Hello,
What are the recommended settings for the Phantom 4 pro to obtain quality and detailed captures for the production of a card, Basic and Advanced?
How are the images captured by the Phantom 4 Pro geolocated? Is there a special handling to do as for photos imported from an eBee from Sensefly?
How to import “geolocated” captures in Pix4D from a Phantom 4 Pro?
Thanks in advance …
Good flights, good catches,
Dom
Dom,
I run my Phantom 4 Pro using the pix4d capture app. The photos are geotagged during flight and can be downloaded from the micro SD card with a reader.
Once they are in a folder on your computer, you can create a new pix4d project and import the pictures directly. The pix4d capture app will email you a p4d file based on the flight, but I haven’t had much luck with this option because it always seems to refer to pictures that do not exist. The project should process just fine without the p4d file.
The Sensefly eBee platform differs, in that it does not geotag during flight for RGB photos (it does geotag thermalmapper photos during flight). Because of this, you do have to go through the postflight process in eMotion to geotagg the photos.
During flight, the settings I use are as follows:
Camera Angle: 70°
Front Overlap: 80
Side Overlap: 75
Drone Speed: Up to you as a pilot
Hope this helps.
Chris
Hi Chris,
Thank you very much for your reply ! …
For the photos acquisitions, what should be best format and the best altitude ? 16:9, 4:3 or 3:2 ? 75, 100 or 145 m ?
Why an angle of 90° would not be better than the one you advocated, 70° ?
Thank you in advance
Sincerely
Dom
Dom,
The aspect ratio doesn’t matter as long as it is consistent. The 16:9 can give the best side overlap, if the camera is good enough.
Altitude is up to you. I usually fly between 100-200 ft if I am wanting high definition in my point cloud / model. The lower altitude is also better for separating ground points from vegetation for a bare-earth surface file. However, if there is substantial terrain, maintaining a consistent distance from the ground becomes harder. Unlike the eBee, the phantom doesn’t fly using existing terrain models to keep a consistent AGL flight level unless you use MapPilot (mapsmadeeasy.com), which is pretty glitchy.
I use 70° instead of 90° because it gives me better data on vertical surfaces. The 90° / nadir angle looks strait down which, in my experience, leaves most vertical surfaces pretty sparse in your point cloud.
Hope that helps. If you have any other questions, don’t hesitate to ask!
Cheers,
Chris
Dom,
One more thing I forgot to mention. The 70° angle is also nice because, while it allows you to get better data on vertical surfaces, it doesn’t introduce any photos that have sky in the shot.