been doing roofing inspections for about 8 months now and still feel like im figuring out my own workflow every single job. right now im running a mavic 3 enterprise with the wide and tele combo and it works okay but i feel like im missing stuff or at least not being as efficient as i could be.

like do you guys do a full orbit first to get the lay of the land and then go in closer on problem areas or do you just grid the whole thing from the start? for flat commercial roofs ive been doing double grid at like 85% overlap which gets me good photogrammetry output in pix4d but for pitched residential stuff i never really know what angle to use on the camera and i end up with a ton of unusable frames.

also curious if anyone is using the thermal payload for roofing specifically. ive had clients ask about moisture detection and i know thats a thing but i havent pulled the trigger on renting the thermal unit yet because honestly im not sure how useful it actually is vs just doing a really thorough visual with the tele lens

thermal for moisture is genuinely worth it if your clients are doing insurance claims or selling commercial property. did a 40,000 sqft flat roof last spring and the visual showed basically nothing alarming but the thermal lit up three separate areas where water had gotten under the membrane, two of them were nowhere near any visible damage. client was thrilled and it basically paid for itself in terms of repeat business.

that said for residential pitched stuff i honestly just do a close manual orbit and then hover over anything that looks off. photogrammetry on a complex hip roof with dormers and whatever is kind of a nightmare to set up properly anyway and i find my eye catches more than the model does at that scale. the tele lens close-in approach is underrated for shingles and flashing detail.

for the camera angle on pitched roofs i usually set it around 60-65 degrees instead of straight nadir and that helps a lot with getting the actual slope surface in frame rather than just photographing the tops of ridges. probably obvious but took me a while to figure out lol