Category: General

Guide for creating 360 panoramas from the DJI Mini 2

About a year ago I got into drone photography with my first drone, a tiny DJI Mini 2. While not the fanciest of drones it does a pretty good job for the price point. Easy to control and decent 4k video.1 

One of the downsides is that the onboard software will stitch a 360 degree panorama for you, but only at a lower resolution. The Mini 2 does have a nifty feature to take all 26 photos needed for a complete 360 view, in the DNG format, but it can’t stitch it together for you. So what is a person to do? Enter open-source tools!

I’ve done this a few times and each time I have to remember all the steps. Time to write it all down for myself and if I’m lucky to help others too. 2

Take your photos

First you need to take the photos! 

Position your drone somewhere near the object or location you want to take a panorama of. Do not place your drone directly above the point of interest! You want to position the drone away from direct center. It helps make sure your POI gets the best coverage of direct photos. Make sure the drone is between the sun and the point of interest. Don’t have both your POI and the sun in the same direction. You’ll end up with blown out sun flares. I did not do this perfectly with my image above of the Fort, but you can see that the sun is off to the left from where my drone was. You have to learn the rules before you can break them. 

Once positioned, switch the mode to Pano and select Sphere.

Then make sure your format is set to jpeg + RAW3

Once ready, hit the red record button and let the drone take the photos. It will hover in place and rotate both the gimbal and drone to get as much coverage as possible.

Now you have your drone up in the sky, positioned nicely and you’ve taken some photos. Time to return to the computer. You have a folder of DNGs that are waiting to be stitched together. Enter Hugin.

Hugin

Hugin is an open-source panorama photo stitcher.4 It’s a powerful tool with many knobs and dials. I’m going to focus on the settings that I think are important, but please do read up on all the software can do. I’m doing this all on a Mac, but the interface and steps are generally the same. 

Speaking of Macs, the most recent version of Hugin for Mac was last updated in February of 2019. If you’re using a Mac with a Retina (HiDPI screen) display you’ll want to grab a beta release that fixes an issue with Macs with this screen. It’s unfortunately still out-of-date compared to the Linux and Windows releases.

As noted on Hugin’s download section, “On Mac OS 10.15 Catalina and later you will need to manually grant Hugin “Full Disk Access” in the Privacy tab of the OS X System Preferences, Security & Privacy.” Since we’re using an out-of-date and not well supported version of Hugin on the Mac, you’ll want to right-click on the Hugin.app and select Open or else you’ll get a scary warning about it not being trusted (you can trust it). Do the same for PTBatcherGUI.app. You’ll also want to make sure Hugin has Full Disk Access as noted above. Check these settings in System Preferences>Security & Privacy. 

Ok, you’ve download Hugin and installed it. The second step done.

DNGs to PNGs

If you’re using the settings above on your Mini 2, you’ll end up with image files in the DNG and JPG formats. We want to use the DNGs as they have more data and less compression. You’ll need to convert them to another format to use with Hugin. You can do this a myriad of ways. If you’re using a modern Mac, a Shortcut workflow to select files and convert to PNG works just fine.

Loading images into Hugin

Open Hugin and select Load images… from the main window. You’ll want to Shift+click to select all the PNGs we created earlier. 

Depending on how you converted the DNGs to PNGS you may be missing the metadata for your lens type. You’ll then see a window asking about the Camera and Lens data. Here’s the settings to use.5

Lens type: Normal (rectilinear)
Focal length: 4.49 mm
Focal length multiplier 5.345 x

Select Ok. You should see your images in a jumbled mess in the Overview window in Hugin. That’s not right! Click 2. Align… in the main Hugin window.

A new window will pop up and the magic starts. Hugin will analyze all the images and look for points where the images overlap. This might take a few minutes depending on how speedy your computer is. Let it do its thing. 

Fine tuning

Once complete, you’ll see something that looks a little more put together. Maybe like a giant ant hill, but at least the sky and ground is consistently attached. 

Head over to the Move/Drag option in the main Hugin window. Click Straighten. Hey look, a panorama with a straight horizon and all! Is it upside down? No problem. Roll the image by 180 and click Apply. Click Straighten again for good measure. 

Export

Time to tell Hugin to make you a single image. Save your project. Go to File>Save in the menu bar or use the handy command+S to save your project. Head back to the Main Assistant window and select Interface>Expert from the menu bar. “What?”, you might be saying. “I’m not an expert!” Don’t worry. We’re going to use this interface to make a few small tweaks. 

Once the Advanced menu option is selected you’ll see a new window. Select the Stitcher tab. 

Form here, make sure the projection is set to Equirectangular. Field of View should be 360 x 180. For Canvas Size click “Calculate optimal size”. The Width, and the Height should be at a ratio of 2:1. So 18648 x 9324, 9482 x 4715, 4096 x 2048, etc. Hugin likes to be helpful and crop out the top of the image where there is no sky (Dones can’t look up!). If you see the Top setting under Crop set to anything other than zero, change it to zero.

I find it helpful to export two versions.  One exposure corrected with low dynamic range and the other fused from any arrangement. So I suggest checking the “Exposure fused from any arrangement” option as well. 

Hit Stitch! And you’ll be asked to specify the prefix for your images. You can leave this as the default or change it to your liking. Then away it goes! This will take some time. 

Once complete you’ll have two big TIFF files. By default this will be in the same folder where you saved your project file. One will just have the prefix, the other _blended_fused.

Most times the blended version is the best. These are big files, about 700 MB. If you don’t need/want such a large file, you can always adjust the canvas size in the Stitcher. Just keep the ratio at 2:1. 

Take a look at your images. Pick which one you prefer. 

Pretty good, eh? All except for the giant void where the sky should be. Time to fix that.

Skyfill 

More open-source software! This time we’re going to use a utility called Skyfill to fill in the sky. We can close Hugin for now. Go download Skyfill. There are Linux, Windows, and MacOS (Darwin) versions. Open the zip and inside you’ll see a file called skyfill.

This is a command-line utility, so no point-and-click for this bit. Right-click/control-click on the skyfill file to open it. A Terminal window will open and a bunch of text will appear. You just ran skyfill but with no settings so it will say [Process completed] without actually doing anything. You can close that window. Why did we do all of that? In doing that we did give the program permission to run from the Terminal.

Time to use the Terminal! Open the Terminal app on your Mac by going to Applications>Utilities>Terminal.app. Drag and drop the skyfill file into the Terminal window that appears. You should see something like this. 

If you hit return, skyfill will run, but again not do anything. It doesn’t know where the image from Hugin is or what settings you want to use. With the command to run Skyfill still in the Terminal, drag your image to the Terminal window. You should see something like this. 

Hit return and skyfill should do its work to fill the sky. The result is a giant TIFF file in the same folder as your source image with the sky filled in. It will have “-filled” appended to the file name.6

So here’s an 360 image where I break the rules when we first began. I have my subject (a house) right below the drone and the sun blaring at the camera. A terrible photo but illustrative of why you shouldn’t frame your photo this way! 🙂 

Cleanup

From here you might need to touch things up. Maybe remove an errant bird or adjust the colors. Load the TIFF image into your favorite image editor of choice and go to town. I’m skipping details here because personal preferences differ when it comes to editing software and depending on where and when your image was taken you may have more or less editing to do. Personally I used Pixelmator Pro and do a light pass in editing. 

Share

Once you have your image all cleaned up you’ll want to share it with folks. I have a few suggestions and there are other ways to do this. 

Flickr

You an upload your image to Flickr as a PNG and the site can display your image in a 360 view. You’ll need to add the equirectangular tag to your image and refresh the page. Here’s an example. You can upload images at large resolutions, but the built-in viewer will downsample them. There is no ability to zoom in on an image.

kuula.co

Kuuala has a nice interface where you can customize the focal point and default view. It accepts photos up to 16384 x 8192 in PNG and allows for viewers to zoom the image.

Google Streetview

If you can get your final image on to a mobile device, you can download the Google Streetview app and upload your photo to Google Maps. Here’s an example of one I created and uploaded.

