Photogrammetry/Remote SensingNRMT 2270

Lecture 1

Remote Sensing and Aerial Photography Definitions. History of Photography and

Aerial Photography.

Tomislav SapicGIS Technologist

Faculty of Natural Resources ManagementLakehead University

Definitions

Photogrammetry:The art or science of obtaining reliable measurement by means of photography (American Society of Photogrammetry, 1952; 1966)

Photogrammetric Interpretation:The act of examining photographic images for the purpose of identifying objects and judging their significance (Colwell, 1960)

Remote Sensing:The measurement or acquisition of information of some property of an object or phenomenon, by a recording device that is not in physical or intimate contact with the object or phenomenon under study (Colwell, 1983).

Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing combined:Photogrammetry and remote sensing are the art, science, and technology of obtaining reliable information about physical objects and the environment, through the process of recording, measuring and interpreting imagery and digital representations of energy patterns derived from non-contact sensor systems (Colwell, 1997).

Source: Jensen (2007).

In Situ vs. Remote Sensing

Source: Jensen (2007).

In Situ – intimate contact.

Remote Sensing – recording device is located on an aircraft or satellite.

GIS

Biological Sciences

Physical Sciences

Social Sciences

Surveying

RemoteSensing

Cartography

Remote Sensing (Photogrammetry): The Context

Modified from Jensen (2007).

Tree Species

Ecological Land Classification

Stereo Viewing

Flightline Planning

Aerial Photo Characteristics

Digital File Characteristics

Aerial Camera

Georeferencing

Photogrammetry/Remote Sensing Course Components

History of Aerial Photography and Aerial Platforms

• Photography was an invention waiting to happen.

• Two of the main components of photography had been understood for centuries:- the theory of light and colour- a recording instrument

(the camera obscura)

• What was needed was a material that is light-sensitive and can permanently retain light registrations – a light-sensitive emulsion became that material.

Source: Jensen (2007).

• The principles of pinhole cameras were explained in 1604 by Johannes Kepler in his Astronomiae Pars Optica, today generally recognized as the foundation of modern optics (see also Groh 2014).

Light and Colour

• India’s astrologers have taught for more than a thousand years that the Sun’s white light is composed of all colours.

• Unfortunately, it was Aristotle’s belief that all colours are created by mixing black and white which has prevailed all the way into the 17th century.

• Sir Isaac Newton’s understanding of light and colours, published 1672 in his New Theory about Light and Colours.

Source: Jensen (2007).

• Newton found out that by using a prism one can disperse white light into a spectrum of colours – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Then, by utilizing a second prism, one can recombine the colours into white light.

Light and Colour

Source: Jensen (2007).

First Photograph

• Taken 1826, in France, by Joseph Nicephore Niepce (1763 – 1833).

• The picture was of his estate courtyard.

• It was taken by using a camera obscura and a metal plate of pewter coated with an emulsion of bitumen of Judea (a kind of asphalt).

• The exposure lasted eight hours; the parts of the plate exposed to light hardened, areas that did not receive light remained soft.

• He washed the soft parts away with lavender oil and white petroleum.

• He called it heliograph, from the Greek helios for “Sun” and graphos for “drawing”.

• Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre (1787 – 1851), a business partner of Joseph NicephoreNiepce, developed the daguerreotype process:

o A polished surface of silver was plated onto a sheet of copper

o The plate was made light-sensitive by exposing it to the vapors from iodine crystals in a box – light sensitive silver iodide (silver halide) compound is created.

o The plate was placed in a camera obscura and a latent image of a very still (exposures of several minutes needed!) object made on the plate.

o The latent image was developed by placing the exposed plate in a box and applying vapor from heated mercury.

o The plate was then placed in a bath of common salt (sodium chloride), which caused unexposed silver iodide to become insensitive to further light exposure. At the end, the plate was washed in water and dried.

• Photos (positives) with great detail could be created.

