New to me M2P: Best Mapping Settings for construction orthos and panos?

Beautiful Maps and Models
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Well, last September I wanted to upgrade from my M1P to a M2P; so yesterday I finally did! :smiley:

I now have a slightly used M2P, and have been watching youtube for the last week, working on getting it setup for some cinematic stuff I want to do.

But Iā€™m also going to use it with DD for my one 36 acre construction site that Iā€™ve been doing for a few years now with the M1P, hence the question in the subject!

Iā€™ll be doing an ortho of the entire site from 200ā€™ (so far the client has been fine with the quality) and then 6x panos at various altitudes (between 125ā€™ and 150ā€™).

Is the answer: just let DD take care of the camera settings?

Or do some of you old salts have recommendations, such as: First start the Go4 app and set everything to auto, kill that app and open DD, and fly? Orā€¦something else?

Thanks for your help, as always!

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My vote is to just let DD do it and post-process editing if you want but I very rarely had to edit with a M2P, Autel EII, Phantom 4P or Mavic 3E unless I was forced into flying in really sub-optimal conditions. Even if ambient light is a little low just slow the drone down a couple of ticks.

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Thanks @MichaelL ! I did a test DD flight at lunch today; I checked the go4 app before and after the DD mapping flight and I see that DD changed the photo mode.

Comparing the map photos with some photos I took with manual settings yesterday, the DD photos seem a tad ā€œmushierā€. I suppose thatā€™s to be expected when going full-auto, but weā€™ll see what it looks like after WebODM stitching later tonight. Depending on that outcome I may experiment with the ā€œmanual exposure/focus settings in go4 appā€ sliders in DD tomorrow.

In any caseā€¦this camera is SO much better quality than the M1P camera! Now I gotta sell the old M1P to fund some more M2P batteries and a case. :slight_smile:

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For what it is worth, you can try what we do. Like you said, go into Go4 first, we use full auto, exit Go4, get in DD and make sure your switches(2) in the ā€œAdvancedā€ tab are on for the Go4 settings (Manual Exposure and Manual Focus in DJI app). Our experience has been that the photos have been a bit ā€œcrisperā€ than letting DD do it. We are doing wildlife surveys on a beach and our target is 50 - 80 cmā€™s. We fly pretty low.

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Thanks; my ortho samples from last night turned out a little better looking than my M1P orthos, so for this specific site it looks like I wonā€™t have to mess with anything.

And the panos are WAY better than the M1P panos! Iā€™m stoked about that and canā€™t wait for my next flight at the site so I can show them off afterwards. :slight_smile:

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