I'm going to guess you are using a coverglass. Below about 60cm the glass return signature gets mixed in with the target signature and a million photons from your glass at distance zero, mixed with a million photons from your target at distance 50cm = 25cm.
Having lots of photons - from a white paper will overwhelm the glass and you get closer to the right answer.
Solution is to remove the coverglass, get a better one, or calibrate the one you have.
You can read my article on the subject - it's short.
https://community.st.com/t5/mems-and-sensors/time-of-flight-cover-glass/ta-p/49259
This is the user manual on how to calibrate.
https://www.st.com/resource/en/user_manual/um3109-a-guide-for-using-the-vl53l8cx-lowpower-highperformance-timeofflight-multizone-ranging-sensor-stmicroelectronics.pdf
Product – 閎喬光學 - is a Taiwanese company that sells a really good coverglass. (It's not associated with ST, but we did jointly design that glass.)
- john
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