Assessing the Photogrammetric Potential of Cameras in Portable Devices

In recent years, there have been an increasing number of portable devices, tablets and Smartphone’s employing high-resolution digital cameras to satisfy consumer demand. In most cases, these cameras are designed primarily for capturing visually pleasing images and the potential of using Smartphone and tablet cameras for metric applications remains uncertain. The compact nature of the host’s devices leads to very small cameras and therefore smaller geometric characteristics. This also makes them extremely portable and with their integration into a multi-function device, which is part of the basic unit cost often makes them readily available. Many application specialists may find them an attractive proposition where some modest photogrammetric capability would be useful. This paper investigates the geometric potential of these cameras for close range photogrammetric applications by: • investigating their geometric characteristics using the self-calibration method of camera calibration and comparing results from a state-of-the-art Digital SLR camera. • investigating their capability for 3D building modelling. Again, these results will be compared with findings from results obtained from a Digital SLR camera. The early results presented show that the iPhone has greater potential for photogrammetric use than the iPad. * Corresponding author.