How close am I flying to things? Best way to tell?

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I am sure this is a stupid question but when you are flying over a tall tree or coming in for a landing between your house and shop or barn or something, if you are not able to maintain that line of sight during landing how do you gauge if you are clearing all the objects around you? I have been pointing my camera straight down and then trying to land slowly but am worried that when I am flying over trees and going in for a closer look that I might get too low and snag a branch, what are your methods and tips for making sure you are clear of all obstacles when you do not have full line of sight? When you are landing how to do you figure if you have enough clearance just when using camera view only? Is there any way to calibrate the altitude? My P4Pro thinks that it's -39 feet when on the ground.

Thank you.
 
Personally, I always land manually within sight as areas I fly at have uneven spots where it could tip over and bust a prop. I'm often at my last 1% "Warning! Critical Battery Voltage Reached" voice message when hovering over a potential landing spot I survey out. Never have used RTH to land. Might not even work on mine.

As to the altitude, only way to set is at take-off. Anything beyond that is "Who knows what it will show in GO?" And yeah, mine often lands at -46 feet. For all the hardware on it, sure is sad it cannot tell. "Okay, the ground is beneath me and I just landed on it according to all my wonderful sensors, but I'll just show the Bozo flying me -46 feet on the GO screen just to twist him off." :p
 
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what are your methods and tips for making sure you are clear of all obstacles when you do not have full line of sight?
I make sure that I fly from an area that will be safe to come back to.
launching from somewhere cluttered with trees, buildings, overhead wires etc is asking for trouble.
Is there any way to calibrate the altitude? My P4Pro thinks that it's -39 feet when on the ground.
A difference of a couple of feet is not an issue but 39 feet is a problem.
Try doing an IMU recalibration on a level surface and see if that gets it back in spec.
 
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I have a question as to distance to an object. How do you tell how close you are? The camera always makes it look a lot closer than it is. I want to film a lighthouse and drop down so I am even with it and then circle around it. When I do the flight it looks like I am close but when I get home and check out the video or the pictures I am a lot further than I thought I was. This pic is a good example, thought I was closer.

Thanks as always...
DJI_0009.JPG
 
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I have a question as to distance to an object. How do you tell how close you are? The camera always makes it look a lot closer than it is. I want to film a lighthouse and drop down so I am even with it and then circle around it. When I do the flight it looks like I am close but when I get home and check out the video or the pictures I am a lot further than I thought I was. This pic is a good example, thought I was closer.

Thanks as always...
View attachment 78908

I have the same issue even with LOS ( but closer to 300 feet away)
I have done 2 things so far that have helped a little. Avoid being too close but the better choice was to hold my drone and looked at my screen . So I walked it and in some cases drove. Had drone in my hand and approached the object ( tree in this case) and looked at my screen. Eventually I had more confidence in the drones ability to accurately report the distance from the object. It seemed like the only way for me to get close up shots. Good luck!
 
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I have the same issue even with LOS ( but closer to 300 feet away)
I have done 2 things so far that have helped a little. Avoid being too close but the better choice was to hold my drone and looked at my screen . So I walked it and in some cases drove. Had drone in my hand and approached the object ( tree in this case) and looked at my screen. Eventually I had more confidence in the drones ability to accurately report the distance from the object. It seemed like the only way for me to get close up shots. Good luck!

Yeah, that's a great idea! I've started flying over things and then slowly going down towards them and checking the level with eye so I can get an idea of how close things should look in the camera without being too close. White oak trees are difficult because it looks like like stray twig or branch might snag me if I get too close.
 
I've noticed while flying, objects will look closer on my live view than they actually are. For example, while I was flying over a billboard, looking at the live view on my tablet it looked ( or felt) as if the landing gear might clip the top of the billboard, now when I looked at my drone directly I could clearly see I had plenty of room to fly over.
 
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