panoramic camera mount

[mogwai101]

I have not seen anyone talking about panoramic camera mounts in the muti rotor fora.  Why is that?  Is it there and I cant find it?......or is it something that is not known to multi rotor enthusiasts?
In my general photography (mast mounted and kite mounted) I used a panoramic mount (RC) as a matter of routine.
For those not familiar, let me explain.  A panoramic mount allows you to pan/tilt your camera about the focal plane (the point where the  light rays cross in the body/lens of the camera).  This allows you to stitch photos together with little distortion to make very wide images
You can make very large high definition prints from  a few images that are stitched together in this way (there is good open source software available for it- Hugin).
With the stability of the multi rotor platform in calm weather this would be of interest.  If no one else has developed this, I guess I better get to work on it.
C

[Cozp83]

sounds interesting dude.....

[shortwave]

Interesting have you got any links to the software

[yurik_ryba]

There is already a gazillion people who do 360s with multirotors. The most famous group I would say is Airpano.com

Some rigs pan, some not and people just rotate the copter. Cheap and simple stuff here: http://www.servocity.com/html/pan_tilt_roll___accessories.html or chinese sites of your choice.

Techically, the difference between your kite rig and copter rig will be in mounting. Kite rig mounts via pendulum or picavet. The copter one should have vibration dampening. I would suggest that you just mount your picavet cross right to the bottom plate of the copter via antivibe grommets. If you rig is pendulum one than you will probably need to add another plate.

I tested picavet kite rig with the copter just by hanging it on arms'; ends and it swings alot, bad idea.

[yurik_ryba]

Interesting have you got any links to the software

http://hugin.sourceforge.net/ - free
http://www.ptgui.com/
http://www.kolor.com/image-stitching-software-autopano-giga.html

[shortwave]

Thank you

[mogwai101]

I used the Hugin and the ptgui  and preferred the Hugin.  It is a while back (2007) so I imagine that it will have advanced since then.
To get the best pics, it is necessary for all rotations of the camera to be about the intersection of the three planes of rotation at the focal point of the camera.  This will generally mean the the centre of gravity of the camera and mount is not coincident with the centre of gravity of the copter (unless the camera is very thin with no significant lens on the front).  You then need to use some counterweights to balance it (batteries probably.
I had a look at the servo city site but do not see a rig that has the characteristics I am looking for....but they may be able to help.  Thanks for the link.
I thought of using a picavet tray but saw a few people have tried that and did not get good results...it also does not give the rotation about the focal plan- merely a level platform (a bit like a giro stabilisation).

[yurik_ryba]

You do not need to rotate exactly around nodal point with aerials. Greater distance to objects pretty much diminishes parallax.
Moreover, good software like Autopano Giga effectively corrects these errors.

My kite rig camera is not accurately following nodal point either. You can see my aerials here: http://www.360cities.net/search/@author-rybalskiy
these were shot with the kite rig with some significant camera movements between shots and still corrected and stitched.

The problem with copters is that you will probably need to place camera as low as possible to avoid arms and props on images.
And yeah, you need a strong copter to lift all that stuff 

[mogwai101]

Thanks for this.
I was thinking as I went to bed last night that perhaps the distance made the panoramic rig redundant and I was also wondering about how static the rig is when fixed on a gps point.
My accurate land based GPS (=/- 1cm) has a price tag of about $14,000 so what can I expect for a gps board that costs under $100?  On the ground with the cheaper model ($3000) with a fix on seven satellites I have my apparent position changing by four to six metres from moment to moment.
If there is any significant movement in the rig the rig between images the pano has no benefit.

[mogwai101]

I liked the pano pics Yurik.
What camera  and software did you use?

[yurik_ryba]

Mostly Nex5 and Autopano giga 3.