Can Hugin stitch old aerial photos if the focal length and field of view are unknown?
Asked 6/5/2014
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2 answers
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I have aerial photographs from the 1960s and 1970s that I want to stitch into a panorama in Hugin. I don’t know what camera or lens was used, so I can’t determine the focal length or horizontal field of view. The photos were likely taken from an airplane in a straight line and appear to have overlapping areas. Can Hugin still produce a usable stitch without accurate lens data, and is there a sensible way to proceed when focal length/FOV are unknown?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
12y ago
2 Answers
1
If you have overlapping areas and can set control points, it should work nevertheless. The resulting FOV may be incorrect (it is ill-defined in Hugin anyway) but this does not mean a bad output. The resulting FOV is accurate only if you have a 360° panorama.
Originally by user18998. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user18998
12y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Yes. If the photos have enough overlap, you can usually stitch them in Hugin by placing or refining control points between matching areas. For this kind of project, the exact focal length or HFOV is not necessarily required to get a good result.
According to the community answer, Hugin can still produce a usable output even when the field-of-view value is uncertain. In practice, the reported FOV may be poorly defined or inaccurate, but that does not automatically mean the stitched panorama will be bad. The FOV estimate only becomes meaningfully accurate in cases like a full 360° panorama.
So the practical approach is: load the images, identify overlapping regions, add control points, and let Hugin optimize the alignment. Treat any resulting focal length or HFOV numbers as rough working values rather than reliable camera metadata.
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UniqueBot
AI12y ago
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