DJI drone panoramas: Sphere, 180°, Wide Angle, Vertical and Free, and how to get a clean stitch

The numbers below come from two drones. The DJI Mini 4 Pro manual describes the four preset types. For the DJI Mini 5 Pro, I used a detailed test by the VicVideoPic blog, which also covers the newer Free mode. Other DJI models have similar menus, but the number of frames and the available options can differ, so check on your own drone.

Where to find it

In DJI Fly, open the shooting modes in the camera view and choose Pano. The Mini 4 Pro manual lists four types: Sphere, 180°, Wide Angle and Vertical. The drone takes several photos and the app synthesises the panorama based on the selected type. On the Mini 5 Pro there is a fifth type, Free, at the top of the list.

A few limits worth knowing before you go out:

• VicVideoPic notes that the panorama function is only available when the drone is in the air.
• According to the Mini 4 Pro manual, Portrait mode (the gimbal rotated 90° for vertical shots) doesn't work with Pano.
• The same manual says Pano is unavailable when the optional wide-angle lens is fitted.
• On the Mini 5 Pro, according to VicVideoPic, panoramas can't use the 48 mm medium tele mode, the 50 MP mode or HDR.

The five types

Sphere. A full 360° view. On the Mini 5 Pro it takes 33 photos in quick succession. Flattening 360° into a 2D image adds distortion, which can look surreal, or it can be shared as an interactive 360 image. The gimbal can't point straight up, so the top of the sky is filled in by software. VicVideoPic notes that on the Mini 5 Pro less sky is missing than on the Mini 4 Pro.

180°. A wide strip along the horizon. 21 photos on the Mini 5 Pro, with less distortion than Sphere. It works for a classic flat panorama, and the resolution leaves room to crop or print large.

Wide Angle. 9 photos in three rows and three columns, giving a wider and taller frame than a single shot.

Vertical. One column of three photos. Good for something tall: a tower, a waterfall, a cliff face.

Free. You choose the area yourself. VicVideoPic describes it as a mode DJI first brought to its lighter drones with the Air 3S. DJI's Air 3S FAQ says both of that drone's cameras, the wide-angle and the medium tele, support Free panorama with flexible shooting range selection. On the Mini 5 Pro it works like this:

1. Select Free at the top of the panorama menu.
2. Point the camera at the top left corner of the area you want, then tap Start (or press C1 on the DJI RC 2).
3. Turn right and tilt the gimbal down to the bottom right corner, then tap the same button, now labelled End.
4. The app calculates how many photos it needs and how much overlap to give them.

VicVideoPic's author says Free makes 180°, Wide Angle and Vertical almost unnecessary, and it's the only type he uses unless he wants an interactive or deliberately distorted Sphere.

Exposure, white balance and filters

Each panorama is made of many frames, and anything that changes between them shows up as a seam or a band.

Exposure. In Pano you can switch between automatic and manual exposure. VicVideoPic shoots most panoramas in manual, because auto tends to brighten the ground too much. In low light he switches to auto.

White balance. Set it manually, so the colour doesn't shift from frame to frame. VicVideoPic uses about 5200 K in daylight on the Mini 5 Pro and higher values in low light. Treat that as a starting point, not a rule.

Sun. In a Sphere panorama the sun is always in the shot, which makes exposure hard. Shooting around sunrise or sunset, or with the sun behind cloud, reduces the dynamic range.

Polarising filters. Leave them at home for panoramas. A polariser's effect depends on the angle to the sun, so across a wide panorama the sky comes out with heavy banding.

Scenes that won't stitch. The stitching software needs a lot of detail to match frames. A view that is mostly water or clear sky can fail to stitch.

While the drone shoots

Once the sequence starts, leave the sticks alone. According to drohnen.de's description of DJI's Air 3S panorama tutorial, you can stop it by tapping the red button in the camera view or pressing Flight Pause, and moving the sticks also cancels it. Anything moving in the frame, like cars or people, can end up doubled or cut in half, because each frame is taken a moment after the last.

Keep the original frames

The drone saves the stitched panorama as a JPEG. VicVideoPic found the Mini 5 Pro's automatic panoramas good enough to use without editing, and clearly better than the Mini 4 Pro's. If you want to stitch on a computer, you need the individual frames:

• The Mini 4 Pro manual lists Photo Type as the camera setting for Pano.
• On the Mini 5 Pro, in the panorama settings window, the Original tab lets you save every frame as RAW or JPEG.
• On the card, VicVideoPic found the stitched JPEGs in the DJI folder and the individual frames in a separate Panorama folder.

RAW frames give you the most room to recover a bright sky. They also take far more space on the card, because a Sphere is 33 files.

Stitching in Lightroom Classic

Adobe's help page describes the process. Select the frames and choose Photo > Photo Merge > Panorama (Ctrl+M on Windows, Control+M on Mac). Then pick a projection:

• Spherical: as if mapped onto the inside of a sphere. Adobe recommends it for very wide and multi-row panoramas, which covers most drone Sphere, 180° and Wide Angle sets.
• Cylindrical: as if mapped onto the inside of a cylinder. Good for wide panoramas and keeps vertical lines straight.
• Perspective: as if projected onto a flat surface. It keeps straight lines straight, which suits architecture, but very wide panoramas distort heavily at the edges.

Boundary Warp (0-100) bends the panorama to fill the rectangle, so you keep the content near the edges that cropping would remove. Fill Edges fills the uneven edges automatically, and Auto Crop cuts away the empty areas. Create Stack groups the panorama with its source frames. The panorama goes into the catalogue as a normal photo you can develop like any other.

Lightroom can also merge bracketed shots into an HDR panorama (Photo > Photo Merge > HDR Panorama), but only if every set has the same number of shots and the same exposure offsets, and the shots in each set were taken one after another.

A short checklist

1. Fly high enough that nothing is close to the drone, and pick calm weather.
2. Choose the type: Free for a specific area, 180° for a horizon, Vertical for something tall, Sphere for an interactive 360.
3. Set white balance manually and consider manual exposure.
4. No polariser.
5. Turn on saving the original frames if you plan to stitch them yourself.
6. Press the shutter and don't touch the sticks until the drone has finished.
7. At home, stitch the frames in Lightroom with Spherical or Cylindrical projection and adjust Boundary Warp.