Leica digital camera processing

The RCD produces raw files that need to be processed in order to create TIFF files. The processing basically uses a gain and offset scaling and (probably) corrects for lens distortion. See the RCD page for more details, including filename convention.

Processing the raws

1. Load the Leica photo processing software
   • Under Windows, select start->programs->leica->calibration->Calibration Post Processing
   • If using wine, run "leica_photo_processing"
2. Select the appropriate camera config (Parameters)
   • As of late 2009, this is CH39_021_060
   • There may be updates to this as the camera is recalibrated
   • The G3/G4 characters at the end of the raw filenames denote the gain level used during image capture. Use the same gain level for post processing.
3. Select the input files
   • Typically this will be something like ~airborne/workspace/IPY09_11-2009_219_Helheim/leica/RCD/images
   • You can click and shift-click to select a list from the open file dialog, but be aware that it appears to take about 5 seconds per file under wine, so expect a long wait while it's thinking (it hasn't crashed!)
4. Unset all the processing options (Auto Contrast, Adaptive left-right balance)
5. Select the output directory
   • Typically this will be something like ~airborne/workspace/IPY09_11-2009_219_Helheim/leica/RCD/images-processed
6. Select 16 bit TIFF output (this is important''')
7. Hit the start button and go for coffee (allow about 20-30secs per file)

A typical processing setup looks like:

Tagging the TIFFs

TBC:

python ~chrfi/tifftagger -v -V -p IPY09/11 -l Helheim -f 219 /users/rsg/airborne/workspace/IPY09_11-2009_219_Helheim/leica/RCD/logs/090807-120958ImageEvents1.csv /users/rsg/airborne/workspace/IPY09_11-2009_219_Helheim/leica/RCD/images-processed/

Subsequent processing

There are several other steps that could be undertaken:

• orthorectification (map the photos with respect to the ground/aircraft position)
• ? geocorrection (map the photos with respect to the ground + a DEM) - possibly only Bill's azgcorr mods could do this
• compositing orthorectified photos and seam-line adjustment
  • compositing is easy, but will have ugly problems when you get different views on an object with vertical structure
  • to improve the look of this, you have to manually edit the positioning of the joins - this is currently a very manual process and we do not currently have software for it