Creating a top-down drone photo of a large area

We were recently asked to take some drone photos of a woodland for the cover image of a book being written on its history. One request was for a top-down image showing the whole area.

With the legal drone flight altitude limit of 120m (generally speaking), the camera could only get around 1/30th of the area required in one photo!

So to solve this we turn to the PC to design a flight pattern that can be sent to the drone controller. The drone then takes photos at regular intervals while flying this pattern. In this case this gave us around 40 photos which we could then stitch together into one very high res image.

See some of the process below

This is the flight pattern produced on the PC

This pre-programmed flight is then transferred to the drone controller, which takes over and runs an automated flight, which can be accurately repeated as many times as necessary.

The images from the drone are then seamlessly stitched together on the PC. The above image isn’t the final one used, but this area contains around 25 photos to make up the above 1 image.

While a book cover is a less common approach we receive, this photo technique is equally good for producing overhead shots for caravan/camping sites, nature areas to show footpaths, construction sites and every other application where information may want to be overlaid on a top-down high-quality photograph.

Get in touch on our contact page to find out more