Some of our favorite Brisbane & Gold Coast drone photographs captured during April 2017. We used the MavicPro as a flying tripod for the following landscape and cityscape photographs due to its low noise characteristics, small footprint and ease of use.
Drone Panorama Photography
To extend the capabilities of any camera, (be it on a drone or on the ground) turn to panorama photography. Capture a sequence of images while rotating the camera and then use specialised stitching software to create a composite image. The image below is made up of 15 aerial photographs captured with the DJI MavicPro and then stitched using Autopano Giga. The whole is certainly greater than the sum of it parts.
The Gold Coast Broadwater Aerial Panorama
The aerial panorama below is the northern part of the Gold Coast called The Broadwater. While not part of Brisbane, we decided to include this image as one of our favorites. We used the DJI MavicPro to capture 18 overlapping photographs and then stitched them together using Autopano Giga. Despite the high winds along the coastline resulting in variations in the altitude of each photograph, the software was able produced a superb panorama.
Brisbane’s Springhill, Chinatown & the CBD
Looking from near Chinatown over the Brisbane suburb of Spring Hill with the Central Business District in the background. This aerial panorama was generated from 10 photographs captured with the Mavic Pro and stitched using Autopano Giga. The apartment construction on the left will have complementary blue and gold facades on each tower once completed.
Robina Town Centre, a shopper’s paradise
When the Robina Town Centre was developed on the Gold Coast in the 1980’s, it was considered by many locals to be a massive white elephant. How time have changed, now it is the shopping heartland of the Gold Coast. This is the largest aerial panorama we have created to date. 19 images where used to generate the final image at approximately 15,000 by 5000 pixels.
Drone Real Estate Photography – Residential, Commercial, Industrial
One of a number of aerial panoramas created of this Queensland commercial property for lease.
Drone Mapping & Photogrammetry
Pointclouds
We undertook additional drone mapping trials using the MavicPro controlled using the autonomous flight control app DroneDeploy. A total of 172 images were captured, the MavicPro returning to within 1 metre of the take off / home point once the mission was completed. Agisoft Photoscan was used to do the photogrammetry, outputting a dense point cloud as below as well as a high resolution orthomosaic.
Orthomosaics
A georectified orthomosaic is a composite image made from a series of photographs that have been geometrically corrected (no perspective distortion) giving it a uniform scale. Orthomosaics are used in GIS applications as map backgrounds, for markups and included in up-to-date progress reports. Stitching programs like Autopano Gig do not take into account perspective distortion and therefore cannot be used get accurate distance measurements. The orthomosaic below has a ground sampling distance of 2.5cm/pixel and measures 22,000 pixels by 11,500 pixels.
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