Strange altitude readings in Lightroom.

[Dave Maine]

Sorry for the confusion. I was trying to derive the information from setting up a google earth perspective to match what was in the photo. You have better data it sounds like. All I have is what is in the externally available EXIF published in photos taken a year ago., which is consistent. As far as I can tell, only EXIF is recorded to the photo - I examined the entire raw metadata file, but what internal data was used to fill in that field you clearly know from your work.

Thanks,
Dave

 

[sar104]

Sorry for the confusion. I was trying to derive the information from setting up a google earth perspective to match what was in the photo. You have better data it sounds like. All I have is what is in the externally available EXIF published in photos taken a year ago., which is consistent. As far as I can tell, only EXIF is recorded to the photo - I examined the entire raw metadata file, but what internal data was used to fill in that field you clearly know from your work.

Thanks,
Dave

If you take another look at the link in post #2 (Firmware v01.00.0510 EXIF altitude changes) you will find the detailed explanation of the EXIF data and the logged IMU data that are used to derive those values. The implementation is a little strange, but not particularly obscure.

 

[Meta4]

We can agree that Lightroom shows barometric altitude relative to takeoff because of the experiment I shared in the last post. That is what is in the EXIF data in the actual photo.

View attachment 84573 Lightroom View attachment 84574 Preview (Mac) View attachment 84582

While the app will show you the altitude relative to takeoff, the altitude you are seeing in Lightroom is a very rough (possibly out by a few hundred feet) approximation of the altitude above sea level.
This number is useless for calculations.
To find out how high the drone was, you could track the photo point in the recorded flight data when the shot was taken.