Digital Airborne Cameras – Status and Future

The traditional way of airborne photogrammetric imaging is undergoing major changes currently. With the advent and operational availability of digital (large-format) imaging sensors a strong and powerful alternative to the standard way of analogue imaging appeared. The direct digital imaging not only closes the final chain link in the full digital workflow of image acquisition and processing, even more important, obtained results showed significant advantages of digital imaging compared to scanned analogue images. Nevertheless, long-term experiences using such sensors in operational airborne environments and production are not yet available, from that these new sensors still have to prove their long-term performance compared to the analogue mapping cameras. The paper tries to briefly reflect the today’s situation of digital airborne imaging and the role of digital sensors in future market. Since the empirical investigation of these sensors is still of major concern and necessity some exemplarily results from such performance studies are briefly cited. Within the second part the ongoing activities in development of user guidelines for digital airborne sensors and standardization needs are given, where a certain focus is laid on the topic of digital sensor calibration and validation.