so anyway this has been bugging me since this morning. doing a commercial flat roof inspection for an insurance claim, big warehouse, maybe 40,000 sq ft of TPO membrane. wind was showing 12mph on my phone but at roof level it was gusting way more than that, definitely felt like 20+ at times. im on a mini 3 pro which i know is not ideal for this kind of job but its what the client booked and honestly most roof work ive done its been fine.

the problem was the drone kept drifting during the grid pattern and some of the overlap on my images is totally off. like i can see gaps in coverage when i pulled it into webodm. the membrane seams are the critical thing to document for the adjuster and i got maybe 60% of them properly. had to cut the mission short because a gust caught it pretty good and i got nervous.

ended up going back up once the wind died a bit and got most of it but the lighting had changed and now i've got two sets of images with totally different exposure which is gonna make the ortho look horrible. do i just deliver what i have and explain it or try to reshoot the whole thing. client is already asking for the report

that lighting mismatch in the ortho is going to look really bad, ive had this happen and the adjuster actually questioned whether the images were from different days which became a whole thing. if you can get back out there i would, even if it means eating the extra time. for flat roof work id honestly just be upfront with the client that conditions werent ideal and you want to make sure the deliverable is solid. most of them would rather wait a day than get bad data.

also for future reference the mini 3 pro in wind above like 15mph is asking for trouble on grid missions, the attitude hold just isnt as locked as something heavier. ive switched to doing manual passes on windy days instead of relying on litchi or dronelink to handle it automatically

honestly the exposure thing might not be as bad as you think depending on how webodm handles it. ive seen odm normalize pretty well across mixed lighting if the overlap is there. the gaps from drift are the real problem. id just be transparent with the report, note the conditions, show the coverage map and flag the areas with insufficient overlap as needing follow up. adjusters deal with incomplete data all the time and its better than pretending the coverage was fine when it wasnt