Camera Focal Length and Flight Altitude to Map with Intel® Insight Platform
Consider the following when you select the camera focal length and flight altitude:
- At a defined altitude, increasing the focal length captures a smaller area.
- The Ground Sampling Distance (GSD) value decreases. One pixel captures a smaller area and the image has a higher spatial resolution.
- At a defined focal length, decreasing the altitude captures a smaller area.
- The GSD value will decrease. One pixel captures a smaller area and the image has a higher spatial resolution.
| Note | The image rate needs to be increased to maintain a good overlap. |
Terrains
- Forest and dense vegetation: Flying higher helps for the reconstruction, but the spatial resolution will be lower.
- Buildings: Flying higher reduces the artifacts at the building edges, but the spatial resolution will be lower.
Overlap
- Low altitude with big focal length requires a high image rate to maintain a good overlap.
- For a given focal length and a given image rate, increasing the altitude will increase the overlap.
| Related topics |
| Image Acquisition and Flight Planning |
| Compute Flight Height for Ground Sampling Distance |
| Compute the Image Rate for Frontal Overlap |
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