There are some downsides. Google now “owns” your image and you have very little chance to interact with anyone viewing your images. However, given the reach of Google, many more people can see and enjoy your photos. 

Conclusion

This isn’t the perfect tutorial and there may be other tools to help with some of the steps. In my desire to use open-source when possible, this is what worked best for me. If you have a tip or question, please leave a comment. Now go have fun with your sky camera!

A little bit of everything, all of the time

As someone who has been chronically Very Online for many years7 this bit from Bo Burnham’s latest Netflix special really resonated with me. Both for the brilliant and spot-on “ha-ha” comedic description of the modern Internet and the terrifying spot-on oh-this-is-so-tragic synopsis of what the Internet has become and how it impacts us. I’ve watched it at least a dozen times. Content warning: NSFW language.8

via waxy

Using a smartphone as a webcam

I’ve been using my iPhone as a webcam for the last few months. I thought I’d share a few notes here on my experiences for others who might want to try this.

Why use a smartphone as a webcam? Because the “top pick” Logitech webcam on almost everyone’s list is terrible. In fact, in my experience, all webcams are terrible. Mostly because there isn’t much competition in this space so the generational improvements are small.

For example, the top recommended webcam by The Wirecutter up until October 2020 came out in 2012, the same year the iPhone 5 was released! Their latest recommended webcam is basically the same camera with very small hardware differences. The white balance is often off, focus is inconsistent, and the built-in microphones are of the most inexpensive quality you could imagine.9

Conversely, the camera(s) in your smartphone are great and get better every year. Phone manufacturers consistently tout the tech in the camera systems because that’s a huge selling point for these devices. More often than not your most used camera is your phone, right? You probably already have a smartphone too, so one less thing to buy.

So what is the catch? How do I do this magic? I use a free (as in beer) software called Reincubate Camo.10. I install their app on my smartphone. I install their companion app for my computer that runs in the background. It sits here ready to pass the video from my smartphone camera to whatever video chat software I’m using (Meet, Zoom, etc.). A few minutes before my call, I plugin in my phone, launch Camo on my phone and select it as my video input in my conferencing software du jour.

Pros:

  • Hands down the best picture I’ve seen (and I’ve used some top-of-the-line telepresence setups by Cisco).
  • Consistent, sharp focus on your face, not the bookshelf or wall behind you (I’ve perpetually had this issue with the Logitech).
  • Use a device you probably already have (instead of buying another webcam).
  • Higher dynamic range and more natural color (see the photos above. You can actually tell there are trees outside my window!).
  • You charge your phone while using it. 🙂

Cons:

  • Have to install an app on your computer and keep running in the background.
  • Need some way to hold phone up at a decent angle. I use Lego (see below).
  • Your phone is in use while you are in a call (If you use a 2FA app or something this could be problematic)
  • Mac and Windows only
  • If you want a resolution over 720p you need the Pro version (but in my opinion image quality is more important than image resolution).

I hope you find this interesting and maybe useful. I’d love to hear about your setup and what improvements you suggest in creating a nice virtual presence.

The Oasis by Shiro Miyake

Post-Dispatch Magazine article on the garden

There’s this historic house in my home city. Not the most culturally or historically significant, but old by US standards and a handsome specimen of its time. It sat catty-corner to the warehouse/mailroom my dad use to work from before he retired. In 2016 it was purchased and renovations began. My dad would watch the folks work and was curious about the house. We were able to find the completed National Register of Historic Places Registration Form online for the home and learned a lot about the house from the research work within.

About two years ago I started a draft article about the house for Wikipedia 11 and used that document as a foundation. At the urging of a fellow Wikimedian I attended an editing party last week and got the article in a good enough state to move to article namespace on English Wikipedia. It now lives at Dr. George Ashe Bronson House.

At the same time I applied for a library card through the Wikipedia Library to get access to newspapers.com. I wanted to see if I could find out more about the owner of the home, Dr. George A. Bronson, a predominate local dentist. I did, and added a few additional citations to the article.

