Surveyor Blog
Measured Building Survey, Burneside, Kendal
Trial use of a Ricoh Theta Z1 to colourise scans using the Dual fisheye plugin. A 90deg USB-C cable is needed to connect a power bank, as the internal battery doesn’t last long. In this environment I shot 7 HDR brackets which turned out well in the darkest of corners. I shot twice at each location at 90 deg. Developed in Lightroom, stitching in Theta Stitcher. This only allows one image set, so I moved onto PTGui to stitch the 4 images. This needs refinement, as parallax errors are evident when the panorama has been stitched to the scan.
Land Survey, Great Ayton
Lodge park surveying, definitely a job for the drone, however using a GNSS receiver on top of a 360 prism, when out of the sight line of the total station, i.e. behind a lodge, the measurement is recorded with the GNSS R10. This survey method does save significant time.
Land Surveying, Nawton, North Yorkshire
Substantial land survey for a lodge park extension. As long these horses don’t push my gear over, we will get on fine.
Bridge Survey, Sizergh, Kendal
Scanning a footbridge to provide detailed drawings for heritage preservation and future planning of maintenance. This Nedo elevating tripod I usually use for loft hatches comes in handy.
Measured Building Survey, Lancaster
Working into an alley opposite Lancaster Castle for a measured building survey of an apartment block. Urban environments can pose problems in obtaining a satellite position fix to start a survey. Usually a crossroads provides some open sky in opposing directions.
Land Surveying near Hawkshead
Land surveying around a farm complex for potential lodge development. I can’t say I have been up any of these peaks but there is time yet.
Land Surveying, Dalton in Furness
Land surveying of an old quarry for potential redevelopment. Taking the high ground provides wider optical sight lines. The less number of times we have to move the instrument, the quicker the job is done.
Setting Out, Ullswater
Setting out foundations for a new build on the shore of lake Ullswater. This is a seriously good view on a fine day.
3D Model of the Lido, Grange-over-Sands
3D mesh model generated in Reality Capture software from a combination of Z+F laser scan data and Canon 5Ds R images using a EF 11-24mm lens. The detail level, which can be captured, is impressive.
Measuring inside the water tanks so that a volume can be calculated.
3D scanner descending into the water tanks. Each scan has to have sufficient overlap with another to bind it into the whole point cloud of measurements.
Drone Mapping Survey, Ravenstonedale
We do now have Topodrone PPK functionality on the DJI Inspire 2, this means we can accurately position each image before processing. We still need some ground control to check this accuracy. This project is for watercourse re-meandering. The drone photography is combined to produce a 3D mesh model from which we can extract standard contour information.
