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how to calculate resolution of an image

I am very new at this; how does one obtain the resolution of a map completed with mapsmadeeasy?
When people say the resolution of an image is 3 feet, or one meter, what does that mean, exactly?
Thank you!

Luis Martinez

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It is a pretty complicated topic... It is related to the camera's focal length, the sensor's pixel size and the distance from the objective. It is generally referred to as GSD or Ground Spatial Distance. GSD is typically quoted in inches or cm per pixel. A GSD of 4 in/px means that one pixel in the resultant image represents a 4 inch square on the ground. Smaller squares means more detail.

On a camera with a fixed focal length, like the DJI Phantom 3, the GSD will scale linearly with altitude. On a camera with a varifocal lens, the GSD will scale linearly with focal length.

People also sometimes refer to an image being X feet or Y meters and are talking about the spot size, or size of the area that an image covers on the ground. In aerial images, these are usually 10s to 100s of meters and will equal the GSD times the resolution. A 4000x3000 image with 5 cm GSD will give a spot size of 20000cm x 15000cm, or 200x150 meters.

Our Flight Planner https://www.mapsmadeeasy.com/flight_planner will let you play with the numbers without getting bogged down in the math.

Tudor
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You can't really calculate it after the fact. You just have to know the altitude you flew at and what camera you used. that will give you the best case GSD. When we texture the 3D model to create the orthomap a little stretching goes on, but we try to keep things as close to native resolution as possible.

Tudor 0 votes
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I flew at 250 feet w/ a P3P. If you can refer me to the info, I'll work it out. Thanks.

Luis Martinez 0 votes
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Select the Phantom 3/Inspire 1 camera. Put 76 meters in for the altitude. That gives you 3.3cm/px or 1.29 in/px.

Tudor 0 votes
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i have a question about resolution
What is the resolution if the flight as two passes with different altitude.
Because i have a flight at 40 m and an other at 60 m for the higher structure.
thanks for your help..

berdeaux françois 0 votes
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Berdeaux: That behavior is somewhat ill defined. The texturing stage will select the closest and most orthogonal image to use as the primary texture source so we would expect that the lower terrain would get the lower set of images. The higher terrain is questionable though. This is against the data collection guidelines since there are two different cruising altitudes.

Try it and find out!

Tudor 0 votes
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Hola! un gusto saludarle esperando se encuentre bien!


 
Cuales son los parámetros de cámara Phantom 4 Pro:
 
Focal Length =
 
Pixel Pitch (microns) =
 
X Resolution =
 
Y Resolution =
 
Gracias por su respuesta.
 
 
Eddison
Eddison Araya 0 votes
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Focal Length = 4.7 mm
 
Pixel Pitch (microns) = 1.56192
 
X Resolution = 3000
 
Y Resolution = 4000

 In the future, please only post your question one time.

Zane 0 votes
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What are the parameters for the Mavic 2 Pro?

Last Frontier Aerial, LLC 0 votes
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The Mavic 2 Pro is the same as the P4P with a 10.28mm focal length.

Zane 0 votes
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Hi. How do I know the height above ground of a dji mini 2 photo? I use mapsmadeeasy for orthomoisaics and get very accurate distance measurements, but what about a single picture? I want to measure an object from a dji mini 2 photo, and I followed the steps that you suggested... however, when I look at the metadata of the photo, the "altitude" is greater than the height above ground (67 m vs ~ 20 m). Is there a way to extract the height above ground of a single dji mini 2 photo, in order to estimate a distance (using your flight planner) of an object on the ground? Thank you!

Millo Marin 0 votes
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Millo: This isn't really on topic for this conversation and this thread has been dead for 4+ years. Please ask your question as a new post instead of including 8 other people with off topic posts.  

Zane 0 votes
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