• But, there was no way of producing multiple copies.

• Also, another problem was the presence of mercury vapor in the process of developing – some photographers went literally insane.

Daguerrotype Process

Source: Jensen (2007).

The Earliest Reliably Dated Photograph of People

Boulevard du Temple, Paris, spring 1838, daguerreotype photo by Daguerre (Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daguerreotype).

• William Henry Fox Talbot (1800 – 1877) discovered that an image formed on paper coated with silver iodide could be developed with gallic acid and silver nitrate.

• He used transparent paper negatives, fixed in hypo, to make positive copies on silver chloride paper.

• The process was called calotype; the copies were not as sharp as daguerrutypephotos.

• This negative-positive process is the same one that has been used for chemical photography up until today.

Calotypes

Source: Jensen (2007).

Dry Plates, Film Rolls, Mass Production

• Richard L. Maddox, a London physician and photo-micrographer, invented the dry-plate process in 1871.

• Gelatin was used as a medium for suspending light-sensitive silver salts.

o The emulsion was much more sensitive than earlier versions and could be developed in a dry state.

o This led to a greatly improved quality of detail.

• Out of that logic grew the invention of a film roll, by Leon Warnerke in 1875.

• The Eastman Kodak Company, founded by George Eastman, started in 1888 producing inexpensive box cameras with film rolls containing 100 frames. People would take 100 pictures, send the camera and the exposed film back to Kodak and Kodak would send back the developed photo prints along with a new camera with a film.

Source: Jensen (2007).

Colour Photograph

• In 1861, Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, with the help of photographer Thomas Sutton, demonstrated the additive colour combining technique.

• He photographed a bow of multicoloured ribbon four times using black-and-white film.

• Each time through a different filter: red, green, blue, and yellow.

• He then projected light through the red, green, and blue filtered black and white images and was able to recreate the image of the multicoloured bow.

Source: Jensen (2007).

Digital Photograph

• The concept of digital photographs was predated by the concept of digitizing images on scanners and the concept of digitizing video signals.

• The complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology was patented in 1967, in the USA, by Frank Wanlass.

• The charge-coupled device (CCD) was invented in 1969 at AT&T Bell Labs by Willard Boyle (a Canadian physicist) and George E. Smith. Both shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for this invention.

• 1988 was the year when likely the first true digital camera was produced by Fuji.

History of Aerial Platforms

Gaspard Felix Tournachon (1820 – 1910), who called himself Nadar, obtained the first aerial photograph, from a balloon, in 1858 near Paris, France, and patented the aerial survey as we now it today.

The first successful aerial photograph that there is a record of was taken in 1860, over Boston, USA, from a tethered balloon, by James W. Black, a professional photographer from the firm Black & Bathelder.

Source: Jensen (2007).

Aerial Photography in Forest Management in Canada

Paul Provencher’s Story…“I surveyed from Bersimis River east along the St. Lawrence to Moisie and all that country and I travelled north to the height of land and Fort McKenzie. My longest exploration was 10 months. I started in November and came back when the snow was falling the next year, 1929– 30. Before that only the main rivers had been surveyed. When aerial photography came in, it was different.” After the First World War the cutting of pulpwood expanded rapidly up into the Boreal Forest, and quick timber surveys were needed. In 1919 at Grand’Mère, Quebec, Ellwood Wilson borrowed two superannuated Curtiss HS2L flying boats from the federal government and bought two cameras. “As far as I know it was the first cruising of pulpwood by aerial surveys. The ideas of using the air had been thought of before and some sketching had been done by different people, but our base maps in that country were so terribly inaccurate — lakes, instead of being irregular with bays in them, were just a circle on the map.”

