Is it any better to use a modified lens in a GoPro for aerial mapping? If I change the original fish eye lens for a 5.4mm flat lens, can I fly higher, or is it better for creating a 3D model of a structure such as an industrial chimney? If so, should I create a new camera model?
Hi Santiago,
Changing the lens of your fisheye camera to a 5.4mm lens, you are going to lose the wide field of view that a fisheye camera has.
fisheye cameras are very good for interior mapping and cases where the flexibility of your movements is limited.
For aerial mapping, I would use a perspective camera.
If you want to convert your GoPro into a perspective camera, then you should edit the camera model in Pix4dmapper.
You should set your model as Perspective instead of Fisheye.
Check this out: http://blog.pix4d.com/post/117691418916/industrial-inspection-of-a-104-year-old-chimney
It’s a nice example of a chimney reconstruction.
Best,
The link is broken is there another source for the link?
@Ian,
Thank you for pointing it out. This one should work: https://pix4d.com/industrial-inspection-of-a-104-year-old-chimney/ .
Technical Support Engineer,
Can you share the settings that were used for the GoPro with the 5.4 mm flat lens. I have changed my fisheye lens out to the same lens and am have in issues with the settings.
The Pix4D internal camera database includes GoPro camera with default fisheye lenses.
In case that you use a modified lens, we recommend calibrating the camera before using it in our software in order to get an estimation of initial internal camera parameters. This typically only needs to be done once and the parameters can be used later on for all the projects with the specific modified camera/lens.
More on how to calibrate a camera can be found here: