PANORAMIC STEREO EXPERIMENT (Sanitized) PROJECT 9039

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: NGA Records (Formerly NIMA)
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP78B04747A000600140012-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 28, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 28, 2001
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: April 20, 1962
• Content Type: REPORT

Approved For Relew 2001/07/16: CIA-RDP78B04747A000p0140012-8
PANORAMIC STEREO EXPERIMENT
-Project 9039
Letter Report No. 1
April 20, 1962
This report covers work performed through April 16, 1962.
In order to demonstrate the interpretability of convergent stereo-
scopic panoramic photography, the following engineering development
STATINTL work was done on =airborne equipment.
Camera modification. The =panoramic camera,
havi YJINTL
12-inch focal length, is being used for this project, The _ is suitable
STATINTL
in all respects for the purpose except that the film transport system was
modified to reduce the metering cycle to 5 seconds. Engineering and
ground operational tests of the modified camera were performed during
the week of April 9.
Camera mount. A new mount, which provides the _c& i NTL
sufficient rotational freedom to obtain the required degree of convergence,
was designed and fabricated. The camera was mounted in the aircraft to
sweep across the flight line, with a forward tilt of t 15 degrees from the
vertical. The camera mount also provides ? 10 degrees of lateral tilt
correction and a full 360-degree rotation about the vertical axis. If
desired, therefore, the camera sweep could be set parallel to the flight
line, or at any other desired orientation.
View finder. An A-2 view finder was purchased and slightly modi-
fied to fit the space limits of the aircraft and camera mount. The glass
viewing plate has two pairs of cross-hairs, one of which identifies the
Declass Review by NIMA / DoD
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nadir point of the exposure being made and one the nadir point of the next
exposure. The aerial photographer thus has control of the interval be-
tween exposures, and can easily obtain convergent stereo mates covering
identical ground areas, or having any desired amount of overlap.
On April 13 a test flight was made over the Central Valley of
California. In spite of extensive ground testing of the camera before
the flight, the film metering system proved faulty, and satisfactory
coverage could not be obtained. A new cam was installed and the flight
was repeated the next day. Flight altitude was 20, 000 feet, which with
a 12-inch lens provided a photo scale of 1:20, 000. The first pass was
made from a point just south of Modesto for five miles to the east. Ex-
posures were made manually at intervals of one-half mile. Then the
pass was repeated from east to west to obtain convergent stereo mates
covering identical ground areas.
Originally it had been planned to fly additional photography over
the San Francisco Bay Area on the same day, but this could not be done
because of cloudy weather near the Pacific Coast. Another flight has
therefore been scheduled to obtain the Bay Area coverage. One flight line
will be flown along the East Bay shore, and another will cover the area
from San Jose about ten miles to the south. In addition, an east-west
flight line will be flown for twenty-five miles across the Central Valley.
Convergent stereo coverage of these areas will provide a great variety
of topography, urban and suburban culture, shoreline and water features,
natural vegetation, and cultivated crops, and will therefore lend itself
to extensive experiments demonstrating the interpretability of panoramic
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stereo photography. Some of the photographs taken on the return passes
will have random overlap, obtained by intervalometer setting, instead
of the identical ground areas photographed on the return pass in the
first flights. This will provide photography more closely resembling
that likely to be obtained in an operational situation.
Stereo panoramic viewer. Two projection viewers developed by
were modified for stereoscopic projection through the polaroid
principle. On April 16 the modified viewer was in the last stages of
assembly. The viewer has a Polacoat screen 15 inches high by 45
inches wide. It displays 70-mm slides made from the panoramic nega-
tives at approximately 20X magnification, showing the area from the
center of format toward either horizon and rectifying both the forward
convergent tilt and the lateral obliquity toward the horizons. The
slides are swept before the projection lens along a perpendicular cam
path, and tilted as required to provide continuous vertical registration
of conjugate stereo images. Horizontal registration at the edges of
the panoramic format is maintained by tilting the Polacoat screen.
The stereo viewer is to be tested, aligned, and adjusted during
the week of April 23. Stereo pairs from the photography obtained on
April 13- 14, as well as that from the flight still to be made, will then
be projected and evaluated. Separate evaluations will be made for
various categories of image, both artifacts and natural features, and
for images at various distances from the photo centers. Arrangements
will then be made for demonstration of the photography and equipment
to representatives of the contracting agency. The results will be de-
scribed in the final report.
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