Did my first aerial panorama

Gunter

Gunter

Draganflyer X4
After a few enquiries about surveys, I thought I would give aerial panoramas a try. Yesterdays weather was perfect, so set the gopro to shoot every 10 seconds and got the hexa up to 40-50 metres.

The sun was a bit low but I think for a first stab it works okay. I stitched it all together in Panoweaver professional - I tried PTgui and other cheap progs, but they didn't like the fisheye effect of the gopro - maybe I was doing something wrong!

Click here to see it.
 

hugh4g

hugh4g

Member
Hi Gunter,


Try PTGui, I think you probably need to define the lens a bit better. Go to Advanced/LensSettings/ and choose either full frame fisheye or circular fisheye. It helps if you can dial in some of the other parameters of the GoPro too.

Then go to Panorama Settings and try choosing 'equirectangular' this will make the program stitch a spherical panorama, which you need because you are pointing downwards. The sky portion of the image will be left black for you to blend a sky into later.

Good luck, I'm right with you on these....


Hugh
 

B

broadwing

Member
Hi Gunther,

How did you capture?
One Gopro?, horizontal or vertical?, How many photo for 360?, what angle? HOw much time for full cycle?

rgds,
koos
 

hugh4g

hugh4g

Member
A good set up for this would be portrait mode, images should have an overlap of 30%, A quick look also suggests that five portait images would be good.... however if you set up for an image each 10 seconds, get some more, ptgui can handle it.

Hugh
 

Gunter

Gunter

Draganflyer X4
Thanks Hugh, I did try PTgui but couldn't get it to work. It missed loads of control points I'll try it again tonight because to buy its a lot cheaper!


Regards,

Gunter.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

Gunter

Gunter

Draganflyer X4
broadwing said:
Hi Gunther,

How did you capture?
One Gopro?, horizontal or vertical?, How many photo for 360?, what angle? HOw much time for full cycle?

rgds,
koos
Click to expand...

Koos, I used one gopro horizontally. I have a hexa, so between photos I rotated it by one boom, 60 degrees. For the first set of shots it was tilted about 30 degrees down. Send set of shots was tilted almost straight down. I still have a lot to learn, this was my first attempt, but goes to prove that it's not too hard to do. I now just need to get the stitching correct and learn to blend in a sky.


Regards,

Gunter.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

Gunter

Gunter

Draganflyer X4
hugh4g said:
Hi Gunter,


Try PTGui, I think you probably need to define the lens a bit better. Go to Advanced/LensSettings/ and choose either full frame fisheye or circular fisheye. It helps if you can dial in some of the other parameters of the GoPro too.

Then go to Panorama Settings and try choosing 'equirectangular' this will make the program stitch a spherical panorama, which you need because you are pointing downwards. The sky portion of the image will be left black for you to blend a sky into later.

Good luck, I'm right with you on these....


Hugh
Click to expand...

Hugh, any advice on how to blend in the sky?

Thanks.

Gunter.
 




hugh4g

hugh4g

Member
Hmmm Sky...

We are talking here about a spherical panorama, in which you can look all the way around and up and down.

For your set up, I would suggest portrait orientation of camera.

Try to organise so that the nadir (south pole) is in shot in the bottom of the frame. I suspect that will be possible with the GoPro.

Shoot so that you have 30% overlap in your images... more is not a problem, you can either edit or let PTgui sort it for you.

PTgui is an excellent stitcher and better than anything else I've tried, although there is a bit of a learning curve, thing to do is to take it a bit at a time.

I've suggested how to set up in a post above. The result of that stitch will give you a 360 x 180˙ equi-rectangular flat image, with the bottom half inhabited by your 'downwards' pointing panorama, and an area of probably black above, where the horizon finishes and the sky should continue to as a vault to the zenith (north pole of the panorama)

For the sky... Now is the time to find some sky shots and make 'top half' panoramas... some panorama shooters collect skys that they can drop in at the time of post production, and this is what you need. You have a machine above you to be got rid of.

So export the panorama from PTGui as an equi-rectangular tif at full resolution, and open in photoshop. Then it is time to extract the area above the panorama and drop in a sky... having done that re-import the image to PTGui and wrap into a ball, or, better, I use Pano2VR. Both excellent programs and mac!

If you want to send me a set of images I'll wrap 'em for you.


Best

Hugh
 






Gunter

Gunter

Draganflyer X4
Well, many thanks to Hugh for all his patience today, as well as his help to show what my pano could look like with a bit of work. He rehashed the pano from the start, added some sky and spruced up all of the colours. It really shows when you know what you are doing ;)

Clickety click

Thanks Hugh :)
 

G

ghaynes

Member
Gunter

As a photographer who does a lot of panos the key to success especially for a uniform sky is using a totally manual exposure. Thats not a choice with the Gopro. Technically the camera is using a different exposure value for each shot. Trying to blend those together, while the seams are ok, the sky is so important and prominent that other than lots of work in post with Photoshop not much of a way to fix it. You have the same problem in the non sky portion it just isn't as prominante.
 


hugh4g

hugh4g

Member
panoramas

ghaynes said:
Gunter

As a photographer who does a lot of panos the key to success especially for a uniform sky is using a totally manual exposure. Thats not a choice with the Gopro. Technically the camera is using a different exposure value for each shot. Trying to blend those together, while the seams are ok, the sky is so important and prominent that other than lots of work in post with Photoshop not much of a way to fix it. You have the same problem in the non sky portion it just isn't as prominante.
Click to expand...

And that's why I swiped a sky from one of my other panos... indeed, Gunter's panorama would have a whole chunk of machinery in the way of the sky. Its worth going out and gathering skies just to drop into panoramas... so often they are rather disappointing or obvious. I do think that aerial still panoramas have excellent potential though.....especially when printed out flat...it wasn't that much work and the next one that Gunter does will be a breeze....


best

Hugh
 
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