okay so this has been bugging me for like two weeks now. i flew a pretty standard grid mission over a field, M30T, DroneDeploy, nothing fancy. the resulting orthomosaic has this faint but visible seam kind of diagonally across the middle of it and its definitely not a physical feature of the land, its an artifact from the processing or the flight i think.

lighting conditions werent ideal, it was partially cloudy so the sun was going in and out which i know can cause issues but ive flown in those conditions before without getting anything this obvious. overlap was set to 75/70. i didnt use any GCPs on this one because the client just wanted a general overview not survey-grade accuracy.

anyone seen this before? im wondering if its a stitching issue or something to do with the way the images were captured on that particular pass. the seam lines up roughly with where the flight direction reversed so maybe thats relevant.

yeah that sounds like a classic lighting change issue combined with the direction reversal. when the cloud cover shifts even a little between passes you get different exposure values on images that are supposed to stitch together and the software struggles to blend them cleanly. the fact that it lines up with where the flight reversed makes me pretty confident thats whats happening - that would be roughly the midpoint of your flight time where conditions had the most time to change.

few things that might help next time: fly in consistent lighting obviously which i know isnt always possible, but also try enabling the terrain follow if your area has any elevation change because sometimes the altitude variation contributes. in post processing you can try adjusting the radiometric calibration settings if DroneDeploy gives you access to that, or just flag it to the client as a lighting artifact if accuracy isnt the point. honestly for a general overview deliverable its probably fine.

Is the seam consistent across zoom levels or does it kind of disappear when you zoom out? sometimes what looks like a real seam at 1:1 is barely noticeable at the scale the client will actually view it. Not saying ignore it but worth checking before you spend hours reprocessing.