How can I find the original camera position from an old photograph?

Question

I have old photos of a town and nearby landscape, and I want to recreate them from the same shooting positions. I can identify some buildings and landmarks in the images, and in some cases I know their locations on a map and even their dimensions. However, I don’t know what camera or lens was used.

Are there practical techniques or software tools for estimating the original camera location from a single photograph?

user25672 · Accepted Answer

The key is to find areas of the image with a lot of parallax, such as a foreground building and a background tree. Try to pick a point as close to one edge of frame as possible. Now walk left/right (green) to find the correct point of intersection from the old photograph.

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Now that you've done that, you've established a straight line to move along (red).

Pick a different parallax intersection on the other edge of frame. Instead of walking left/right, walk along the red axis you established earlier. Once you've matched that parallax, without spoiling the first match, you've found the position of the camera.

Once you're in the same position, matching the lens is easy. You can just look through the camera and adjust until the framing matches, or measure the angle of view.

There is software that can calculate the position of the camera, but generally you need a 3D model of the scene as a basis.

How can I find the original camera position from an old photograph?

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