bundle adjustment

digital camera

Optical Engineering

One of the most remarkable issues of modular large format digital cameras is that the image which is photogrammetric processed (for example, is the input to aerial triangulation) results from the composition of images physically acquired by a sensor. This “artificial” image is produced through a given principal distance and principal point and is corrected from distortions up to a certain amount (usually 2 μm). Therefore, it becomes unavoidable to monitor the adequate behavior of the camera and images, so self-calibration is one of the main procedures related to the efficient management of these devices. In this context, to calibrate this type of sensor and assess its performance, a two-height flight, with ground sample distance of 0.075 and 0.150 m, over a test field has been projected and executed. The issues that have been checked are: the misalignment between the inertial motion unit and the camera, the actual value of both the principal distance and principal point and the influence of the so-called additional parameters on the behavior of the image residuals.

Detection of systematic error on charge coupled devices of large format modular cameras