Comparative geometric and radiometric evaluation of mobile phone, compact and DSLR cameras

Progress development in digital imaging system has impacted in many fields including close range photogrammetry (CRP). With the improvement in resolution of digital imaging, the image qualities of digital imaging especially non-metric cameras is increasingly optimized. The recent increase in number of pixels of non-metric digital camera and hand phone camera has encouraged the needs to utilize it for CRP applications such as 3D measurement and creations of orthoimages. The objective of this study is to evaluate the performance of non-metric cameras used in CRP. In this study, three non-metric cameras which are Digital Single-Lens Reflex (DSLR), compact and mobile phone are calibrated and tested based on geometric and radiometric characteristics. Geometric performance test is carried out by using self-calibration technique where a calibration test field in the form of three-dimensional (3D) was used. The 3D distance measurement is made to verify the accuracy for these cameras. The interior parameters of the cameras were evaluated and analyzed using descriptive analysis and subsequently followed by performing distance measurement. The radiometric capabilities of all cameras were evaluated by carrying out modulation transfer function (MTF) analysis and image noise analysis. The results clearly demonstrate that the potential and the capability of non-metric cameras to measure up to sub-millimeter precision. From this study, it can be concluded that the performance of geometric is generally increases with the radiometric performance.