I would be interested if there is already some experience or examples on using Mapillary on waterways (canals) with the scope of taking photos of the waterfront buildings/landscape. I am not talking about equipment (GoPro plus Garmin etrex 30) will do the job technically) but what is the best arrangement? One GoPro looking forward? Two GoPros, one looking 45degrees forward left and a second one looking 45degrees forward right. Or better one forward, one left at 90 degrees, one right at 90 degrees? Or only lateral views?
Volker,
Padova, Italy
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I do that as if I was walking, on my side:
- http://www.mapillary.com/map/im/pDZLf47zqZcYuQf7-txsxw/photo
- http://www.mapillary.com/map/im/3W6XpjTfXrH-HB31ecBd4w/photo
- http://www.mapillary.com/map/im/txB-e9bMWR2Nv9uwfGaqXQ/photo
Always in manual mode as pictures are often blurred in auto-shoot mode with my cellphone.
In general I would always have a camera looking forward. If I have a second camera, I would point it at what is most interesting, e.g. a coastal line. But “in general” also means that if two cameras at 45 degrees in each direction is the best, then that is the best.
A thing to keep in mind, is the 3D reconstruction Mapillary uses. It looks at images and finds features that are the same on multiple images. So keeping an overlap of 1/2 to 1/3 of the image between two cameras makes it easier to match images in this way. Usually I always keep two cameras no more than 45 degrees apart for this reason.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the direction of the camera is usually set to be pointing forward, when looking at the sequence. If the cameras are not pointing forward, it is really good to use https://github.com/mapillary/mapillary_tools/blob/master/python/interpolate_direction.py to set the direction. The script takes two parameters: First the path to the folder with the geotagged images, the next (optional) is the number of degrees to correct. So if a camera is pointing 45 degrees to the left, it is -45, if it is 45 deg to the right it is 45, straight right is 90 etc.
Hi
On the ferry trip in Toronto I stood on the backside of the ferry and pointed my mobile backwards. No other chance to point and get not much folks on it, also I only had one mobile with me.
On a waterway with enough mobiles/cameras/… do point it on a pole high above your obstacles and make some pictures all around, e.g. one forward, one left, one right, one back… if possible.
aceini
I made this one on water with my casio exilim. http://www.mapillary.com/map/s/yAaujftJgvaeVGYTZb4oew
I point the camera at different directions depending on how interesting it is.