Shiro Miyake’s Wash U Yearbook Photo

Along the way I found out about the history of the Japanese garden the doctor built on the premises. Called, “The Oasis”, it was designed by Shiro Miyake from Nio, Sanuki, Japan. 12

Miyake came to St. Louis as part of the Japanese exhibit for the 1904 World’s Fair. He was a dentistry student at Washington University and graduated in 1909. He worked with Dr. Bronson to build the garden as his “houseman”.

According to old records from Washington University he was the Sergeant at Arms during his time at the school and his favorite occupation was “grinning”. His favorite song? “Just Fill Them Up Again”.13 And his ideal [person] was “Battling Nelson“.

It appears he later lived in Denver at one point and, if this is him, died in California in 1952.

While Miyake himself is not notable enough for his own Wikipedia article, I like that I was able to find out a little more about him through online resources and include his contributions to this well-respected garden in the article.

Five Years Later…

I’ve been at the Wikimedia Foundation for five years now. I don’t often speak publicly14 about what it’s like to work at the non-profit behind one of the biggest social movements, website, and community on the planet. Also one of the few that aren’t backed by squicky dude-bros who care more about money than humans. AAAAANNNYYYHOW, there’s something special about the number five and so here are my thoughts.

Where is the Foundation now?

I think the Foundation is in a better position than in the past five years – both internally in how the organization is structured and work is managed, but also in what we work on and where our focus is. We’ve learned a lot from the lumps garnered in the past (deservedly or not) and with Movement Strategy and strong focus on Objectives and Key Results (ORKs) it’s more transparent (and apparent) that our work is tied to the needs of the movement.

Better, not perfect.

For example, the recent strategy and board work are both well-staffed – with regional support. The teams (from my perspective) are taking it slow and giving folks a chance to talk and listen. Doesn’t mean we’re going to do everything (we can’t) or hear everyone (we can’t) but that we are trying to acknowledge gaps and biases.

Product has been kicking butt in building tools that help. In particular the Growth team, mobile web, and the desktop refresh. I still love Community Tech after five years. I think I will after another five. If I were a billionaire they’d get 100 million a year just to do more of this.

I still feel like new teams/initiatives/people still sometimes get burned. Unclear expectations, combative community, crossed wires. We’re working on that. I am seeing less of it. Still a few spots of things we should be doing IMHO, but aren’t. Like Maps and visualizations. Like search and the portal. We need to make a decision about the weird stuff kinda floating out there.

Have you seen the multimedia search for Commons? It’s a media search that’s useful! No more “site:commons.wikimedia.org dog” searches on Google.

Onboarding staff new to this wacky world is a challenge. It’s inconsistent and it takes six months to even get up to speed – if not longer! I know smart people are working on this, so I have optimism for the future. It’s still going to be a struggle. We are a multifaceted organization15 and an even more multifaceted movement. And we’re continuing to grow. Obtaining knowledge about the river in which the ship is moving in, while the ship is moving, is tricky. Making this more systemic and process-driven will help, but we still have so much information about our volunteers and the relationship, in well, individual relationships with people. I mean, it should be that way. Humans connecting to humans, but hoo boy does that not scale easily.

Foundation is investing into listening. I mean, I’m on a team literally charged with improving Movement Communications. With Diff, and our needs assessment work, I’m feeling jazzed about moving the needle on the relationship with communities. The Foundation has been inconsistent in talking to folks and connecting our work to theirs. We need to be better storytellers, listeners, and force multipliers. Especially in emerging communities and places of the world where we have communities but know little about them (and therefore can not support them).

I feel like my work is contributing in a more strategic, positive way with Diff. Working with and amplifying the work of people where we can treat each other like teammates and not combatants. It’s encouraging and impactful. Fun Fact: Diff saw 86,865 views from 65,935 visitors in January. Higher than any expectations I had.

As I was drafting this blog post our ED announced she was stepping down. I’ve reflected on all that has happened under her leadership and I think it make sense to mention it here. Katherine has put the org – and by extension the movement – on a solid course.

