How to Record and Stitch Drone Panoramas

Safety First: Always prioritize safety and legality when flying your drone. Familiarize yourself with the local regulations and guidelines.

Location and Subject: Choose a captivating location and subject, keeping in mind that panoramas capture a wide field of view. Ensure unwanted elements are excluded from the final image.

Drone Stability: Ensure the drone hovers stably before initiating panorama shooting. Both vertical and horizontal speeds should be close to 0 m/s. Watch for wind speed warnings from your drone.

Exposure Settings: Utilize automatic exposure to accommodate varying brightness levels in different frames, ensuring each shot is well-exposed.

White Balance: If possible, manually set the white balance to ensure consistent color quality across images. A range of 5300-5500K is typically ideal.

Image Format: Opt for RAW+JPEG to balance between image quality and processing speed. Refer to our detailed guide for more insights.

Panorama Type: Choose the type based on your desired outcome – “Sphere” for fully spherical panoramas, “180°” for wide views, “wide angle” for wide lens emulation, or “vertical” for taller subjects.

Wind Conditions: Be cautious of strong winds as they can induce parallax errors, affecting the quality of stitched panoramas.

Water and Waves: When flying over water, ensure the drone maintains stability and be aware that large waves can confuse the stitching algorithm.

Obstacle Awareness: Be mindful of surrounding obstacles as the drone rotates during panorama capture to avoid collisions.

Subject Distance: Maintain a constant distance from the subject to avoid focus disparities and parallax errors during stitching. Ideally, all images should be focused at infinity or near-infinity.

Battery Check: Ensure your drone’s battery is sufficiently charged to complete the panorama shooting without interruptions.