Canada had no forestry schools of its own until the University of Toronto established one in 1907, the University of New Brunswick at Fredericton in 1908, Laval at Quebec City in 1910, and the University of British Columbia in 1921. Old woods bosses like Harry Dennison at Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, who put no faith in book learning, were sceptical. Dennison insisted that a bush-ranger such as Peter Lesage of the Garden River Indian Reserve, born and bred in the woods, could out-cruise any college boy. But the new pulp companies were inclined to agree with Ellwood Wilson, the Yale Forestry School graduate who pioneered modern timber cruising on Quebec’s St. Maurice River in 1905; like army generals the companies needed accurate maps and information to operate. It was not enough, argued Wilson, merely to know where the wood and the streams were, with a guess at the amount. He wanted to know how much of a timber limit was swamp or burnt-over, whether the trees were growing or dying and how long the supply would last, how much it would cost to log the area, and what the risk of fire might be.

From MacKay (2007)(text only):

Curtiss HS2L over Red Lakehttp://www.msacomputer.com/flyingboats-old/curtiss/1926Curtiss-HS2L-overRedLake.jpg

History of Aerial Platforms

Source: Jensen (2007).

History of Aerial Platforms

WWI trenches

WWII V-2 rocket launching facility in Germany

U-2 US reconnaissance aircraft ER-2 – civilian version of U-2

Source: Jensen (2007).

Modern Analog Aerial Camera

Source: Jensen (2007).

Modern Digital Aerial Camera

Leica Geosystems ADS-40

Source: Leica Geosystems (2008).

http://www.aibotix.com

1687 – Sir Isaac Newton’s Principles summarizes basic laws of mechanics

1826 – Joseph Nicephore Niepce takes first photograph

1838 – Lois M. Daguerre invents positive print daguerrotype photography

1839 – William Henry Fox Talbot invents calotype negative/positive process

1855 – James Clerk Maxwell postulates additive colour theory

1858 – Gaspard Felix Tournachon takes aerial photograph from a balloon

1867 – The term photogrammetry is used in a published work

1873 – Herman Vogel extends sensitivity of emulsion dyes to longer wavelengths, paving the way for near-infrared photography

1903 – Airplane invented by Wright Brothers

1942 – Kodak patens first false-colour infrared film

1960 – Term remote sensing introduced by Evelyn Pruitt and other U. S. Office of Naval Research personnel

1970’s – Digital image processing comes of age

1970’s – Remote sensing integrated with geographic information systems

1990’s – Digital soft-copy photogrammetry comes of age

Milestones in the history of aerial photography

Source: Jensen (2007).

References:American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. 1952, 1966, Manual of

Photogrammetry, Bethesda: ASP&RS.Colwell, R. N. (Ed.) 1960. Manual of Photographic Interpretation. Falls Church: ASP&RS.Colwell, R. N. (Ed.) 1983. Manual of Remote Sensing, 2nd Ed., Falls Church: ASP&RS.Colwell, R. N. (Ed.) 1997. “History and Place of Photographic Interpretation,” in Manual of

Photographic Interpretation, 2nd Ed., W. R. Phillipson (Ed.), Bethesda: ASPRS, 33-48.Groh, J. M. 2014. Making Space: How the Brain Knows Where Things Are.Jensen, J. R. 2007. Remote Sensing of the Environment: An Earth Resource Perspective.

Pearson Prentice Hall.Leica Geosystems. 2008. Leica - 3rd Generation Airborne Digital Sensors: Features/Benefits

for Remote Sensing & Environmental Application. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCoQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmars.jrc.ec.europa.eu%2Fmars%2Fcontent%2Fdownload%2F1176%2F6943%2Ffile%2FT1_Rohrbach_Rohrbach-AirborneSensors-3rd_Leica.pdf&ei=35NkUvrqMa-E2gWWqoCwBw&usg=AFQjCNFxEdk3vWVOSM_CAXFELGDLjceZNg&bvm=bv.54934254,d.b2I&cad=rja. October 10, 2013.

MacKay, D. 2007. The Lumberjacks. Natural Heritage Books. Third Edition.