Investigation of a consumer-grade digital stereo camera

The paper presents a metric investigation of the Fuji FinePix Real 3D W1 stereo photo-camera. The stereo-camera uses a synchronized Twin Lens-CCD System to acquire simultaneously two images using two Fujinon 3x optical zoom lenses arranged in an aluminum die-cast frame integrated in a very compact body. The nominal baseline is 77 mm and the resolution of the each CCD is 10 megapixels. Given the short baseline and the presence of two optical paths, the investigation aims to evaluate the accuracy of the 3D data that can be produced and the stability of the camera. From a photogrammetric point of view, the interest in this camera is its capability to acquire synchronized image pairs that contain important 3D metric information for many close-range applications (human body parts measurement, rapid prototyping, surveying of archeological artifacts, etc.). Calibration values for the left and right cameras at different focal lengths, derived with an in-house software application, are reported together with accuracy analyses. The object coordinates obtained from the bundle adjustment computation for each focal length were compared to reference coordinates of a test range by means of a similarity transformation. Additionally, the article reports on the investigation of the asymmetrical relative orientation between the left and right camera.