been doing residential and light commercial roofing inspections for about 8 months now, mostly wind damage and hail claims stuff for a couple of insurance adjusters who found me through word of mouth. my question is more about how close people are actually flying to get usable imagery because i feel like i'm either too far away and missing granule loss detail or i'm so close that i'm in this weird parallax situation where the images wont stitch right in the mapping software

currently on a Mavic 3 Enterprise which i know isnt the most serious option but it works for the residential stuff. the 70mm equivalent zoom helps but even then for like a 4/12 pitch roof im not sure im capturing what the adjuster actually needs to see on the back slope without basically flying below the ridge which feels sketchy on anything over a single story

also wondering if anyone's dealt with pushback from homeowners when you're hovering close to the roof, had one lady yesterday come out and ask if i was looking in her windows which, fair enough i guess but still

the stitching issue you're describing is pretty common when you're flying under like 50ft on a pitched roof, the overlap math just doesn't work the same way it does on flat surfaces and most mapping software assumes you're doing a nadir grid which is basically useless for anything with significant pitch. what i do for steep slopes is fly manual orbits and then just deliver the raw sorted images rather than trying to force a 2D map out of it. adjusters generally dont care about orthomosaics anyway they just want to see the damage clearly

the window thing happens to me constantly. i just try to position myself so its obvious im pointed at the roof and not the house but theres only so much you can do. had a guy threaten to call the cops once even though i was clearly just doing a roof inspection on the neighbors place. people are just weird about it now

on the actual flying question im using an M3E too and i usually try to stay about 15-20 feet above the ridge for the top surfaces and then come around to the sides for the rakes and eaves. for hail you really do need to get close, granule loss doesn't show up at all if you're back too far. the 70mm tele lens helps a lot but youll still need to get uncomfortably close on darker shingles