RESULTS OF A PERFORMANCE TEST OF A DUAL MID-FORMAT DIGITAL CAMERA SYSTEM

The low weight and the relatively low cost of medium format digital cameras have pushed the use of those units for aerial survey. These medium format cameras are often used as secondary sensors together with other aerial sensors like LiDAR systems. The rising number of pixels per camera leads to an increasing interest in medium format systems as main sensors, especially for smaller survey aircraft. While the number of pixels across flight direction is not critical for capturing linear objects, like power lines or pipelines, the relatively small number of pixels compared to large format systems increases the necessary flying effort for photogrammetric blocks. In case larger blocks have to be flown efficiently, it is possible to combine two or more of such medium format cameras (dual- or multi-head solutions). This combination of medium format cameras increases the possible image strip widths and therefore reduces the flying time and distance for block projects. A performance test of a dual-head medium format digital camera system flown over the Vaihingen/Enz test field of the Institute for Photogrammetry of Stuttgart University is presented. The operated Dual-DigiCAM-H/39 consisted of two 39Mpixel cameras. To increase the image width across flight direction, the two cameras were mounted to look to the side at an oblique angle of +14.8 ° and-14.8°, respectively. This configuration results in an effective image width of 13650 pixel. The dual camera system was operated together with a CCNS/AEROcontrol navigation- and GPS/IMU system. The GPS/IMU trajectory was processed with different GPS methods and the different trajectories are compared. The overall system performance was evaluated based on the analysis of independent check poin