  • Gained the role in the midst of a terrible era of trust (both internal to the Foundation and with community).
  • Lead with grace and dignity in every interaction I had that was reassuring and respectable.
  • Got a movement strategy rolling for the future and in solid shape to get us to 2030 and beyond.
  • Leadership at the C-level and below shored up (Hiring new folks for gaps, new needed roles, sorting out HR, etc.).
  • Clarifying governance (Board make up, sort out the board/Foundation responsibilities, bylaws, election).
  • Movement-wide Code of Conduct.
  • Endowment is nearly at it’s 100 million goal.
  • Organizational growth and capacity.

I mean, the next CEO can step in and goof off all day for ~4 years and still leave successful – assuming they don’t muck with stuff too much. 😉

Where is the movement now?

2020 sucked. I’m inspired by the folks who keep on trucking. And reminded by those that took a step back that you can’t keep others warm by setting yourself on fire. It’s amazing that folks have continued the amazing work, supporting one another, and moving the needle of trust and free knowledge. I was on the committee for Wikimedian of the Year and in all honesty I would have nominated everyone. They were all inspirational and all so human.

There are still folks who like to be edgy jerks and stoke the fire on the whole WMF/Community divide. I think it’s unconstructive. It’s also super demoralizing. It’s also something you can’t do anything about. But I have noticed less petty picking-of-fights over a lack of clarity and supposition with fear and doubt that The Foundation is evil. So that’s nice. I also am caring less about the loud minority of folks as I give more of my attention to those who want to work with me within the system. You know, like you would anywhere else in life.

Where am I now?

Five years is the longest I’ve been at any prior organizations. It’s also easily the longest I’ve been in the same position. Or roughly the same position. Community-facing communications.16 Five is also half a decade. A lot can change in five years. When I joined the Foundation my youngest daughter was less than two years old. She’s now kicking my butt (and the world’s) as a smart six-year-old.

I still care and am still invested in my work and the movement. A little less than in the past. I don’t know if that’s me trying to learn how not to give a fuck or if that’s burnout over all the changes the last few years have brung. Ya’ll, the work is hard, the work is plentiful, and working remotely can feel isolating. Not gonna lie.

I worry more about my co-workers than myself. They’re the smart ones I rely on to appear intelligent. 🙂

Working remotely is challenging because getting an attaboy or acknowledgment of your work is really hard when you don’t see your boss in the hallway. This sort of encouragement, I know, is very American, but I like to have a sense of knowing where I stand in organization and how I’m doing with my work. So far, I think I’m doing pretty good. Still a struggle to be OK with ambiguity and chaos.

Remote work productivity tips

So yeah, let’s end this on an up-beat note. I’ve been working from home for five years now. Full-time. I’m super privileged to be able to afford the time/money/space to have built my studio. If you cannot do the same, I still want you to take your self-care seriously. Here’s some advice. Don’t feel bad if it doesn’t work for you. It sometimes doesn’t work for me.

  • Get a white noise machine. I even have a portable one for when I travel. Helps focus from distracting house-noises.
  • Don’t work in spaces that distract you. Find yourself feeling unproductive after a day at Starbucks? Don’t work there.
  • Setup your space to be organized and keep it separate from where you do your personal computering.
  • Use a quick launcher. I have saved billions of trackpad taps (and seconds) by using a nice launcher. My go-to is Alfred. I was a Quicksliver user for over a decade. Alfred is just so nice. Keep your hands on the keyboard as much as you can. Learn the shortcuts for your commonly used apps. Yell at the ancient gods when you can’t use command-K to add a link in Slack.
  • Everything is a draft, that’s ok. Perfect is the enemy of good – and feeling like you’re not getting anything done isn’t productive. Even organizing your bookmarks or deleting old email is production. Don’t beat yourself up on slow days.
  • Work from libraries – in my suburban area we have public libraries with quiet study rooms you can borrow for an hour or two. Lots of comfy seating. People around you, and most are trying to be quiet – unlike a Starbucks.
  • Write it down.
  • Listen to music? I can’t listen to anything new to me or anything with lyrics. The best for me is a chill playlist, music in another language, or the creme de la creme – video game soundtracks.

So, five years down. Maybe I’ll do this again in another five?