Level the horizon?

PaulEden · Jul 22, 2020

Guys,
Here's a short scene of a newly planted forest that I flew over a few days ago.

Backstory, the local council were doing a tree planting event and we went along to plant a tree. We had my old drone and shot quite a bit, but the weather was bad and the camera sucked. Anyway, we took the H Plus back there and filmed the above shot.

But it's bugging me, it's on a hillside. You can't see the horizon but you can see the hedgeline at the top of the frame and it's tilted because its on a hill.

So what should I do to make this better? Tilt it level in post?
Refly, but angle the camera down so the hedgeline isn't in shot?
Live with it? Mostly people who know the location know it's quite steep.

Thanks,

Paul

WTFDproject · Jul 22, 2020

It's interesting that the stakes near the center seem much more vertical than suggested by the tilt of the hedgerow. If you refly the scene, it would be informative to take an actual horizon shot, preferably from 300ft or higher.

PaulEden · Jul 22, 2020

I think that's intentional. The trees and their stakes are vertical, the hedgerow isn't. Is that what you mean?

WTFDproject · Jul 22, 2020

PaulEden said:
I think that's intentional. The trees and their stakes are vertical, the hedgerow isn't. Is that what you mean?

Perhaps I misread your original post. In that post you said "it's tilted because its no a hill." I read that as "it's NOT a hill", and thought you were experiencing the common "right tilt" that plagues many C23 cameras.

On second read, I see the incomplete word may not be incomplete, but possibly misspelled, and was intended to read "it's ON a hill".
My apologies for the confusion. Please clarify if you are experiencing a camera problem, or looking for photo editing advice.

Steve Carr · Jul 23, 2020

If you tilt the video in the editor all the stakes will be tilted. The only way to get rid of the hillside is to re-fly it or crop the video.
The first half of this video (0-22 sec) has been tilted. The second half is cropped to remove the horizon.

PaulEden · Jul 23, 2020

WTFDproject said:
Perhaps I misread your original post. In that post you said "it's tilted because its no a hill." I read that as "it's NOT a hill", and thought you were experiencing the common "right tilt" that plagues many C23 cameras.

On second read, I see the incomplete word may not be incomplete, but possibly misspelled, and was intended to read "it's ON a hill".
My apologies for the confusion. Please clarify if you are experiencing a camera problem, or looking for photo editing advice.

And then I misread your reply and we all got confused!

It IS on a hill, the left hand side is uphill, so yes, I'm asking about better composition and post editing.

PaulEden · Jul 23, 2020

Steve Carr said:
If you tilt the video in the editor all the stakes will be tilted. The only way to get rid of the hillside is to re-fly it or crop the video.
The first half of this video (0-22 sec) has been tilted. The second half is cropped to remove the horizon.

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Right, good. So tilting the video looks odd, though to be honest, it isn't as bad as I'd feared. A crop is better.
Here's what I'm going to do... At the weekend, I'm going to re-fly this. The aircraft will be going in the same direction but will be further to the right and the camera will be facing uphill and slightly more pitched down. So it will become a tracking shot instead of a fly over. I'll probably refly the original too, but with more camera pitch down to keep the hedgerow out of shot.
Thank you both!