops it. Good news it's is really simple to expand the range up and down of the stock gimbal and move the center higher on the horizon. Since I made those changes I'm really happy with the final video.

 

[rockville]

Thanks for the replies, if it cannot point straight down I will need to look at an alternative gimbal, correcting distortion
In photoshop I've heard gives excellent results. I shall be using the final picture to show boundaries so the pointing down at 90deg from horizontal is essential. Maybe the Phantom 2 with a gimbal and another camera may be the best option.