TL;DR: We want a digital photography and photostitching consultant for setting up our business - if you can help or know where we can find an expert that would be awesome!
Hi,
I'm an engineer currently working for a U.S. based startup working on creating a commercial UAV business. A big part of this business is aerial photography and photostitching. We are trying to photostitch professional quality, engineering grade maps from photosets gathered by a flying, mobile platform. We have been successful, but not at the level of quality we want (currently using Photoscan Pro and a NEX 5T). I've learned an incredible amount about photography, cameras/lenses, and photostitching, but there is still so much more.
We are looking for someone with a background in digital photography and photostitching, and some experience with software to view large stitched images (web/locally). For a visual example, we want to create something like this, but from overhead photos.
Some of the questions we have include:
What is the best stitching software for large aerial orthophotos? What is the best way to view those photos on a Mac or Windows system? What is the best way to host them for online viewing? What camera and lens works best for our purpose? What picture format should we shoot in (ie is RAW beneficial for photostitching)?
Like I said, we have a system that has produced what we want, it's just simply not good enough. For us to try all of the different options out there for software or lenses and cameras is impractical. While resources exist, they are scattered and time consuming to explore. We are looking for one resource, a person or company, who will be compensated to help us find our way.
Thanks for any help you can provide,
David Locascio
Tenbo Aerial Imaging
Engineer and UAV Operator
Replies
Hi David,
Hopefully you've found someone but I have a few thoughts for you.
RAW with all exposure variables fixed is always better for professional images since you can use post processing to insure they look good when stitched together (same exposure, color balance, etc.)
Gigapan and others (like 360Cities) are showing spherical images, not orthophotos.
The two big players for image stitching spherical images are PTGui (www.ptgui.com/) and Kolor (www.kolor.com) and both have forums: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/ptgui and http://www.kolor.com/forum/
I tried out both before settling on PTGui Pro. They both were equally good, but the user interfaces are very different and PTGui was more intuitive for me. Kolor has a larger product line, especially when it comes to virtual tours.
Within the forums there have been some discussions of how to use their respective products to make orthophotos but I get the impression it involves lots of workarounds and compromises.
Both vendors have software that you can put on your website to display photos.
The key to the high quality panoramas you see on Gigapan and 360Cites is that they are done with a telephoto lens mounted on a tripod or other stationary fixture, not a wide angle lens mounted on a moving and shaking copter. You have quite a challenge ahead of you!
Hey Phil,
I have come quite a long ways since this post. I've been using Photoscan to create orthomosaics, and have had plenty of problems and found just as many solutions.
Hopefully we can hire someone else to take care of the photogrammetry side, but for now it looks like it'll be a one-man show.